Wednesday, January 31, 2018

San Francisco will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions dating to 1975


By Sarah Parvini, Rong-Gong Lin II and Cindy Chang

Jan 31, 2018 | 4:40 PM

| SAN FRANCISCO


San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1975, the district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

San Francisco will retroactively apply California's new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanors and felonies dating to 1975, the district attorney's office announced Wednesday.

Nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to Proposition 64's passage will be dismissed and sealed, Dist. Atty. George Gascón said. The move will clear people's records of crimes that can be barriers to employment and housing.


San Francisco's move could be the beginning of a larger movement to address old pot convictions, though it's still far from clear how many other counties will follow the famously liberal city's lead.

Proposition 64 legalizes, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allows individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allows people convicted of marijuana possession crimes eliminated by Proposition 64 to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged from their records as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety.

They also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.

"While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country's disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular," Gascón said in a statement. "Long ago we lost our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance, and it has broken our pocketbooks, the fabric of our communities, and we are no safer for it."

California lawmaker wants to make it easier to clear marijuana convictions from criminal records


About 75% of San Franciscans voted to legalize marijuana, the highest margin among all of California's 58 counties. But only 23 petitions for Proposition 64 reduction, dismissal or expungement have been filed over the last year, the district attorney's office said, adding that it does not have any active marijuana prosecutions.

As of September, 4,885 Californians have petitioned the courts to have marijuana convictions expunged or reclassified, but many people don't know about the process, which can be difficult, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which supported Proposition 64.

"So instead of waiting for the community to take action, we're taking action for the community," Gascón said.

Gascón's announcement came with special resonance in the city's Castro District, a center of efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in California. One of the biggest advocates of medical marijuana, Dennis Peron, died Saturday; Peron was considered a central figure in promoting the use of marijuana for AIDS patients.

"I'm totally in favor of that," Paul Greenbaum, 72, said of automatic expungement after he walked out of the Apothecarium, a medical and recreational cannabis dispensary in the Castro. "If it's not a crime now, what's the sense in continuing to stigmatize people?"

Greenbaum said he has been regularly smoking pot since he moved to San Francisco when he was 30 years old.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said there is historical meaning in San Francisco taking this step.

The Castro "was so deeply impacted by the AIDS epidemic. So many people were getting sick and dying, and medical cannabis was a lifeline for many people living with AIDS — a way for people to help with the side effects of the medication, to help with nausea, to help improve their appetite," Wiener said.

Some noted that the district attorney's move could help people with prior convictions improve their livelihoods.

Convictions "really can hold you back from getting a good job," said Redding-area resident Tom Savasta, 32, adding that the move would help people "become more proactive members of society."

A 2016 study by New Frontier Data, a data analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry, found "stark racial disparities in Califor­nia's marijuana-related jail population." Black, Latino and white people all consume and sell marijuana at similar rates, the research found, but black Californians are jailed for marijuana-only offenses at much higher rates — nearly one-quarter of people jailed for those offenses are black.

In a statement, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said San Francisco's move provides "new hope and opportunities to Californians, primarily people of color, whose lives were long ago derailed by a costly, broken and racially discriminatory system of marijuana criminalization."

Gascón said the disparities outlined in the study "weighed very heavily" in his decision to review people's convictions.

"We know there were tremendous failures in the war on drugs, and we criminalized large sections of our community," he told The Times. "The African American and Latino communities were the most harmed by this."

The district attorney said he hopes other counties will follow in San Francisco's footsteps. Some lawmakers have already started to pursue or support similar measures, including state Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), who has proposed legislation that would require criminal convictions for marijuana-related offenses to be automatically expunged, placing the burden on the courts.

Proposition 64 was opposed by many law enforcement groups in California, including the California Police Chiefs Assn., the California District Attorneys Assn., the California Narcotic Officers' Assn., the California Peace Officers Assn. and the California State Sheriffs' Assn. They expressed concern about the impact of legalization and question whether the state was prepared for all the implications the law would bring.

In Colorado, where voters legalized pot, prosecutors have been reluctant to erase prior marijuana convictions, said Sam Kamin, professor of marijuana law and policy at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law.

Often, defendants have pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, and prosecutors do not want to wipe their records clean when they may have committed more severe offenses than marijuana possession, Kamin said.

Eric Shevin, a Los Angeles defense attorney who specializes in marijuana law, said many people don't know they can wipe out their convictions or can't afford a lawyer to help with the process.

Shevin has already done a few hundred Proposition 64 petitions, which require preparing a motion and appearing in court several times. He said that process would go much more quickly with prosecutors taking the lead.

"District attorneys certainly have the right to research their own records and dismiss these cases on their own, en masse," Shevin said. "I applaud this D.A. for taking the initiative, and I hope others will follow."

Lin reported from San Francisco; Parvini and Chang from Los Angeles.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

Above is from:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-san-francisco-marijuana-20180131-story.html

cindy.chang@latimes.com

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

The full 'Putin list' of Russian oligarchs and political figures released by the US Treasury

























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By Sheena McKenzie, Nicole Gaouette and Donna Borak, CNN

Updated 12:46 PM ET, Tue January 30, 2018

US releases list of Russian oligarchs, political figures

The list, which the US administration had been required by law to release, includes 114 senior political figures and 96 oligarchs, all of whom rose to prominence under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The administration was required to name the companies and individuals and consider whether to sanction them under legislation meant to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 US election, as well as its human rights violations, annexation of Crimea and ongoing military operations in eastern Ukraine.

