Category: Labor and Working

Joy Reid responds to Pastor Mark Burns

Joy Reid responds to Pastor Mark Burns, who said that she should “move to Haiti” after his appearance on AM JOY, during which Joy expressed compassion for Haitian and all immigrants. Watch their full interview: http://www.msnbc.com/…/trump-s-hole-comments-doubted-by-pas…

Joy Reid responds to Pastor Mark Burns, who said that she should "move to Haiti"

Joy Reid responds to Pastor Mark Burns, who said that she should "move to Haiti" after his appearance on AM JOY, during which Joy expressed compassion for Haitian and all immigrants. Watch their full interview: http://www.msnbc.com/am-joy/watch/trump-s-hole-comments-doubted-by-pastor-on-am-joy-1136410691865?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_jy

Posted by AM Joy on MSNBC on Saturday, January 13, 2018

Anderson Cooper: I want to take a moment to talk about Haiti

A Plus

We agree, Anderson Cooper. Haiti is anything but a shithole.

Anderson Cooper Choked Back Tears As He Defended Haiti From Trump's Insults

We agree, Anderson Cooper. Haiti is anything but a shithole.

Posted by A Plus on Friday, January 12, 2018

West Point Cadet Alix Idrache from Haiti

Stars and Stripes

‘American Dream’ photo of West Point grad from Haiti goes viral

By DAN LAMOTHE | The Washington Post | Published: May 25, 2016

As 2nd Lt. Alix Schoelcher Idrache stood at attention during the commencement ceremony at West Point, New York, on Saturday, he was overcome with emotion. Tears rolled down both cheeks, but his gloved left hand held firm on his white, gold and black “cover,” the dress headgear that Army cadets wear.

The photograph of Idrache, by Army Staff Sgt. Vito T. Bryant, was published Tuesday on the Facebook page of West Point’s U.S. Military Academy, and it almost immediately went viral. Part of that is Idrache’s background: He worked his way through one of the nation’s most prestigious military schools after immigrating to the United States from Haiti, earning his citizenship and serving for two years as an enlisted soldier with the Maryland Army National Guard, according to Army records.

“I woke up this morning and found my face all over Facebook and with it myriad of amazing comments about my accomplishments,” Idrache wrote Tuesday on Facebook. “I am humbled and shocked at the same time. Thank you for giving me a shot at the American Dream and may God bless America, the greatest country on earth.”

On West Point’s Instagram page, he left another message thanking people for their support. Bryant, the photographer, “captured a moment that I will never forget,” Idrache said. He credited past generations of soldiers and Capt. Kristen Griest, 1st Lt. Shaye Haver and Maj. Lisa Jaster, the three West Point graduates who last year became the first women to graduate from the Army’s grueling Ranger School.

“Three things came to mind and led to those tears,” Idrache wrote. “The first is where I started. I am from Haiti and never did I imagine that such honor would be one day bestowed on me. The second is where I am. Men and women who have preserved the very essence of the human condition stood in that position and took the same oath. Men who preserved the Union [in] a dark period of this country’s history. Men who scaled the face of adversity and liberated Europe from fascism . . . Women like CPT Griest, LT Haver, MAJ Jaster who rewrote the narrative and challenged the status quo to prove themselves worthy of being called Rangers.”

The third thing Idrache thought about, he wrote, is his future. Shortly after he leaves West Point, he will report to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to start flight school.

“Knowing that one day I will be a pilot is humbling beyond words,” Idrache wrote. “I could not help but be flooded with emotions knowing that I will be leading these men and women who are willing to give their all to preserve what we value as the American way of life. To me, that is the greatest honor. Once again, thank you.”

Idrache was a leader in his class of 950 cadets. According to a West Point news release, he was named a regimental commander last summer. Army officials at West Point said that he was on leave Thursday and not available for comment. His home town is listed as New Carrollton, Maryland, a Washington suburb.

Column: Your response to Trump’s racist ‘shithole’ comment will be remembered

Chicago Tribune

Column: Your response to Trump’s racist ‘shithole’ comment will be remembered

President Donald Trump listens during a meeting Jan. 9, 2018, with lawmakers on immigration policy in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington. In a meeting days later, he used profane language when talking about immigration. (Evan Vucci / AP)

Rex Huppke, Contract Reporter, Chicago Tribune   January 13, 2018

What did you say when President Donald Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador and some African nations as “shithole countries”?

