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These single use dinner plates biodegrade in 30 days.It takes 500-1000 years for plastic to degrade.Learn about plastic pollution: http://bit.ly/2xbb5Xg
Posted by EcoWatch on Wednesday, October 25, 2017
By Laura Zuckerman, Reuters October 25, 2017
A family plays while cooling off at the beach in Cardiff after sunset during what local media reported to be a record breaking heat wave in Southern California, U.S., October 24, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake
By Laura Zuckerman
(Reuters) – Nearly two-thirds of Americans, mostly in Western states and on the Eastern seaboard, have endured more days of extreme summer heat over the past 10 years than in previous decades, a leading environmental group said in a study unveiled on Tuesday.
The analysis compared daily summertime high temperatures recorded at thousands of U.S. government weather stations across the country from 2007 through 2016 with the same data in the years 1961 to 1990, and showed a pattern of more frequent extreme heat nationally.
The study, issued by the Natural Resources Defense Council, identified 21 states and the District of Columbia as being the hardest hit. In each one, at least 75 percent of residents now face more than nine summer days in which temperatures are higher than the top 10 percent hottest days of June through August during the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, according to the report.
The group said its findings add to a growing body of evidence that climate change attributed to emissions of heat-trapping “greenhouse” gases, caused by fossil fuel combustion and other human activities, is having direct consequences that are being felt today.
The NRDC also cited government data showing 65,000 people end up in U.S. hospital emergency rooms each summer from heat-related illnesses and that summer heat waves were to blame for at least 1,300 deaths across 40 major U.S. cities from 1975 to 2004.
“This analysis gives a sense of the degree to which the present is really not like the past,” said Kim Knowlton, a senior NRDC scientist. “Climate change is fueling more extremely hot days and poses a clear and present threat to public health.”
Release of the NRDC study coincided with an October heat wave in Southern California that has led forecasters to predict record highs for Tuesday’s World Series opener at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Authorities also have warned of elevated risks of wildfires and heat-induced ailments across the region.
California is one of 11 Western states ranked by the NRDC report as the most affected by extreme summer heat. But the current bout of blistering triple-digit temperatures came as an early fall phenomenon linked to the region’s seasonal hot, dry Santa Ana winds.
The NRDC report was accompanied by an interactive U.S. map showing the growing extent of extremely hot summers – affecting nearly 210 million people – and projections for more of the same across much of the country (https://www.nrdc.org/climate-change-and-health-extreme-heat#/map).
The trend poses the greatest risk to children, the elderly and others vulnerable to respiratory distress and dehydration, said Dr. Samantha Ahdoot, a pediatrics professor at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine.
(Reporting by Laura Zuckerman in Pinedale, Wyo.; Editing by Steve Gorman)
Karma Allen, Good Morning America October 25, 2017
Residents in California experienced record-breaking heat on Tuesday as temperatures soared past 100 degrees in southern parts of the Golden State.
Meteorologists said residents should expect more triple-digit heat on Wednesday, bringing the blistering heat into its third day, but temperatures should cool after that.
The hottest temperatures were recorded in San Luis Obispo and San Diego, where temperatures reached 108 degrees.
More than a dozen heat records for the day were broken throughout the state on Tuesday and the National Weather Service said more records will be challenged on Wednesday. Los Angeles, Burbank and Woodland Hills are all forecast to see highs of least 100 degrees on Wednesday.
Downtown Los Angeles broke a 108-year-old record when temperatures hit 104 degrees on Tuesday, topping the previous record for that day of 99 degrees.
Temperatures at the San Luis Obispo Airport touched 108 degrees on Tuesday afternoon, tying the nation’s high temperature of the day with the Miramar Naval Air Station in San Diego, according to the NWS.
The NWS warned that the heat, coupled with gusty winds, could create the most dangerous fire weather conditions seen in the past few years.
Several wildfires broke out on Tuesday, but many were quickly put out, authorities said. Nearly 120 acres were charred in a rural area of Ventura County, located an hour northwest of Los Angeles, before firefighters stopped it from spreading. No homes were threatened, but two firefighters were injured: one for smoke inhalation and the other for multiple bee stings, according to the Ventura County Fire Department.
The fire, dubbed the Vista fire by authorities, was about 50 percent contained as of late Tuesday evening.