    The list, which includes senior members of Putin's Cabinet and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, reads like the US has "simply rewritten Kremlin's phone book," said Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev in a Facebook Post.

    Here it is in full. (Note: Names, spellings and titles are those provided by the US Treasury Department.)

    Senior Political Figures

    Presidential Administration

    1. Anton Vayno: Head, Presidential Administration

    2. Aleksey Gromov: First Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

    3. Sergey Kiriyenko: First Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

    4. Magomedsalam Magomedov: Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

    5. Vladimir Ostrovenko: Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

    6. Dmitriy Peskov: Deputy lead, Presidential Administration; Presidential Press Secretary

    7. Vladislav Kitayev: Chief of Presidential Protocol

    8. Andrey Belousov: Aide to the President

    9. Larisa Brycheva: Aide to the President

    10. Vladislav Surkov: Aide to the President

    11. Igor Levitin: Aide to the President

    12. Vladimir Kozhin: Aide to the President

    13. Yuriy Ushakov: Aide to the President

    14. Andrey Fursenko: Aide to the President

    15. N ikolay Tsukanov: Aide to the President

    16. Konstantin Chuychenko: Aide to the President

    17. Yevgeniy Shkolov: Aide to the President

    18. Igor Shchegolev: Aide to the President

    19. Aleksandr Bedritskiy: Adviser to the President, Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues

    20. Sergey Glazyev: Adviser to the President

    21. Sergey Grigorov: Adviser to the President

    22. German Klimenko: Adviser to the President

    23. Anton Kobyakov: Adviser to the President

    24. Aleksandra Levitskaya: Adviser to the President

    25. Vladimir Tolstoy: Adviser to the President

    26. Mikhail Fedotov: Adviser to the President, Chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights

    27. Venyamin Yakovlev: Adviser to the President

    28. Artur Muravyev: Presidential Envoy to the Federation Council

    29. Garry Minkh: Presidential Envoy to the State Duma

    30. Mikhail Krotov: Presidential Envoy to the Constitutional Court

    31. Anna Kuznetsova: Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights

    32. Boris Titov: Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights

    33. Mikhail Babich: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Volga Federal District

    34. Aleksandr Beglov: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Northwestern Federal District

    35. Oleg Belaventsev: Plenipotentiary Representative to the North Caucasus Federal District

    36. Aleksey Gordeyev: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Central Federal District

    37. Sergey Menyaylo: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Siberian Federal District

    38. Yuriy Trutnev: Deputy Prime Minister, Plenipotentiary Representative to the Far Eastern Federal District

    39. Vladimir Ustinov: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Southern Federal District

    40. Igor Kholrnanskikh: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Urals Federal District

    41. Aleksandr Manzhosin: Head, Foreign Policy Directorate

    42. Vladimir Chemov: Head, Directorate for Interregional and Cultural Ties to Foreign Countries

    43. Oleg Govorun: Head, Directorate for Social and Economic Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia

    Cabinet Ministers

    44. Drnitriy Medvedev: Prime Minister

    45. Igor Shuvalov: First Deputy Prime Minister

    46. Sergey Prikhodko: Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Government Apparatus

    47. Aleksandr Khloponin: Deputy Prime Minister

    48. Vitaliy Mutko: Deputy Prime Minister

    49. Arkadiy Dvorkovich: Deputy Prime Minister

    50. Olga Golodets: Deputy Prime Minister

    51. Dmitriy Kozak: Deputy Prime Minister

    52. Drnitriy Rogozin: Deputy Prime Minister

    53. Mikhail Abyzov: Minister for Liaison with Open Government

    54. Aleksandr Tkachev: Minister of Agriculture

    55. Vladimir Puchkov: Minister of Civil Defense, Emergencies, and Natural Disasters

    56. Nikolay Nikiforov: Minister of Communications and Mass Media

    57. Mikhail Men: Minister of Construction, Housing, and Public Utilities

    58. Vladimir Medinskiy: Minister of Culture

    59. Sergey Shoygu: Minister of Defense

    60. Maksim Oreshkin: Minister of Economic Development

    61. Olga Vasilyeva: Minister of Education and Science

    62. Aleksandr Novak: Minister of Energy

    63. Aleksandr Galushka: Minister of Far East Development

    64. Anton Siluanov: Minister of Finance

    65. Sergey Lavrov: Minister of Foreign Affairs

    66. Veronika Skvortsova: Minister of Health

    67. Denis Manturov: Minister of Industry and Trade

    68. Vladimir Kolokoltsev: Minister of Internal Affairs

    69. Aleksandr Konovalov: Minister of Justice

    70. Maksim Topilin: Minister of Labor and Social Protection

    71. Sergey Donskoy: Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology

    72. Lev Kuznetsov: Minister of North Caucasus Affairs

    73. Pavel Kolobkov: Minister of Sports

    74. Maksim Sokolov: Minister of Transportation

    Other senior political leaders

    75. Valentina Matviyenko: Chairwoman, Federation Council

    76. Sergey Naryshkin: Director, Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)

    77. Vyacheslav Volodin: Chairman, State Duma

    78. Sergey Ivanov: Presidential Special Representative for the Environment, Ecology, and Transport

    79. Nikolay Patrushev: Secretary, Security Council

    80. Vladimir Bulavin: Head, Federal Customs Service

    81. Valery Gerasimov: First Deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff

    82. Igor Korobov: Chief, Main Intelligence Directorate General Staff (GRU), Ministry of Defense

    83. Rashid Nurgaliyev: Deputy Secretary, Security Council