What did you say when the president of the United States followed that comment by suggesting he’d rather see more immigrants from countries like Norway?

Whether now or in the future, you will be asked this question: What did you say?

Did you call out the obvious racism behind those statements? Did you acknowledge that the leader of the free world — by title, anyway — had shown himself to be a white supremacist, casually expressing his dislike of brown-skinned immigrants and preference for white European immigrants?

Were you outraged that such comments from a sitting president were antithetical to the ideals that have always made America a beacon of hope and opportunity?

What did you say?

Did you speak out?

Did you denounce the comments, as Rep. Mia Love, a Utah Republican whose parents came to America from Haiti, did, saying in a statement: “This behavior is unacceptable from the leader of our nation. … The President must apologize to both the American people and the nations he so wantonly maligned.”

Or did you keep quiet?

Take note, because you will be asked. Trump’s has been a presidency filled with jaw-dropping moments of offensive behavior, but this one will stand out over time, both for its profane nature and its naked racism.

So what did you say?

Did you look for excuses? Did you toss out a “Well, what about …” scenario you thought might take the heat off?

Did you scream something about “identity politics” and try to pretend that this is the fault of others, not the fault of the transparently racist old man in the White House?

Did you say he has a point? Did you say, “Well, those countries are shitholes, aren’t they?”

Did you forget how people once described immigrants from Italy and Ireland? Did you forget the words on a plaque at the Statue of Liberty?

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Did you forget those words, or just ignore them? Did you smile about a tax break and say nothing?

Did you not put the pieces together and consider all the other times Trump has shown us exactly who he is?

Did you tamp down memories of his calls for the execution of the Central Park Five, even after the young men, four black and one Latino, were found innocent?

Did you explain away what Trump was implying in this tweet from 2013: “According to Bill O’Reilly, 80% of all the shootings in New York City are blacks-if you add Hispanics, that figure goes to 98%. 1% white.”

Did you disregard his years-long birther crusade against the nation’s first black president? His description of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals? His regular criticism that immigrants coming from predominately nonwhite nations are examples of those countries’ “worst people”?

Did you not let yourself see the pattern? Did you twist logic into knots and blame it on the media? On political correctness?

What did you say when our president called other countries “shitholes” and you had to shield your children’s ears from profanity on the nightly news?

What did you tell your children about this moment? How did you explain the president’s words?

Tell me, what did you say? Mark it down, let it be known. Because you will be asked this again someday.

And if you stayed silent, if you made excuses, if you tried to fool yourself into believing this is appropriate presidential behavior, if you let it slide because this presidency might somehow line your pocketbook, then you will be remembered as complicit, as one who stood by and let America’s decency get dragged through the mud.

And if you laughed, or if you smiled, or if you nodded your head in agreement, you will be remembered just as Trump will: as a racist, a fool and an absolute embarrassment.

rhuppke@chicagotribune.com

RELATED

President Trump owes the country an apology »

What happened when I followed Trump’s example and started lying all the time »

Trump attacks protections for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries in Oval Office meeting »

Trump’s ‘shithole’ remark is the latest in long string of racial provocations 

Donald Trump cancels London visit amid protest fears

The Guardian

Donald Trump cancels London visit amid protest fears

President will not open new US embassy next month, with secretary of state Rex Tillerson likely to take his place

Heather Stewart, Political editor, and  David Smithin, Washington                     January 12, 2018

Donald Trump and Theresa May pictured in Brussels ahead of a Nato summit meeting in May last year. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Donald Trump has cancelled a visit to Britain next month to open the new US embassy in London, amid fears of mass protests.

The president claimed on Twitter that the reason for calling off the trip was his displeasure at Barack Obama having sold the current embassy for “peanuts” and built a replacement for $1bn (£750m). “Bad deal,” he wrote.

But the embassy’s plan to move from Mayfair to Nine Elms in London was first reported in October 2008, when George W Bush was still president.

The London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said Trump had “got the message” that many Londoners staunchly opposed his policies and actions.

 Related: The fabulous new US embassy is best not tainted by a Trump visit, Oliver Wainwright

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/12/new-us-embassy-fabulous-not-tainted-by-donald-trump-visit

“It appears that President Trump got the message from the many Londoners who love and admire America and Americans but find his policies and actions the polar opposite of our city’s values of inclusion, diversity and tolerance,” Khan said on Friday.