Craig Digure, 46, who has lived in Los Angeles for less than a year, said the heat was too brutal to sun himself at Echo Park Lake near downtown.
“It’s kind of crazy. I’m from Minnesota, so I’m not used to this in October. It’s 40 degrees back home, almost ready to snow,” he told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I thought summer was over. But it’s just not seeming to end.”
Temperatures are forecast to lower by a few degrees late Wednesday, but they will still be well above normal highs, according to the NWS. It expects to see further cooling on Thursday and Friday.
Alice Park, Time October 24, 2017
The latest study to look at the long-term effects of Roundup, a popular weed killer developed by Monsanto in the 1970s, raises questions about the herbicide’s possible contributions to poor health in certain communities.
The study, published Tuesday in JAMA, tracked people over the age of 50 in southern California from 1993-1996 to 2014-2016, with researchers periodically collecting urine samples during that time.
TIME Health NewsletterGet the latest health and science news, plus: burning questions and expert tips. View Sample
Researchers led by Paul Mills, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California San Diego, found that the percentage of people who tested positive for a chemical called glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in the herbicide Roundup, shot up by 500% in that time period. The levels of glyphosate also spiked by 1208% during that time.
Read more: Study Links Widely Used Pesticides to Antibiotic Resistance
Exactly what that means for human health isn’t quite clear yet. There are few studies of the chemical and its effects on people, although animal studies raise some concerns. One trial from the UK, in which rats were fed low levels of glyphosate throughout their lives, found that the chemical contributed to a higher risk of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition in which fat accumulates in the liver and contributes to inflammation and scarring of the tissue. Mills says that the levels of glyphosate documented in the people in his study were 100-fold greater than those in the rats.
To follow up on these results, Mills plans to measure factors that track liver disease, to see if the levels of glyphosate he found are actually associated with a greater risk of liver problems in people. He heads the Herbicide Awareness & Research Project at UCSD, an ongoing research project in which he invites people to provide urine samples to test glyphosate levels. By gathering more information about people’s exposure, he is planning to tease apart how much of it comes from actually ingesting products sprayed with the chemical, and how much can be attributed to breathing in particles that have been sprayed into the air, especially in farm communities.
Read more: Here’s Which Produce Has the Most Pesticides
For now, he says the findings should make people more aware of what they are ingesting along with their food. While Roundup was developed to eliminate most weeds from genetically modified crops — and thus reduce the amount of pesticides sprayed on them — recent studies have found that many weeds are now resistant to Roundup. That means growers are using more Roundup, which could only exacerbate potential negative health effects on people who consume those products. Eating organically grown produce may help to reduce exposure to some pesticides and herbicides, but it’s not a guarantee that the products are completely free to potentially harmful chemicals.
“From my perspective it’s remarkable that we have been ingesting a lot of this chemical over the last couple of decades,” says Mills. “But the biomedical literature hasn’t said much about its effects on people. That’s a gap that we endeavored to address and bring more awareness to with this study.”
About this contentCourt documents reveal that fruit from two food giants on UK supermarket shelves was picked by workers in southern Italy under ‘conditions of absolute exploitation’
Farm workers pick tomatoes in southern Italy. The country’s tomato industry is worth an estimated €3.2bn (£2.85bn). Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters
Isabel Hunter and Lorenzo Di Pietro October 24, 2017
Two of Italy’s biggest food companies have been implicated in labour abuses of migrant workers picking tomatoes bought by thousands of British and European consumers every week, according to court documents.
Italian prosecutor Paola Guglielmi has named food giants Mutti and Conserve Italia as benefiting from “conditions of absolute exploitation” in the country’s hugely lucrative tomato industry, as part of an investigation into the death of a seasonal laborer.
Both Mutti and the Conserve Italia brand Cirio supply major UK supermarkets with premium tinned tomatoes and passata, and are named in court documents signed by Guglielmi.
The case began with the death of Abdullah Muhammed, a 47-year-old legal Sudanese immigrant and father of two, who suffered a heart attack while working in the fields of Nardó, which sits on the heel of southern Italy, in July 2015. The allegation against his employer was that Muhammed’s life could have been saved if he had been allowed to go to hospital.
The Italian investigator used her powers to track the supply chain up to the very top of the country’s €3.2bn (£2.85bn) processed tomato industry. While the companies are not liable for the death, their link is significant.
