Progressive Breakfast: Open Letter From Pittsburgh to the President on Paris Climate Pullout

MORNING MESSAGE

Dan Doubet

Open Letter From Pittsburgh to the President on Paris Climate Pullout

Mr. President, you represent the past, not the people of Pittsburgh. In the City of Bridges, we know climate change is real, regulations save lives, clean energy creates jobs, and our diversity is our strength. We are moving to the future, with or without you.

Health Options

Are Democrats becoming the single-payer party? NYT: “At rallies and in town hall meetings, and in a collection of blue-state legislatures, liberal Democrats have pressed lawmakers, with growing impatience, to support the creation of a single-payer system, in which the state or federal government would supplant private health insurance with a program of public coverage. “

California passes single-payer health care proposal, but it’s already facing an uphill battle. Salon: “The California state Senate passed a single-payer health care proposal on Thursday, but the bill has a long road ahead and the state must still determine how to bear the costs… If the bill comes into is ever made into law, California would become the first state in the U.S. to enact universal health care coverage.”

Obama unwittingly handed Trump a weapon to cripple health law. NYT: “Obama administration officials knew they were on shaky ground in spending billions of dollars on health insurance subsidies without clear authority. But they did not think a long-shot court challenge by House Republicans was cause for deep concern… the uncertain status of the cost-sharing payments now looms as the biggest threat to the stability of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act.”

Bridges and Tunnels

Trump plans week-long focus on infrastructure, starting with privatizing air traffic control. WaPo: “President Trump will seek to put a spotlight on his vows to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system and spur $1 trillion in new investment in roads, waterways and other infrastructure with a week-long series of events… Trump’s plans next week also include a trip to the Ohio River, where it separates Ohio and Kentucky, to talk about the importance of waterways… the president will also welcome a bipartisan group of mayors and governors to Washington to discuss the topic and venture to the Transportation Department to talk about roads and railways.”

Free Speech?

Pro-Trump “free speech” rally In Portland is a flash point between opposing groups. NPR:“Portland is one of the West Coast’s most liberal cities. But the murders last week really changed the atmosphere here. The suspect in the murders had attended Gibson’s last rally. And during his arraignment this week, he sort of parroted language that the alt-right uses shouting free speech or die and death to anti-fascists. And so that made this particularly sensitive.”

White House tells federal agencies to ignore information requests from Democrats, FOIA. Politico: “Hill Democrats are outraged by a new Trump administration policy to ignore information requests from members and senators unless they come from committee or subcommittee chairman… This effort is sometimes being aided by Republicans on Capitol Hill, or undertaken at their behest. For instance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) has asked federal agencies to refuse to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests designed to find out what data his panel is seeking from those agencies.”

Hope Springs

Voter suppression just had a bad night in Texas. ThinkProgress: “Texas could have fought for their 2011 law in the Supreme Court, and there’s a very good chance that the state would have won. Instead, the state elected to take a partial loss rather than pushing on for a full victory. It’s unclear whether it will retain that posture if the Supreme Court eventually does legalize new forms of voter suppression. For the time being, however, Texas’ efforts to suppress the vote are hobbled, if not entirely dead.”

ACLU sues South Carolina county for arresting and jailing people too poor to pay court fines. Daily KOS: “Thursday’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of five indigent plaintiffs… alleges that Lexington County has been engaging in the equivalent of modern-day “debtors’ prison” practices: issuing arrest warrants for people who are unable to pay court fees or court-ordered fines for minor infractions like parking tickets, and jailing them without offering them lawyers or determining whether they have the ability to pay in the first place.”

More from OurFuture.org:

Is Britain Also Feeling the Bern? Bob Borosage:“Bernie Sanders is in England for sold-out speaking engagements to boost Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s candidate for prime minister in the snap election scheduled for June 8. Corbyn is surging in British polls, and running a populist campaign that pledges radical economic reform. What Corbyn and Sanders’s surge – and the victory of Donald Trump on the right – demonstrate is that people in large numbers are looking for and open to bold alternatives, even ones that challenge the shibboleths about big government and the genius of markets.”

Workers Want a Green Economy, Not a Dirty Environment. Leo Gerard:“From terrible experience, Pittsburghers know about pollution. Before the city’s renaissance, the streetlights Downtown frequently glowed at noon to illuminate sidewalks through the darkness of smoke and soot belched from mills… The streetlights never switch on at noon in Pittsburgh anymore. The Cuyahoga River now supports fish that live only in clean water. But the United States remains the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter; it has an obligation to lead the world in combating climate change. Great leaders don’t shirk responsibility.”