    84. Georgiy Poltavchenko: Governor of Saint Petersburg

    85. Sergey Sobyanin: Mayor of Moscow

    86. Yuriy Cbayka: Prosecutor General

    87. Aleksandr Bastrykin: Head, Investigative Committee

    88. Viktor Zolotov: Director, Federal National Guard Service

    89. Dmitriy Kochnev: Director, Federal Protection Service

    90. Aleksandr Bortnikov: Director, Federal Security Service (FSB)

    91. Audrey Artizov: Head, Federal Archive Agency

    92. Yuriy Chikhanchin: Head, Financial Monitoring Federal Service

    93. Aleksandr Linets: Head, Presidential Main Directorate for Special Programs

    94. Aleksandr Kolpakov: Head, Presidential Property Management Directorate

    95. Valeriy Tikhonov: Head, State Courier Service

    96. Aleksey Miller: Chief Executive Officer, Gazprom

    97. Igor Sechin: Chief Executive Officer, Rosneft

    98. German Gref: Chief Executive Officer, Sberbank

    99. Oleg Belozerov: General Director, Russian Railways

    100. Andrey Kostin: Chainnan Management Board, VTB

    101. Sergey Chemezov: Chief Executive Officer, Rostec

    102. Oleg Budargin: Chief Executive Officer, Rosseti

    103. Boris Kovalchuk: Chief Executive Officer, Inter RAO

    104. Aleksey Likhachcv: General Director, Rosatom

    105. Nikolay Tokarev: Chief Executive Officer, Transneft

    106. Andrey Akimov: Chief Executive Officer, Gazprombank

    107. Nail Maganov: General Director, Tatneft

    108. Vitaliy Savelyev: Chief Executive Officer, Aeroflot

    109. Andrey Shishkin: Chief Executive Officer, ANK Bashneft

    110. Ymiy Slyusar: Chief Executive Officer, United Aircraft Corporation

    111. Nikolay Shulginov: Chief Executive Officer, RusHydro

    112. Sergey Gorkov: Chief Executive Officer, Vneshekonombank

    113. Sergey Ivanov (Jr): Chief Executive Officer, ALROSA

    114. Roman Dashkov: Chief Executive Officer, Sakhalin Energy

    Monday, January 29, 2018

    Trump: 'Ice Caps Were Going to Be Gone, But Now They're Setting Records'

     

    image

    President Trump, notorious for his views on climate change, again said something about the topic that's the opposite of what's actually happening.

    "The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records," POTUS told host Piers Morgan during an interview on UK television network ITV broadcast Sunday.

    Well, the polar ice caps are indeed setting records—for melting. Here's a GIF showing the extent of the frightening sea ice loss in the Arctic from 1979-2016.

    And here's a graph that NASA released last year showing how sea ice extent has sunk to record lows at both poles.

    These line graphs plot monthly deviations and overall trends in polar sea ice from 1979 to 2017 as measured by satellites. The top line shows the Arctic; the middle shows Antarctica; and the third shows the global, combined total. The graphs depict how much the sea ice concentration moved above or below the long-term average. (They do not plot total sea ice concentration.) Arctic and global sea ice totals have moved consistently downward over 38 years. Antarctic trends are more muddled, but they do not offset the great losses in the Arctic.Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

    After the ITV interview, ten different climate scientists contacted by the Associated Press said Trump was wrong about climate change.

    "Clearly President Trump is relying on alternative facts to inform his views on climate change. Ice on the ocean and on land are both disappearing rapidly, and we know why: increasing greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that trap more heat and melt the ice," Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis explained.

    Trump's comment was similar to one he tweeted in 2014: "the POLAR ICE CAPS are at an all time high, the POLAR BEAR population has never been stronger. Where the hell is global warming?"

    Trump is a well known climate change denier who infamously said that global warming is a "hoax" invented by the Chinese. Since taking office, he and his administration have rolled back critical environmental protections and pushed for fossil fuels.

    When ITV host Morgan asked Trump if he thinks climate change is even happening, the president replied, "There is a cooling, and there's a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. Right? That wasn't working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place."

    Of course, 2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Niño. The global ocean was the hottest on record, too.

    Trump's remark was consistent with the one he tweeted last month during a cold snap in the East Coast, when he confused temperature with climate. "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"

    Morgan did not follow up by telling the president that his statements were scientifically untrue.

    However, Trump did tell Morgan that he believes in "clean air. I believe in crystal-clear, beautiful water. I believe in just having good cleanliness in all."

    Also in the interview, Trump suggested he's open to keeping the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement—even though he's said before that landmark pact of keeping global average temperatures from rising 2°C "was a bad deal for the U.S."

    The reason being? He likes French President Emmanuel Macron, who has centered environmental action as a key presidential policy.

    "The Paris accord, for us, would have been a disaster," Trump said. "Would I go back in? Yeah, I'd go back in. I like, as you know, I like Emmanuel."

    "I would love to, but it's got to be a good deal for the United States," he added.

    2017, wasn't just one of the hottest years in modern history, it was also extremely costly. According to a recent report from the National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "the U.S. experienced 16 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion, with total costs of approximately $306 billion—a new U.S. annual record."