Like thousands of other workers, Muhammed’s day would start at 4am and he would work until 5pm handpicking tomatoes in the fierce heat of the southern Italian summer. Labor abuses listed in the court documents include working for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, without breaks, with minimal pay and no access to medical staff.
Italian prosecutor Paola Guglielmi. Photograph: Courtesy of Corriere Salentino
“The person responsible for the crime by law was just the gangmaster,” Guglielmi told the Guardian.
“But in this case there was also manslaughter. That guy would not have died if there had been a doctor’s visit. The violation of the safety provisions on the job was flagrant.”
Through a far-reaching investigation, Guglielmi checked telephone records, tapped phone calls and conducted aerial surveillance to painstakingly link the exploitation of seasonal migrant workers to industrial giants.
While workers make an average of €30 a day in the Puglia region, they can expect to lose up to half of that just to pay for food, transport, water and a cut to their gangmaster.
The gangmaster or “caporalato” system is rife across the Italian agricultural sector where migrants – both legal and illegal – are organized into informal labor groups that are hired by Italian landowners to harvest their crops.
The file accuses Italian company owner Giuseppe Mariano and Sudanese gangmaster Mohammed Elsalih of manslaughter. The preliminary investigation has now concluded, and a judge will decide whether the case should go to trial.
The companies named in the file are not liable and stress the extent to which they encourage their suppliers to treat their workers ethically.
A spokesman for Conserve Italia, which produces the Cirio brand of tinned tomatoes that is sold by Tesco, said it requires all its suppliers agree to “respect” their workers and the company’s ethical code, and that the company cut ties with the supplier involved after they were made aware of Muhammed’s death.
“We know in the south of Italy there are some situations that are not in line but we can’t do the work – it’s not our responsibility to verify what happens in the region but we do ask our suppliers to respect human rights,” he said. “We don’t pay less than the normal price.”
Conserve Italia has since said in a statement that it plans to sue the suppliers for damages “to protect its reputation as the most ethical company in this business”.
Mutti also issued a statement. “Mutti has always been committed to fight any exploitation of workers’ systems by all means … ,” it said. “Mutti selects its farmers and agricultural partners with special care and maintains a constant dialogue with them along the entire supply chain. As far as the protection and security of workers is concerned, each contract involves specific requirements on work conditions (salary regularity as well as security in the workplace). Mutti will continue to foster its commitment to work in cooperation with its competitors, farmers associations and the Italian institutions to avoid accidents in fields.”
A member of Médecins Sans Frontières talks to an African worker in a makeshift camp in the countryside near the village of Rignano Garganico, southern Italy. Photograph: Tony Gentile/Reuters
Activists claim that the low production costs drive interests not to tackle the exploitation problem properly. Yvan Sagnet, 32, from Cameroon worked just five days in the fields near to where Mohammed died before leading a mass strike of the workers in 2012. Now he campaigns to end what he brands “slavery”.
“When I arrived in Puglia I discovered the gangmaster system – conditions were inhuman – they were ghettos that were like concentration camps,” he said.
“One day a guy got sick [in the fields], he couldn’t handle it and in those places there is no way to get first aid – there is no address. There is no cellphone signal. The workers don’t speak Italian so the gangmasters take advantage … The gangmaster insisted, ‘If you don’t pay me the 20 euros I will not take you. If you do you can go to the hospital tonight.’”
After years of campaigning and organizing a mass strike against the gangmasters, a strengthened law outlawing the caporalato system came into effect last year.
But campaigners say very little has changed in isolated farms where authorities do not do enough to proactively crack down on the practice.
“The interests of these fields are linked with the interests of the politicians and people who own the most important companies in Italy,” said Valeria Sallustio, former president of Finis Terrae, an Italian NGO that worked closely with the workers in Nardó.
Zoe Maddison, spokesperson for the British Retail Consortium (BRC), which represents Tesco and Sainsbury’s among other major UK supermarkets, said: “This is a tragic case and we expect the Italian authorities to carry out a full investigation.
“The welfare of all people who work in our supply chains is of key importance to us, and BRC members will investigate any allegations of malpractice.”
The Arizona senator joined a list of high-profile Republicans, including Bob Corker, who have opted to retire amid the turmoil of Donald Trump’s presidency
Sabrina Siddiqui, in Washington October 24, 2017
Arizona senator Jeff Flake on Tuesday launched an extraordinary attack against Donald Trump and the “complicity” of the Republican party while announcing his decision to leave the Senate.