Progressive Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to activists. Progressive Breakfast and OurFuture.org are projects of People's Action.more »

DOMESTIC TERRORISM: Muslim cab driver shot by passenger ranting about ISIS terrorists: ‘This is extreme — this has to stop’

The Raw Story shared a link.

 

Muslim cab driver shot by passenger ranting about ISIS: ‘This is extreme — this has to stop'

A Muslim taxi cab driver was shot by a man who ranted against Islamic State militants before running into his house to grab a rifle instead of paying his fare.

RAWSTORY.COM

Muslim cab driver shot by passenger ranting about ISIS terrorists: ‘This is extreme — this has to stop’

White man shooting rifle (Shutterstock)

uslim taxi cab driver was shot in Pittsburgh by a man who ranted against Islamic State militants before running into his house to grab a rifle instead of paying his fare.

The 38-year-old Moroccan immigrant said he picked up the man about 1 a.m. Thanksgiving outside Rivers Casino, and he said the passenger began questioning him about his background, reported the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“He started the conversation and began to ask questions like, ‘You seem to be like a Pakistani guy. Are you from Pakistan?’” said the driver, who asked to remain anonymous because he feared for his safety.

The driver explained he came from Morocco but insisted he was “an American guy” — but that didn’t satisfy the passenger.

“Then he continued the conversation,” the driver said. “He began to speak about ISIS killing people. I told him ‘Actually, I’m against ISIS. I don’t like them.’ I even told him that they are killing innocent people. I noticed that he changed his tone and he began to satirize Muhammad, my prophet, and began to shift to his personal life. He mentioned that he has two kids and was in prison for some time.”

When they arrived at the man’s house in Hazelwood, he asked the driver to wait because he had left his wallet inside.

“I waited for just five minutes, I think, and I noticed that he came out of the house carrying a rifle in his hand,” the driver said. “I noticed him coming toward me. I didn’t hesitate. I [made] a fast decision to leave and drove my taxi away because I felt he was going to do something, there is danger he would shoot me or something. I felt like he had the intention to kill me.”

The man fired multiple gunshots at the driver’s cab, blasting out the rear window and shooting him in the back.

The driver drove several blocks before pulling over and flagging down another driver to ask for help.

He remains hospitalized in stable condition, the newspaper reported, but the bullet is still lodged between his shoulder blades.

“In our religion, Islam, we forgive, even in such conditions,” the driver told the Post-Gazette. “I learned this from our prophet Muhammad. We don’t take revenge. I could forgive this, but I still want my rights.”

The Cranberry Taxi Service cab was equipped with a video camera, but no arrests have been made.

“It’s not like a TV show where it’s solved in 15 minutes,” said City Councilman Corey O’Connor. “We have to go back, retrace everybody’s steps, look at videos.”

Police have not said whether they believe the driver’s race or religion played a role in the shooting, but the FBI has been notified and is evaluating the case.

The driver arrived in the U.S. five years ago with an English degree and expects to become an American citizen in three months, and he hopes to become a teacher and bring his wife from Africa.

Members of the city’s Muslim community are frustrated that investigators are hesitant to describe the shooting as a hate crime.

“Since the Paris attack, we’ve been suffering,” said one woman, a member of the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh who also requested anonymity. “Personally, we experience a lot of humiliation, a lot of people giving you the finger on the streets and calling you names. But when it comes to the point of shooting, this is extreme. This has to stop.”

Watch this video report posted online by WTAE-TV:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/muslim-cab-driver-shot-by-passenger-ranting-about-isis-terrorists-this-is-extreme-this-has-to-stop/

Radioactive Drinking Water

Pittsburgh’s drinking water is radioactive, thanks to fracking.
Only question is, how much?
by Christopher Mims

Residents of Pittsburgh -- as well as potentially tens of millions of other everyday citizens in the Northeast corridor who rely on their taps to deliver safe water -- are consuming unknown and potentially dangerous amounts of radium in every glass of water. That's the buried lede in the Sunday New York Times' massive exposé on fracking, the relatively new process for extracting natural gas from the massive shale formation that stretches from Virginia to New York state.