    Above is from:  https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-2529631788.html

    Puerto Rico Is A Man-Made Disaster

    U.S.

    Puerto Rico Is A Man-Made Disaster

    HuffPost Charles R. Venator-Santiago,HuffPost 12 hours ago

    Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello, left, takes a picture as he and President Donald Trump receive a briefing on hurricane relief efforts on Oct. 3, 2017. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters)

    Months after hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, what should have been an example of how one of the most powerful nations in the world could rebuild a territory is instead an example of a man-made catastrophe now moving to the mainland.

    Today, about 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s population has access to reliable electric power. Access to potable water is compromised. Food and jobs are scarce, and houses are uninhabitable. More than 40 percent of schools do not have electricity. Thousands of police officers are not showing up to work, and violent crime is rampant.

    President Donald Trump’s inability to effectively manage the federal agencies tasked with helping U.S. citizens in need has only compounded the problems created by Congress’ historically discriminatory policies toward Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican government’s ineptitude at addressing local corruption.

    One of the roles of the president is managing federal agencies. If the response to this year’s hurricanes has taught us anything, it’s that the agencies charged with assisting the Puerto Ricans are underfunded, understaffed and overextended. Take, for example, the federal response to the housing problem on the island. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers collected tarps under Operation Blue Roof, but five months into the crisis, thousands of them are in storage. The USACE has fulfilled a little more than half of the requests, leaving upwards of 30,000 households without roofs.

    Congress should stop treating Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens and step up to finance and supervise the rebuilding of the island.

    But the executive branch is only part of the problem.

    For more than a century, Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, has governed Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory ― that is, a territory that can be treated as a foreign country when it is convenient for the federal government. As a result, Congress has frequently authorized less funding for the development of Puerto Rico’s economy and federal assistance programs than it gives to states; it has also provided insufficient funds for infrastructure repair.

    Federal lawmakers, again with the support of the Supreme Court, responded to the financial crisis in Puerto Rico by passing the Promesa Act. It declared that Puerto Rico was not a commonwealth with any degree of sovereignty, but was merely a territorial possession of Congress. The legislation created a financial overview board to manage the local economy in order to guarantee that the Puerto Rican government would pay an unpayable debt.

    Even before two major hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure last year, its government wasn’t able to generate sufficient revenue to pay its public debt obligations (some estimates place the debt at over $150 billion). Yet Congress, while it assumed control over Puerto Rico’s economy and while its financial oversight board sought to impose some of the failed austerity measures used in Kansas and Greece, has simultaneously refused to assume responsibility over the economic woes afflicting its territory.

    And just last month, while it was clear that hurricanes had devastated the Puerto Rican economy, the tax reform bill Congress passed imposed new tariffs or taxes on U.S. companies that held foreign subsidiaries in Puerto Rico. The tariffs could force companies to choose between operating in Puerto Rico and leaving the island ― and could cost the Puerto Rican economy billions of dollars in local taxes and significant job losses.

    What happens when a state does not have the necessary resources to absorb a traumatized migrant and provide for him and his family?

    Unfortunately, some local politicians have also hindered efforts to help Puerto Ricans. During the hurricanes, Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Roselló failed to activate the island’s emergency management plan, and his administration’s response was poorly coordinated. It took him 40 days to assess damages and ask for federal money for rebuilding projects.

    Roselló’s administration initially refused to hire the established American Public Power Association and instead granted multimillion-dollar contracts to shoestring companies like Whitefish Energy and Cobra Acquisitions to raise power lines across the island. Local media report almost every day that mayors and agencies on the island are embezzling federal relief money, and relying on partisan clientelism to provide or deny local services across the island.

    The governor consistently refused to provide a transparent audit of the Puerto Rican government’s finances, and is busy trying to distract resident with a dead-end campaign for statehood.

    Roselló proposed a fiscal plan last week that depends heavily on Congress’ commitment to give Puerto Rico more than $50 billion over the next five years. The plan operates on deficit spending and doesn’t promise to balance the government’s budget for another five years. It also doesn’t include payments to bondholders, which has been a nonstarter for the financial oversight board in the past. The board agreed to make a decision on the fiscal plan by Feb. 23.

    Ismael Rivera stands at his damaged house in San Lorenzo, Puerto Rico, on Oct. 4, 2017. (Alvin Baez / Reuters)

    As for Puerto Rican citizens, some are now being moved to the mainland without the necessary financial support. Under current practices, the Federal Emergency Management Agency assists in bringing Puerto Ricans to the mainland, providing temporary assistance with housing and a small amount of money to help rebuild homes on the island.

    However, as we are experiencing in Connecticut, the state government is expected to assume responsibility for the well-being of the migrant once he or she arrives. Earlier this month, for instance, 36 families living at a Red Roof Inn in Hartford were abruptly told that they would have to leave earlier than expected after there was an error with FEMA paperwork. (The state stepped up to cover the cost of lodging at that hotel and others.)

    The humanitarian crisis on the island is being moved to the mainland. What happens when there is no available work, housing or medicine? What happens when a state does not have the necessary resources to absorb a traumatized migrant and provide for him and his family?

    Private charitable giving is not going to be enough to help Puerto Ricans. Trump should direct federal agencies to work together and with states, and have the government assume financial responsibility over the lives of these U.S. citizens. Congress should stop treating Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens and step up to finance and supervise the rebuilding of the island.