“His visit next month would without doubt have been met by mass peaceful protests. This just reinforces what a mistake it was for Theresa May to rush and extend an invitation of a state visit in the first place.”

The prime minister invited Trump for a state visit when she became the first world leader to visit the president in the White House a year ago. Activists immediately pledged to stage protests and MPs have said they would not give the president the opportunity to address parliament.

Asked about Trump’s cancellation, a Downing Street spokesman repeated the government’s longstanding position that “an invitation has been extended and accepted, but no date has been set”.

The White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said: “The invitation was made and has been accepted we are still working to finalise a date.”

Instead of a state visit, it had been expected that Trump would make a brief, less formal “working visit” in February to cut the ribbon on the embassy in south-west London, and hold meetings with May. Officials had also been examining plans for the president to meet the Queen without the pomp of a full-blown state banquet.

Government sources suggested Washington had signalled that the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, would instead open the embassy.

Rex Tillerson.

Trump confirmed on Twitter late on Thursday night that the trip was off. “Reason I canceled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars,” he wrote just before midnight local time. “Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!”

Citing security and environmental reasons, the US state department agreed to sell the current embassy building in Grosvenor Square to the Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Co, which plans to turn it into a luxury hotel. Estimates put the site’s value at £500m before it was made a listed building, which would have diminished the value because of restrictions on development.

British relations with the president hit a low late last year when May criticised his decision to retweet videos posted by the far-right extremist group Britain First.

Trump responded by tweeting directly to the prime minister that she should focus on tackling domestic terrorism.

The government was so concerned about his decision to share the videos that Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, took the rare step of raising the issue directly with the White House.

London’s new US embassy: a very diplomatic America on Thames

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/dec/17/us-embassy-nine-elms-diplomatic-mission-hidden-teeth

London’s new US embassy may be just a glass cube with disguised fortifications, but it is also restrained, efficient, green… the antithesis of Donald Trump

Trump’s ambassador to London, Woody Johnson, subsequently insisted: “The president and the prime minister have a very, very good relationship. I know the president admires and respects the prime minister greatly.”

May’s government has been keen to strike up a close relationship with the Trump administration despite his erratic behaviour, because of Britain’s desire to strike a swift trade deal with the world’s largest economy when it leaves the European Union.

Trump has sparked alarm among diplomats by repeatedly entering into Twitter spats with key public figures, including the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to whom he recently boasted about the size of the US nuclear arsenal.

The White House has been rocked in recent days by the revelations in an explosive book, Fire and Fury, by the US journalist Michael Wolff, who suggested senior figures in the administration questioned the president’s fitness for office.

Asked about the revelations last weekend, May said she believed they were not serious, and Trump was a man making decisions “in the interests of the United States”.

Trump faced fresh criticism on Thursday night after the Washington Post reported that he had questioned planned changes to immigration rules, asking colleagues why the US had to welcome arrivals from “shithole countries”.

Scott Pruitt confirms who he really works for in a tweet

ThinkProgress

Scott Pruitt confirms who he really works for in a tweet

The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. Scott Pruitt is most interested in saving money for industry.

Natasha Geiling        January 12, 2018

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Credit: Pete Marovich/Getty Images

In a series of tweets on Thursday night, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt cheered his agency’s year-long effort to stall or repeal numerous regulations, arguing that it will save the American public $300 million in regulatory costs.

Pruitt’s tweet fails to mention two important things, however. First, the American public likely won’t see any of those savings, because those regulatory costs are shouldered by industry. And second, the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks might save industry money, but they will likely result in widespread environmental and public health costs, which almost certainly will be shouldered by the American public.

Pruitt Tweets: Administrator Pruitt @EPA is working alongside @POTUS to provide the regulatory certainty the American people deserve.

Over the past year @ EPA has issued 20 deregulatory actions saving the American people more than $300 MILLION in regulatory costs.

Take, for instance, the Clean Power Plan — an Obama administration regulation that attempted to place the first-ever limits on carbon emissions from power plants. The rule has been a major target of Pruitt since his days as Oklahoma attorney general and, as EPA administrator, he has overseen its repeal. But even the Trump administration’s own math admits that the CPP would have had significant public health benefits, preventing as many as 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2030.