Flake, a key Republican critic of Trump, said he was retiring at the end of his term in 2018 because there was no room for him in the party under the current president’s stewardship. He then delivered an emotional appeal from the Senate floor against the state of affairs under Trump, bemoaning that his Republican colleagues had “given in or given up on core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfying anger and resentment”.
“It is time for our complicity and our accommodation for the unacceptable to end,” Flake said. “There are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles. Now is such a time.
“We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that that is just the way things are now,” he added. “We must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal.”
“Reckless, outrageous, and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as ‘telling it like it is’ when it is actually just reckless, outrageous, and undignified.”
He said such behavior was “dangerous to our democracy” and projected not strength but a “corruption of the spirit”. He then asked his colleagues: “When the next generation asks us: ‘Why didn’t you do something? Why didn’t you speak up? What are we going to say?’”
Flake joins a list of high-profile Republicans who have jumped ship in recent months amid the turmoil of Trump’s presidency. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, declared his retirement last month and has since been locked in a bitter feud with Trump that reached new heights on Tuesday.
Hours before Flake’s announcement, Trump’s war of words with Corker escalated in unprecedented fashion ahead of a meeting between the president and Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. Prior to the closed-door luncheon, Corker branded Trump as an “utterly untruthful president” on NBC’s Today Show.
In a separate interview with CNN, Corker went even further, stating of the president: “I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard and debases our country in that way but he does.”
Coupled with Flake’s scathing remarks on the Senate floor, the growing list of Republicans sounding the alarm over Trump’s presidency marked a potential watershed moment within the party.
Several prominent Republicans have spoken out, albeit in veiled terms, against so-called “Trumpism” in recent weeks. McCain, who represents Arizona alongside Flake in the Senate, denounced “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in a speech last week that also decried the abdication of US leadership on the global stage. Days later, George W Bush condemned bigotry while declaring American politics “more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication”.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, played into the intra-party rift by dubbing Flake’s decision as “a good move” while telling reporters his remarks were not “befitting of the Senate floor”.
Speaking at the daily White House briefing, Sanders dismissed the criticisms made by Flake and Corker. “Look, I think the voters of these individual senators’ states are speaking in pretty loud volumes,” she said. “I think they were not likely to be re-elected and I think that shows the support is more behind this president than it is those two individuals.”
In his Senate floor speech, Flake implored Republicans to do away with the political considerations that have enabled Trump to challenge to norms of governance and basic decorum.
“The alliances and agreements that ensure the stability of the entire world are routinely threatened by the level of thought that goes into 140 characters,” Flake said. “Would we Republicans meekly accept such behavior on display from dominant Democrats? Of course we wouldn’t. And we would be wrong if we did.”
“When we remain silent and fail to act … because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base,” he added, “we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations.”
Flake was one of the few Republican senators who declined to endorse Trump during the 2016 presidential election. Earlier this year, he published a book framing the rise of Trump as a moment of reckoning for the Republican party.
Flake’s candor highlighted the discord within the Republican party in the aftermath of Trump’s successful insurgent campaign.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, declared war on the Republican establishment after leaving the White House in August to take down incumbents perceived by the base as insufficient in their support of the president’s agenda. A Bannon ally celebrated the news of Flake’s retirement, texting the Guardian: “Another scalp!”
Although Flake had raised millions for his re-election campaign, his criticism of Trump loomed over what was poised to be a tough primary against rightwing challengers that included Kelli Ward, the former Arizona state senator who failed to unseat John McCain in November. Ward had dubbed Flake’s refusal to endorse Trump in the 2016 campaign “treacherous”.
Amplifying pressure from the right, Trump met with some of Flake’s potential challengers ahead of a rally in Phoenix in August and subsequently attacked the senator on Twitter, writing: “Not a fan of Jeff Flake, weak on crime & border!”
Flake was a co-author of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2013 that would have provided a pathway to citizenship for roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US. He also differed from Trump on trade, but ultimately told the Arizona Republic newspaper his decision to leave the Senate was a moral choice.
Corker and Flake’s decisions to step aside leave room for Republicans to run new candidates who might be less tarnished by the toxicity of Trump’s tenure.
Senate Leadership Fund, the Super Pac dedicated to preserving the Republican majority in the upper chamber, said Flake’s decision would ultimately help to thwart Bannon’s crusade against incumbent Republicans.