    Yes, the people of Puerto Rico can and should take this opportunity to conduct a referendum on their own government. But we shouldn’t expect them to take on the challenge of recovering from these terrible disasters alone.

    Charles R. Venator-Santiago is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and El Instituto, University of Connecticut. His most recent book is Hostages of Empire: A Short History of the Extension of U.S. Citizenship to Puerto Rico, 1898-Present.

    Saturday, January 27, 2018

    Is There A Ticking Time Bomb Under The Arctic?


  • January 24, 20184:37 AM ET

    Heard on Morning Edition

    Michaeleen Doucleff 2016 square

    Michaeleen Doucleff

    Twitter

    The Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility, dug in the mid-1960s, allows scientists a three-dimensional look at frozen ground.

    Kate Ramsayer/NASA

    A short drive north of Fairbanks, Alaska, there's a red shed stuck right up against a hillside. The shed looks unremarkable, except for the door. It looks like a door to a walk-in freezer, with thick insulation and a heavy latch. Whatever is behind that door needs to stay very cold.

    "Are you ready to go inside?" asks Dr. Thomas Douglas, a geochemist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

    Behind the door is a geological time bomb, scientists say. No one knows exactly how big the bomb is. It may even be a dud that barely detonates. But the fallout could be so large that it's felt all around the world. Now there's evidence that, in the past few years, the bomb's timer has started ticking.

    Douglas opens the shed door, and we step inside. Immediately, we're standing 40 feet below ground, inside a tunnel carved into the hillside.

    "That's a mammoth leg right there," Douglas says as he points to a giant femur protruding from the tunnel wall.

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    All around are signs of extinct creatures. Tusks poke out of the ceiling and skulls stick up from the floor. But it's the material between the bones that interests Douglas the most: the permafrost.

    In the 1960s, the Army dug the tunnel so it could study this unique surface, which covers about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. In some places, the frozen soil extends downward more than 1,000 feet, or about the height of the Empire State Building.

    A mammoth bone sticks out of the wall of the tunnel in the permafrost.

    Kate Ramsayer/NASA

    Technically, permafrost is frozen soil. But it's helpful to think of it in terms of chocolate cake. Typically, cake is soft, moist and spongy. Now if you take that cake, dip it into water and freeze it, the cake becomes hard or stiff. That's exactly what happens to soil when you freeze it: Moist, soft soil turns hard and stiff. That's permafrost.

    For the first time in centuries, the Arctic permafrost is beginning to change — rapidly. It's warming up. Some places are softening like a stick of butter left out on the kitchen counter.

    In northern Alaska, the temperature at some permafrost sites has risen by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in November. And in recent years, many spots have reached record temperatures.

    "Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades," NOAA wrote in its annual Arctic Report Card last year.

    The consequences of this warming could have ripple effects around the world.To explain why, Douglas takes me deeper down into the tunnel.

    "This is really an amazing feature," he says, shining his flashlight up to the ceiling. Crispy grass is dangling upside-down above our heads.

    "It's green grass — from 25,000 years ago," he exclaims. "It has been preserved that way for 25,000 years."

    The permafrost is packed with the remains of ancient life. From prehistoric grass and trees to woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, just about every creature that lived on the tundra over the past 100,000 years is buried and preserved down in the permafrost.

    And all this life is made of carbon. So there's a massive amount of carbon buried down here. "The permafrost contains twice as much carbon as is currently in Earth's atmosphere," Douglas says. "That's 1,600 billion metric tons."

    In fact, there's more carbon in the permafrost, Douglas says, than all the carbon humans have spewed into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — first with steam trains, then with coal plants, cars and planes.

    Ice wedges form over centuries, creating polygonal patterns in the permafrost.

    Kate Ramsayer/NASA

    Right now the permafrost carbon is inert and trapped in the frozen soil. But what happens when the soil thaws? That's the question Douglas and his colleagues are trying to figure out.

    A few years ago, they ran a simple experiment. They brought big drills into the tunnel and cut out chunks of ice. "We collected pieces about the size of Coca-Cola cans," he says, as he points out holes in the tunnel's wall.

    They took the ice back to the lab and let it slowly come up to room temperature. Then they looked for signs of life. A few days later, something started growing — slowly at first, but then like gangbusters.

    The tunnel turned up a variety of ice age mammal bones — including the giant leg bone of a mammoth.

    Kate Ramsayer/NASA

    "This is material that stayed frozen for 25,000 years," Douglas says. "And given the right environmental conditions, it came back alive again vigorously."

    They were ancient bacteria. And once they warmed up, they were hungry. The bacteria started converting the carbon that's in dead plants and animals into gases that cause climate change: carbon dioxide and methane.

    That experiment was in the lab. But imagine these bacteria waking up, all around the Arctic, across Canada, Greenland and Russia. Last year, scientists started seeing signs of this happening in northern Alaska.

    "We have evidence that Alaska has changed from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to a net exporter of the gas back to the atmosphere," says Charles Miller, a chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who measures gas emissions from Arctic permafrost.

    Scientists don't know yet how much carbon will get released from thawing permafrost or how fast it will happen. Some of the carbon — maybe a big percentage of it — will get washed into the ocean by erosion. Some of the carbon will also get sucked back into the ground by new trees and plants popping up across the warming tundra.