Complying with the rule, however, would have cost the coal industry by forcing power plants to switch from carbon-intensive sources of fuel like coal to less-carbon intensive sources like wind and solar. By repealing the rule — and potentially issuing a much weaker replacement — the EPA effectively trades public health benefits for industry savings.

Under Pruitt, the EPA has also begun reconsidering rules that limit how much mercury power plants can emit. This rule, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard (MATS), was the culmination of more than two decades worth of work by the agency; in April, the Trump administration asked a federal court to delay arguments over the rule (which has been in place for two years and is currently being challenged a coalition of states and industry) while it considered its position. According to the EPA, the rule would prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks, and 130,000 asthma attacks every year. But industry — especially the coal industry — has vocally opposed the rule, arguing that it imposes burdensome costs that lead to closures of coal-fired power plants (coal-fired power plants are by far the largest emitter of mercury into the air).

These are two rules where the EPA has already studied the measurable public health benefits of the regulation; there are countless other rules that have been rolled back, or put on pause, where exact figures don’t exist. In March, for instance, Pruitt rejected the recommendation of EPA scientists and decided to not issue a ban on chlorpyrifos, a widely-used insecticide that has been linked to brain damage. Along with brain damage, chlorpyrifos has been linked to a higher incidence of lung cancer in pesticide applicators who were regularly exposed to the chemical.

But the ban was vehemently opposed by the chemical industry, especially Dow Chemical — one of the primary manufacturers of chlorpyrifos. Andrew Liveris, Dow’s CEO, donated $1 million dollars to President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and met with Pruitt shortly before the administrator announced his decision not to ban the chemical.

In choosing not to ban the pesticide, Pruitt argued that it was important to bring “regulatory certainty” to agricultural producers that use the chemical. But critics have argued that more than regulatory certainty, Pruitt’s regulatory rollbacks illustrate how the agency has come to place the needs of industry over the EPA’s core mission of protecting public health and the environment. Throughout his first year as administrator, Pruitt has time and again argued that “regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate” — but that viewpoint suggests that Pruitt believes his job is to make things easier for industry rather than the American public.

“The only ‘certainty’ Scott Pruitt is providing Americans is that he is failing to protect their air, their water, or the health of their kids in his quest to do whatever the fossil fuel and chemical industries want,” John Coequyt, director of Sierra Club’s global climate policy, told ThinkProgress via email. “The damage that gutting vital air and water protections will do to our families and our health is incalculable.”

Environmental regulations place compliance costs on industry, but they also prevent those costs from being transferred to the American public in the form of increase illness, polluted air, and dirty water. Since the Clean Air Act first became law in 1970, it has created some $22 trillion in net economic benefits, from reductions in illness to improvements in the yield of some agricultural crops. If Pruitt is going to champion the regulatory savings of his actions, he should take responsibility for the loss of public health and environmental benefits, too.

Honey Bees Attracted to Glyphosate and a Common Fungicide

EcoWatch

Honey Bees Attracted to Glyphosate and a Common Fungicide

Modern Farmer

By Dan Nosowitz                      January 12, 2018

All species evolve over time to have distinct preferences for survival. But with rapidly changing synthetic chemicals, sometimes animals don’t have a chance to develop a beneficial aversion to something harmful.

New research from the University of Illinois indicates that honey bees—which are dying en masse—may actually prefer the taste of flowers laced with pesticides that are likely harmful. The study tested honey bee consumption of different sugar syrups, some plain and some with different concentrations of common pesticides. They found that while the bees didn’t care for syrup with extremely high concentrations of pesticides, at low levels, the bees flocked to those pesticides.

Among the pesticides tested were the ever-controversial glyphosate, the most common pesticide in the U.S., which previous studies have also shown to be attractive to honey bees. Chlorothalonil, which is ranked as the 10th most commonly used fungicide in the U.S., usually on peanuts and potatoes, also proved to attract more honey bees. (The connection between fungicides and honey bee health is not that clear; studies suggest they are not in themselves highly toxic, but in combination with other factors can be dangerous).

The bees did not universally prefer adulterated syrups; the researchers note that they avoided prochloraz, a fungicide sold under the name Sportak. And of course, laced sugar syrup is not the same as a flower in the wild. Still, it’s another alarming bit of news about our bees.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Modern Farmer.

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