“The one political upshot of Sen Flake’s decision today is that Steve Bannon’s hand-picked candidate, conspiracy-theorist Kelli Ward, will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018,” the group’s president and CEO, Steven Law, said in a statement.
The move nonetheless removed yet another strong, household name from a seat being eyed as a potential pickup by Democrats, who are seeking to regain control of a Republican-led Congress. Democrats are rallying behind the Arizona congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, known as a rare centrist voice in the increasingly polarized country’s capital.
Political operatives in Washington were surprised by Flake’s announcement, which followed a slew of similar decisions from Republicans in swing states.
Several Republicans serving in the House of Representatives have announced plans to retire, including David Trott of Michigan, David Reichert of Washington, Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, leaving an opening for Democrats in competitive districts.
By contrast, at least one moderate Republican voice, Senator Susan Collins, has said she will seek re-election in Maine.
Alex Conant, a partner at Firehouse Strategies who worked on Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, said it was a “troubling trend” for reliable conservatives like Flake to feel as though they no longer had a place in the Republican party.
“It’s no secret that there’s a lot of divisions within the Republican party right now. A lot of Republican leaders are uncomfortable with the direction that Trump is leading us,” Conant said.
Additional reporting by Ben Jacobs and David Smith
Senator Bob Corker is retiring—and going out firing.
Getty
By Jack Holmes October 24, 2017
President Trump Lies. Frequently. This is not new, but somehow it took the nation a great deal of time to come to grips with this reality. Politifact has rated 463 claims made by Donald Trump before and after he rose to the presidency. Sixty-nine percent of them (nice) were rated some degree of false, including 15 percent that were “pants on fire” lies. Imagine if 15 percent of what you said to people was composed of outright, egregious lies. Imagine if nearly 70 percent of what you told your friends and family and coworkers was not true. Now imagine you’re the president.
One way to tell this is no longer a debate is that Republicans are now simply speaking the truth about the president’s aversion to the truth—even if news outlets can be reluctant to do the same. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee is the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also retiring, so he seems to feel a bit more liberated than his colleagues—who will someday seek reelection and may still need the votes of Trump’s relentless base. Corker gave an interview to The New York Times a few weeks back where he didn’t mince words about the threat the president poses in the context of setting off World War III. Now, after the president attacked Corker in a series of tweets this morning, he is not mincing words about Trump’s record on telling the truth:
Corker on Trump: “Nothing that he said in his tweets today were truthful or accurate.”
Corker on Trump: “I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue.”
Trump has repeatedly peddled this line about his refusal to grant Corker an endorsement, while Corker has repeatedly said Trump begged him to run for reelection—and offered his endorsement if Corker did so. Who to believe? The guy who’s still going around saying that “we’re the highest taxed nation in the world” while pitching his tax plan, despite the fact that everyone and their brother has found we’re nowhere close? Corker says Trump is “an untruthful president,” which still seems generous. Corker is hiding behind the (debatable) notion he does not use the word “liar,” but at least he’s saying something.
As Corker went on to make clear, this is not just a domestic issue. The word of the President of the United States has been incalculably diminished throughout the world because this president has no regard for the truth, or reality, or the concept of sticking to your word when you give it.
“I don’t know why he lowers himself to such a low, low standard, and debases our country in the way that he does,” Corker said, “But he does.” And then, Corker said he would not support the president in another election, essentially because Trump isn’t up to the job:
Corker says he would NOT support Trump in another election, “he’s proven himself unable to rise to the occasion.”
This is truly remarkable from a sitting senator about the incumbent president from his own party. So, too, was this:
Corker: Trump is “absolutely not” a role model, will be remembered for the “debasement of our nation.”
“I think at the end of the day, when his term is over, I think the debasing of our nation—the constant non-truth-telling, the name-calling,” Corker said, “The debasement of our nation is what he’ll be remembered most for. And that’s regretful, and it affects young people. We have young people who, for the first time, are watching a president stating absolute non-truths, nonstop. Personalizing things in the way that he does. And it’s very sad for our nation.”
Naturally, the president responded by…lying and personalizing on Twitter:
“Sen. Corker is the incompetent head of the Foreign Relations Committee, & look how poorly the U.S. has done. He doesn’t have a clue as…..