    But once carbon begins to percolate up through the thawing soil, it could form a feedback loop "over which we would have zero control," Miller says. The gas, coming from the ground, warms the Earth, which in turn causes more gas to be released and more warming to occur.

    Thawing permafrost is a big wild card of climate change.

  • Above is from:  https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/24/575220206/is-there-a-ticking-time-bomb-under-the-arctic

  • Wednesday, January 24, 2018

    China Piles Up Free Trade Deals as Trump Abandons Them


    Bloomberg News

    January 24, 2018, 10:01 AM CST

    • China is hoping to have a ‘bumper year’ for new trade deals

    • 11 nations are planning to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership

    Just as the U.S. throws up new barriers to cross-border commerce, its largest trading partner China is redoubling its efforts to seal free-trade agreements.

    From deals with blocs including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to bilaterals with tiny countries like Maldives, China’s FTAs already cover 21 countries. That compares with the 20 countries covered by U.S. agreements. More than a dozen additional pacts are being negotiated or studied, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

    While President Donald Trump this week imposed tariffs on solar panels and washing machines, underscoring his America first outlook, China is hoping for a "bumper year" for new trade deals, according to the Commerce Ministry.

    China’s FTA approach is also tied to broader goals such as the Belt and Road Initiative to build new trade and infrastructure links across Eurasia, said He Weiwen, deputy director of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing and a former Commerce Ministry official.

    "That would offer some help for China to counter the shockwave from trade frictions with the U.S., but that’s not the purpose," He said. "China wants to be more open, and 2018 is important as it marks the 40th anniversary of the historic reform and opening-up."

    Meanwhile, 11 nations are planning to save the Trans-Pacific Partnership Trump abandoned. That may spur China, which isn’t part of that deal, to pursue its own agreements such as the proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which potentially will bind China to its strategic rival India as well as to diverse partners from Australia to Cambodia.

    ––



    "As the U.S. is retreating from economic engagement in Asia, the rest of Asia is moving forward aggressively to conclude deals among themselves," Wendy Cutler, a former U.S. trade negotiator who’s now vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute in Washington, said Wednesday in a Bloomberg Television interview from Seoul.

    Read More: China Has Targets Aplenty to Retaliate Against U.S. Trade Action

    Such progress could help fortify Beijing’s ambitions to put itself at the heart of globalization -- outlined in President Xi Jinping’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos a year ago -- particularly if Trump follows his dropping the Trans Pacific Partnership with dismantling the North American Free Trade Agreement. Nafta talks are continuing this week.

    China already dominates global trade with almost 14 percent of world exports, data compiled by Bloomberg show, and China International Capital Corp. estimates it will overtake the U.S. as the largest importer within five years. Even so, if a threatened trade war between China and the U.S. does materialize this year, then Beijing may seek friends wherever it can find them.

    — With assistance by Miao Han, and Adrian Leung

    Above is from:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-24/china-wants-to-rack-up-free-trade-deals-as-trump-tramples-them

    Tuesday, January 23, 2018

    Boone County joins opioid lawsuit against drug companies



    By Taylor Utzig

    Connect

    Posted: Jan 22, 2018 6:16 PM CST

    BOONE COUNTY (WREX) -

    Boone County is no stranger to the opioid epidemic.

    "It's been a huge crisis for this community," said Boone County Sheriff Dave Ernest.

    And with nine overdose deaths reported last year, officials say the problem isn't going away.

    "Just the overall amount of felony charges that we have here in Boone County for prescription drugs, for possession of prescription drugs without a prescription, that's increased dramatically," said State's Attorney Tricia Smith.

    But now, the county is taking the issue to the courts.
    This week, Boone County will join a number of other local governments in a mass action lawsuit against several pharmaceutical companies.

    "I think by all communities coming together and filing against the pharmaceutical companies, I think it's getting everyone's attention," said Ernest.

    "It's making a statement to the opioid distributors and manufacturers that they need to be held accountable for their actions," said Smith.

    Win or lose, the suit won't cost taxpayers. That's because a private firm representing the county will only be paid based on settlement recovery. If there is a win, the county says it could bring in money to help relieve some of the financial stress caused by the opioid crisis.

    "We are very aware of all of our social services agencies that are burdened by the affects on the families within in our community not being able to absorb the consequences fully of abuse, addiction and overdose," said Boone County board member Jessica Muellner.

    But it's not all about money, Sheriff Ernest says he hopes the lawsuit raises awareness about this deadly crisis and its impacts on communities like Boone County.

    "People look at it and they say how does this really affect us? It affects everyone in our community tremendously," said Ernest.

    Winnebago County and Rockford announced a similar lawsuit earlier this year against some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the country.

    Above is from:  http://www.wrex.com/story/37323664/2018/01/Monday/boone-county-joins-opioid-lawsuit-against-drug-companies

    Belvidere architect purchases historic landmark post office


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    By Susan Vela
    Staff writer

    Posted Jan 19, 2018 at 7:54 PM Updated Jan 19, 2018 at 9:14 PM

    BELVIDERE — Sun streamed through the vacant 107-year-old South Street post office building Friday, shining light on architect Paul Ollmann and his visions for the historic space identified on the National Register of Historic Places.

    By April, he will move his firm of several architects and engineers from 509 S. State St. and invest about $100,000 in carpeting, painting, plastering and other improvements.

    Ollmann and his wife, Lori, the firm’s business manager, purchased the antique 200 S. State St. landmark this week for an undisclosed price from car dealership owner Jack Wolf.