But don't take the Times' word for it: The day the exposé appeared in print, John Hanger, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protection until June 2010, confirmed on his own blog that the main thrust of the story was dead-on:

No one has any idea if the radioactive material in the wastewater from fracking is appearing downstream, in drinking water supplies, in quantities in excess of EPA recommendations, and we'd better find out:

We must not drift into a war of competing
theories or studies.
We need the facts. Pennsylvanians deserve
nothing less.

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental
Protection should order today all public water
systems in Pennsylvania to test immediately for
radium or radioactive pollutants and report as
soon as good testing allows the results to the public.
Only testing of the drinking water for these pollutants
can resolve the issue raised by the NYT.

Hanger also says there are a number of oversights in the Times article: He says it unfairly characterizes Pennsylvania's response to the fracking crisis. Under his tenure, the number of gas-well inspectors doubled and a number of new regulations were put in place -- basically, he makes the case that Pennsylvania would be much worse off if it weren't for its efforts to curb the worst atrocities of fracking.

Industry dodges on the issue of radiation: A rebuttal of the Times piece by an industry group, the Marcellus Shale Coalition, does not even address the issue of radium in the wastewater that is dumped from fracking operations into water-treatment plants and thence water sources that are ultimately used by cities for drinking water.

The Coalition does claim that the majority of wastewater from fracking operations in Pennsylvania is reused, however, and that the industry aims for 100 percent reuse. This is great news, if it's achieved -- but you can bet it wouldn't happen in the absence of tough regulation.

What the Times piece and the subsequent responses illustrate is that oversight and environmental protection can work, even in the face of headwinds generated by industry -- but that in this case, regulation has been incomplete, and even those responsible for drafting and enforcing that regulation believe there are legitimate worries about the current state of fracking wastewater in Pennsylvania.

Oscar-nominated doc Gasland covers the other, even more dramatic issues with fracking:
Importantly, the radium and wastewater issues are completely independent of the issue of groundwater contamination in the immediate area of fracking operations. The latter is the subject of the documentary Gasland, which was nominated for an Oscar for best feature-length documentary but didn't ultimately win. (Donald Carr reviewed the film for Grist when it first debuted at Sundance.)

Gasland's reach and Oscar nomination brought enough attention to the issue to warrant apparent censorship of industry concessions that the documentary got things right:

"We have to stop blaming documentaries
and take a look in the mirror," Matt Pitzarella,
a spokesman for gas producer Range Resources
Corp., was quoted as saying in
[The Wall Street Journal].

However, if you go to the article, you
won't
find Pitzarella's statement because within the
hour the quote disappeared, say citizen journalists,
who screen captured it and posted it on Twitter.
Gasland director [Josh] Fox, in Los Angeles, awaiting
Sunday night's Oscar ceremony, has the screen shot
of the original version.

The industry also tried to get Gasland disqualified from the Oscars altogether:

The natural gas industry has spent months
attacking the documentary Gasland as a
deeply flawed piece of propaganda. After
it was nominated for an Oscar, an industry-
sponsored PR group asked the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences to reconsider the
film's eligibility.

New York state is next -- and the resulting drilling could threaten the drinking water of New York City itself: If the industry has its way, Pennsylvania is just the start. New York state is next, if it's not feeling the effects already -- the Times reported that fracking waste fluids have already been discharged into Cayuga Lake, which abuts Ithaca, N.Y. The Natural Resources Defense Council sees the Times exposé as yet more evidence that fracking is an unsafe technology that warrants a go-slow approach, especially in a state as dependent on natural waterways for its drinking water as New York.

The article makes the important point
that in Pennsylvania -- where fracking
has exploded over the past few years --
the vast majority of drilling wastewater is
being handled in sewage treatment plants
that discharge into surface water bodies
(like the Susquehanna, Delaware, and
Monongahela Rivers, which collectively
supply over 21 million people with drinking
water). [...]

The same is true in New York. As conceded
in the highly flawed draft environmental review
document issued by the state's Department of
Environmental Conservation in the fall of 2009,
wastewaters contaminated with radionuclides
and other hazardous substances generated in
New York would have to be handled at treatment
plants for discharge into surface waterbodies.
The document further concedes that there are no
adequately permitted facilities to handle this
material in the state.

Worth noting: New York City's water supply is unfiltered and comes straight from reservoirs after just minor chlorination. Try doing that after fracking comes to upstate New York.