…the entire World WAS laughing and taking advantage of us. People like liddle’ Bob Corker have set the U.S. way back. Now we move forward!”
As Charles P. Pierce has discussed at length, Corker is no saintly defender of the republic against the scourge of Trumpism. He has almost always voted with the administration, and his party backs much of the executive branch agenda when it comes to deregulating the country into oblivion. His first instinct on identifying an existential threat to the nation was to announce his retirement.
But Corker still has the courage to face off, in the most public of squares, against a president who has risen to his current position on the back of sheer viciousness as much as anything else. Corker knows that the president will lie and smear him after this, but he spoke out anyway. That’s commendable, particularly when you watch the Marco Rubio’s of the world cower in the corner as the fabric of our republic is tearing at the seams.
this is the best video ever
Posted by ELITE Enslave US on Tuesday, July 5, 2016
McCain critiques Trump without labeling him ‘a draft dodger’….The Telegraph
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., left, and Defense Secretary James Mattis, speak to members of the media after their meeting Friday, Oct. 20, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. Jacquelyn Martin AP Photo
AP Congressional Correspondent October 23, 2017
WASHINGTON: Republican Sen. John McCain left no doubt Monday that he was thinking of President Donald Trump as he criticized the draft system during Vietnam for forcing low-income Americans to serve while the wealthy could avoid war with a doctor’s note.
McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war, stopped short of labeling Trump a “draft dodger” for getting five draft deferments. But the senator’s comments came with Trump already immersed in controversy over how he honors U.S. troop deaths, and underscored the remove between the billionaire president and the military system he now controls as commander in chief.
McCain’s criticism also continued a long-running clash between the two men on the eve of a visit by Trump to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to court Senate GOP votes for his tax plan, a meeting that could contain more than a few awkward moments.
“I don’t consider him so much a draft dodger as I feel that the system was so wrong that certain Americans could evade their responsibilities to serve the country,” McCain said on ABC’s “The View.” He was being pressed about comments in a C-SPAN interview aired Sunday where he lamented that the military “drafted the lowest income level of America and the highest income level found a doctor that would say they had a bone spur.”
One of Trump’s deferments came as a result of a physician’s letter stating he suffered from bone spurs in his feet. Trump’s presidential campaign described the issue as a temporary problem.
McCain, meanwhile, spent 5½ years as a prisoner of war after his plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. Yet during last year’s presidential campaign Trump said McCain was not a war hero because “I like people who weren’t captured.”
The senator made clear during Monday’s interview that he had been referring to Trump in making his C-SPAN comments. When one of the hosts remarked that people thought he was talking about Trump because the president had sought a medical deferment, McCain interjected, “More than once, yes.”
McCain was asked to describe his relationship with the president. “Almost none” he simply said.
The six-term Arizona lawmaker, battling brain cancer at age 81, made his appearance on “The View” in honor of his daughter Meghan McCain’s birthday. She recently joined the daytime talk show as one of its panel of co-hosts. The White House declined to comment on McCain’s remarks.
The tacit criticism reflected the ongoing tension between Trump and McCain, which began during last year’s campaign and has flared on and off. Trump responded furiously when McCain’s “no” vote sunk Senate efforts to repeal and replace “Obamacare” earlier this year.
And last week, in a speech in Philadelphia, McCain questioned “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in America’s foreign policy. Trump lashed out, insisting he would fight back and “it won’t be pretty.”
That prompted McCain to retort: “I have faced tougher adversaries.”
The senator burst into sustained laughter on Monday when one of the hosts mentioned Trump’s threats and asked McCain, “Are you scared?”
After he stopped laughing, McCain said, “I mentioned that I had faced greater challenges.”
“Let’s stop insulting each other. Let’s start respecting each other,” McCain recommended.
The back-and-forth between the president and McCain stands as the latest skirmish between the two Republican Party heavyweights and another example of Trump tangling with GOP senators who could make or break his agenda in Congress.
Trump in recent weeks has feuded with Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, although the president joined with the Kentucky senator at the White House last week to publicly declare they were on the same page. Both Corker and McCain could be critical to the success or failure of the president’s push to overhaul the tax system.
During Trump’s presidency, McCain has questioned the president’s immigration policies and warned him against cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. The senator also criticized Trump in August for saying that both white nationalists and counter protesters were responsible for violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia.
McCain insisted in a tweet at the time that “there’s no moral equivalency between racists & Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry” and the president should say so.