    The walls stretch 20 feet high. There’s plenty of wood. And the main lobby, Ollmann hopes, will be a place for meetings and perhaps special events.

    “It’s going to be nice,” said Ollmann, who started Ollmann Ernest Martin Architects more than a decade ago. “It’s still very much intact. This is beautiful. It’s really good bones to start with. It’s a really good fit for us.”

    Ollmann and his business partners Jeff Ernest and Wendy Martin now have clients in more than 40 states. Their firm has become known as a go-to firm for the food industry. It has designed more than 300 restaurants for clients that include chains like Culver’s. It also is behind the designs for businessman Russell Caldwell’s planned 10,000-square-foot multiuse dining and entertainment complex — dubbed Iron & Coal — near City Hall.

    “We’ve been very fortunate,” Ollmann said. “Illinois is tough.”

    Ollmann, along with his wife and Ernest, grew up in Belvidere. They have fond memories of visiting the post office.



    They’ve also known Wolf well and talked to him over the years about potential uses for the building which also has served as a home for the Belvidere Area Chamber of Commerce and Growth Dimensions.

    The post office was built in 1911 for less than $50,000. It was a hub for downtown activity until 1997 when the postal operations moved to the city’s northwest side.

    Brothers Jack and William Wolf purchased the building in 1998 for about $170,000.

    It has been vacant for some years, and Jack Wolf said he approved of Ollmann’s planned use.

    “It has always been a landmark in Belvidere,” he said. “I didn’t think it should be torn apart and ripped up all to pieces.”

    Martin is looking forward to working in a larger, historic space.

    “It’s a great building,” the 1988 Auburn High School graduate said. “It’s a great space. It feels good to be in it.”

    Growth Dimensions is a public-private organization trying to ignite economic development throughout the region. Executive Director Pamela Lopez-Fettes said it’s good the post office is getting a new purpose.

    “It’s a great opportunity for a business,” she said. “Who better than an architect — one from our community — ... who is willing to invest in our community.”

    Susan Vela: 815-987-1392; svela@rrstar.com; @susanvela

    Monday, January 22, 2018

    Can McConnell be trusted?

    Olive Branch

    Democrats Must Decide If They Trust McConnell Before Ending Shutdown

    The Senate Majority Leader put a new offer on the table, but it’s not clear whether any Democrats will take him up on it.

    Gideon Resnick

    Andrew Desiderio

    01.22.18 1:35 AM ET

    With thousands of federal employees set to be furloughed beginning Monday morning after congressional leaders failed to reach a breakthrough in negotiations over the weekend, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is offering an olive branch to Democrats.

    Now, ahead of a vote on Monday that would re-open the federal government, Democrats must decide whether to trust him to follow through on his promise to bring immigration legislation to the Senate floor by Feb. 8 if lawmakers fail to work out a broader deal by then.

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    Democrats have previously argued that they have no reason to put their faith in McConnell, pointing to instances in which the majority leader was unable to follow through on legislative promises even to his fellow Republicans. Moreover, they don’t believe the House Republican leadership will follow through, either.

    In a short address from the Senate floor just after 9 p.m. on Sunday, McConnell said “it would be my intention to proceed on legislation that would address DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], border security, and related issues” if those bipartisan priorities are not resolved before funding expires on Feb. 8—assuming the government’s lights are turned on before then.

    The promise—one aimed at winning over Democrats and Republicans who did not support Friday night’s four-week stopgap bill—underscores the trust deficit that has engulfed the Senate for months, and the historic inability of Congress to act on comprehensive immigration reform. A supermajority of Democrats in both chambers has, thus far, held the line on voting against any government funding bill that does not include legal protections for DACA recipients—the undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

    It remains to be seen whether McConnell’s colleagues—Democrats, in particular—will be willing to take the majority leader at his word. But according to early indications on Sunday night, such a proposal was unlikely to win over enough Democrats.

    At least one lawmaker—Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who is among a majority of Democrats banding together to block a government funding bill without DACA protections—immediately threw cold water on McConnell’s proposal.

    “To be honest, I’m not sure how good [McConnell’s] word is on things like this.”

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    Dems Fold on This Shutdown, but the Next One Could Be Worse

    “There has to be a pathway that is nailed down much better because McConnell’s version of regular order—he simply controls the place and does what he wants,” Merkley said Sunday night on MSNBC. “There’s very little trust… We haven’t ever seen McConnell stand up for his promises.”

    The Senate will vote Monday at noon on a three-week government funding extension that will expire on Feb. 8. That decision came after senators were unable to resolve their differences over the weekend, though both McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) hinted Sunday that they were inching closer to a potential deal to reopen the federal government two days after it was forced to shut down Friday at midnight.

    McConnell’s assurances on DACA-related legislation were enough to win over two of his Republican colleagues who voted against a four-week extension that most Democrats also opposed, forcing a government shutdown.

    Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ)—who is not seeking re-election this year and has openly expressed his frustrations with McConnell—said on Sunday night that he would vote for the short-term spending bill after receiving McConnell’s assurances on an immigration bill.

    But the Arizona senator has heard this kind of offer before. In exchange for his vote on the GOP’s tax overhaul legislation in September, Flake said he had received a “firm commitment from Senate Leadership and the administration” that the Senate would vote on immigration legislation in January. Similarly, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) was guaranteed floor votes—initially before the end of December, and then early in the new year—on two bills aimed at stabilizing the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance markets.