The senator underwent surgery in mid-July to remove a 2-inch (51-millimeter) blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with an aggressive tumor called a glioblastoma. It’s the same type of tumor that killed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at age 77 in 2009 and Beau Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, at 46 in 2015.
Rob Schmitz, Heard on Morning Edition October 23, 2017
A woman wearing a face mask walks on a street as Beijing is hit by polluted air and sandstorms on May 4. Andy Wong/AP
In the gritty industrial town of Yiwu, workers prepare jeans to be dyed in a vivid range of colors.
Two months ago, this factory — and this entire city, located in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang — was a much quieter place. Inspection crews from the environmental bureau had shut businesses down, cutting electricity and gas so that they could determine who was following China’s environmental laws and who wasn’t.
The boss of this factory, who asked that his name not be used for fear of punishment by local officials, says he’s never seen anything like it.
“It had a big impact on our business,” he says. “We couldn’t make the delivery date since we [were] shut down. It’s not just our factory. All the factories out here had this issue.”
This is happening across the country: Entire industrial regions of China are being temporarily shut down, and the unusual sight of blue skies is reappearing as environmental inspectors go about their work. After decades of doing little about the pollution that has plagued much of the country, China’s government may be finally getting serious about enforcing its environmental laws.
“So, basically, you’re seeing these inspectors go into factories for surprise inspections,” says Gary Huang, founder of 80/20 Sourcing, which connects foreign clients with China’s supply chain. “They’re instituting daily fines, and sometimes — in the real severe cases — criminal enforcement. People are getting put in jail.”
In the past year, China’s Ministry of Environment has sent inspectors to 10 provinces, where they’ve reprimanded, fined, or charged officials in more than 80,000 factories with criminal offenses. Entire swaths of Eastern China have halted production, prompting some companies to move entire supply chains to countries like India and Bangladesh to meet their orders.
“It’s a huge event. It’s a serious event. I think many of us here believe it will become the new normal,” says Michael Crotty, president of MKT & Associates, a company that exports textiles from China. Crotty says in his nearly two decades in China, he’s never seen a crackdown of this magnitude. “The consumers of China don’t want red and blue rivers. They don’t want to see gray skies every day.”
China’s crackdown reminds Crotty of 1970s America after the Clean Water Act was passed.
“At that time, we in the textile business saw many dyeing and printing houses shut down because they couldn’t comply with the regulations. We’re seeing a similar process taking place here in China, and it’s much, much bigger. The disruption is larger,” he says.
Crotty’s colleague Archie Liu, general manager of MKT & Associates, estimates that 40 percent of China’s factories have been at least temporarily shut down in the latest spate of inspections. He says that’s a good thing.
“After all, factories will be better, more sustainable, and more socially responsible after being inspected,” he says. “It’s better for our supply chain. Then we can tell Walmart, Costco, and other retailers of ours that we’re qualified and that everything we make for Americans are environmentally friendly.”
After a quarter century of living in China, Shanghai environmental lawyer Peter Corne is gleefully celebrating the new environmental crackdown.
“This is better than a 100-percent pay raise for me,” says Corne, managing partner at Dorsey & Whitney’s Shanghai office. “I was just dreaming about it. I never thought it would come true.”
Corne says what’s most promising about this new enforcement are the new fees that are being imposed when factories, whose emissions are now monitored in real time, discharge more than the law allows.
“The implementation will be totally different,” Corne says. “It won’t be the environmental bureau that’s implementing anymore. They’ll just be monitoring. It will be the tax bureau that’s implementing it.”
This is crucial, says Corne, because China’s tax bureaus are powerful entities backed up by rigorous laws that, when violated, are typically met with aggressive local enforcement. Corne’s confident the economic hit will be temporary as companies that specialize in clean tech get a boost from so many factories now being forced to comply with much stricter laws.
But in the short term, that’s little consolation for businessmen like Michael Crotty.
“So, short-term, the disruptions are pretty significant, and the timing, quite frankly, is difficult,” Crotty says.
Difficult, because these shutdowns have impacted supply chains producing goods for the upcoming Christmas season in the U.S. Crotty thinks Americans will see an increase in prices on the shelves this holiday season due to the breadth of China’s factory shutdowns.
But, he says, it’s a small price to pay for a cleaner China.
Yuhan Xu contributed research to this story.