    Flake’s immigration promise will almost certainly be broken, while the health-care bills Collins has sponsored remain stalled.

    And despite McConnell’s pledge on immigration-related action before Feb. 8, his deputy, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), shot down that idea just a few hours earlier, saying it created an artificial cutoff because the official deadline to address DACA before it lapses is in early March.

    “We’re more than happy to have a vote on it well before the deadline,” Cornyn told reporters. “Turning the agenda over to Democrats who just shut down the government makes no sense to me. It just seems like it encourages bad behavior.”

    In a brief interview on Sunday night, Flake told The Daily Beast that failure to reopen the government on Sunday night would make it “immeasurably” harder for Democrats and Republicans to come to an agreement—especially because the true effects of the shutdown will be felt starting on Monday morning.

    “Once you’re into a real shutdown after the weekend, it just becomes far more difficult,” said Flake, who co-authored a bipartisan immigration package last week.

    Even though Flake is on board for Monday’s vote, it will be difficult for McConnell to win over the dozen or so Democrats who are necessary in order to break the stalemate. There was no immediate indication on Sunday night that McConnell’s new terms would move the ball with Democrats, who—save for five of them—voted en masse against Friday’s spending bill.

    “Talks will continue, but we have yet to reach an agreement on a path forward that would be acceptable for both sides,” Schumer said Sunday night.

    Complicating matters for Democrats is their skepticism that House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) will follow through on McConnell’s stated plan for a hard deadline of Feb. 8. Conservatives too have openly criticized McConnell for making promises on items that House Republicans oppose en masse.

    “To be honest, I’m not sure how good [McConnell’s] word is on things like this,” a senior House GOP aide told The Daily Beast. Aides on both sides of the aisle doubt that McConnell’s assurances will influence Ryan—a feeling that is likely to prevent Schumer’s left flank from getting on board with McConnell’s proposal.

    As the Senate works to resolve its differences, Democrats and Republicans have both expressed frustrations with President Donald Trump, who spoke on the campaign trail of his deal-making abilities but has not brought the two sides together and has instead resorted to political sniping on Twitter. Some Republicans are hoping that Trump stays out of the tense negotiations, partly because of his apparent shifting positions in recent weeks on the specifics of an immigration plan.

    “I don’t think it’s helpful for him to be involved right now,” Flake said, arguing that the Senate should not be bound by Trump’s whims

    Above is from:  https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-must-decide-if-they-trust-mcconnell-before-ending-shutdown

    EDITORIAL: An astonishing $1 billion down the drain in Illinois




    Opinion

    EDITORIAL: An astonishing $1 billion down the drain in Illinois

    Editorials 01/22/2018, 06:21pm

    The Illinois Capitol in Springfield. | Seth Perlman/AP

    Sun-Times Editorial Board

    How often do you hear political candidates promise to spend more than $1 billion in return for — nothing?

    We can’t recall ever hearing that.


    But a new report out Monday says that’s exactly what Illinois has done over the past couple of years. Our state incurred more than $1 billion in interest penalties because it didn’t pay its bills on time, according to the first Debt Transparency Report from Comptroller Susana A. Mendoza.

    EDITORIAL

    That’s $1 billion that didn’t improve our schools. That didn’t make our transportation systems run more smoothly. That didn’t make health care better. That didn’t provide jobs training or social services. That didn’t help pay off a piece of the state’s massive pension debt.

    Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times

    Because Illinois went more than two years without a budget — and its revenues didn’t come close to matching expenditures — unpaid bills started to stack up in government offices around the state. By law, the interest on many of those bills was 12 percent once they went unpaid for 90 days. The law was intended to encourage bureaucrats not to sit on bills. No one anticipated a time when the state would have no budget.

    Twelve percent in today’s economy is a ridiculous expense. To paraphrase the old joke, you pay 12 percent here and 12 percent there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money. In Illinois’ case, it added up to more than $1 billion.

    If you piled up a billion dollar bills, the stack would be more than 67 miles high.

    That’s $1 billion Illinois didn’t need to pay, or could have spent things that would have benefitted the state. You might call it a foolish-management tax.

    Gov. Bruce Rauner. | Sun-Times file photo

    Now that the state has an actual budget and some $5 billion more in revenues, the pile of unpaid bills has dropped from $16.7 billion to about $8.8 billion. Proceeds from a $6 billion bond sale have lowered the interest on remaining bills to 3.5 percent.

    But the lower interest rate won’t bring back the $1 billion the state has already spent. It won’t revive the many small businesses in Illinois that closed because they weren’t getting paid for services they provided to the state. It won’t help people who worked at those businesses who lost their jobs.

    Next month, the annual budget process will start up again when Gov. Bruce Rauner
    is scheduled to present his spending plan for the next fiscal year. Rauner has said it will include unspecified spending cuts.

    Whatever emerges after his plan goes to the Legislature, it should include a plan for avoiding paying huge amounts of unnecessary interest in the future.

    Above is from:  https://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/1-billion-lost-illinois-penalty-fees-debt-transparency-report-editorial/

    Settlement Agreement between Boone County and Plote Construction


    Who really won this case?  Plote pays total of $1,500 and will now comply with hours of operation until the special use expires.




    For background information on this case go to:  http://boonecountywatchdog.blogspot.com/2014/09/9-18-2014-update-on-plote-case_22.html