March 29, 2018

Life for Residents Near Hog Farms Just Got Much, Much Worse

It just became much easier for large livestock operations to pollute near people’s homes.

Tom Philpott Mar. 28, 2018

In the midst of last week’s, um, stormy news cycle, the meat industry quietly scored a pair of legislative coups, both of which bolster corporate power to impose the downsides of factory-scale animal farming on communities.

One victory will affect people who live near these large operations. In North Carolina alone, 160,000 people reside within a half mile of vast open cesspools full of manure from thousands of confined hogs. If you lived in such conditions, you’d probably want to know what pollutants you and your family were breathing from the foul-smelling air wafting from these operations.

Folded into the omnibus spending bill signed by President Donald Trump last week is a rider that will prevent such knowledge from reaching public view. It’s based on a bill called the “Fair Agricultural Reporting Method Act” (get it? FARM), which proposed to free most livestock operations from having to report the air-borne toxins emitted from the manure they accumulate. These gases, which include ammonia and hydrogen sulfide, can trigger ill health effects in neighboring communities, including eye irritation, chronic lung disease, and olfactory neuron loss. The pork, beef, and chicken trade groups all hotly supported the measure, which is now the law of the land.

[...]

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/03/life-for-residents-near-hog-farms-just-got-much-much-worse/

March 28, 2018

Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you

The harvesting of our personal details goes far beyond what many of us could imagine. So I braced myself and had a look

By Dylan Curran Wed 28 Mar 2018

Want to freak yourself out? I’m going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google knows where you’ve been

[...]

Google knows everything you’ve ever searched – and deleted

[...]

Google knows all the apps you use

[...]

Google has all of your YouTube history

[...]

The data Google has on you can fill millions of Word documents

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google …

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day …

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

[The article continues with similar sub-headings for Facebook. Each shows a link by which you can check or download your own data. These corporate tracking systems are not your friend.]

March 28, 2018

Trumps legal team is in shambles. The timing is terrible.

Mueller’s Russia investigators want to talk to the president right as his legal team is falling apart.
By Zachary Fryer-Biggs Updated Mar 27, 2018

President Trump’s legal team is in shambles at one of the worst possible moments in the Russia investigation.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is heating up, and Trump is facing a big decision about whether to sit down for an interview with Mueller. But because of the staffing chaos that seems to have plagued the rest of his administration, the president now finds himself with virtually no qualified attorneys left to defend him in the Russia probe.

Trump’s top personal lawyer, John Dowd, resigned on Thursday. Reports say he’d grown frustrated with Trump’s unwillingness to heed his legal advice, including his view that an interview with Mueller would be too risky.

And less than a week after announcing that Trump was adding two new lawyers to his legal team, personal Trump attorney Jay Sekulow had to walk back the announcement, saying the two wouldn’t be working on the special counsel investigation after all because of “conflicts” with their other clients.

White House lawyers Ty Cobb and Don McGahn work for Trump on issues tied to the Russia investigation, but both are on the taxpayer payroll, meaning they are responsible for protecting the office of the presidency, not Trump personally. McGahn and Cobb are both reportedly considering leaving as well.

[...]

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/26/17164766/trump-russia-sekulow-legal-team

March 27, 2018

Democracy Now: One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America

[Full headline:]
“One Life Is Worth All the Guns in America”: Students Demand End to Violence at March for Our Lives

In a historic day of action, more than 800 protests were held Saturday urging lawmakers to pass gun control. In Washington, organizers say 800,000 took part in the March for Our Lives, which was organized by students who survived the February 14 shooting massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In New York, another 150,000 took to the streets; 85,000 rallied in Chicago; 55,000 marched in Los Angeles. Tens of thousands also rallied in Atlanta and Pittsburgh. In Washington, D.C., survivors of gun violence—from Parkland to Chicago—shared the stage to decry the power of the National Rifle Association and to demand an end to the violence. We air highlights of the speeches.

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/3/26/one_life_is_worth_all_the

[Transcript and video at link]

[There's over 4 hours of coverage in their special report at Democracy Now, plus individual speeches and interviews.
I finally managed to watch and listen to some of the students instead of just reading transcripts of their speeches. Didn't make it through even the first one dry-eyed, though. So I'm soft. Sue me.]

March 27, 2018

Guardian: Six victories for the gun control movement since the Parkland massacre

Days after the March for Our Lives, the movement continues to see successful efforts – here are six victories since the Florida shooting

Amanda Holpuch in New York
26 Mar 2018

Two days after the largest demonstration against gun violence in the US, the movement to prevent gun violence continues to build momentum – this time in New Jersey, where lawmakers are voting on a stack of stricter gun control laws on Monday.

Teenagers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school have reinvigorated the movement after 17 people were killed at their school last month.

On Monday, New Jersey’s governor, Phil Murphy, vowed to sign into law six pieces of gun control legislation, including a ban on armour-piercing bullets and a bill to make it tougher to obtain a handgun permit, if they are passed by the state legislature.

“Today we marched in memory of Parkland,” Murphy said on Saturday. “But we will act in the name of every family and every community in our state that has been touched by gun violence, and the many more who wish to remain safe.”

Here is a look at other successful efforts to curb gun violence since the shooting in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February.

[...]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/26/gun-control-movement-march-for-our-lives-stoneman-douglas-parkland-builds-momentum

March 26, 2018

TheAtlantic: A Grandpa's-Eye View of the March for Our Lives

He hadn't been to a demonstration since the early '60s, but the energy of the post-Parkland movement drove him to go.

Rachel Gutman 4:39 PM ET

When I asked my mother and my grandfather how the Parkland shooting made them feel, they both said nearly the same thing: “It felt like an attack on the integrity of [my] memories,” said my mom. “It interfered with those pleasant thoughts of living there,” my grandpa said.

When my mom was a teenager, she lived with her parents in Coral Springs, Florida. Their house was one mile away from what’s now Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They had moved around a bit as a family—first from New York to Florida, and then in the Fort Lauderdale area. But, as my mom put it, “When I think of home, I think of Coral Springs.” My grandpa told me that their Coral Springs house “was the growing-up house where we as a family ... established who we are.”

Maybe that connection is what made my grandpa book a flight to Washington as soon as he heard about the March for Our Lives, even though he hadn’t been to a demonstration since college in the early 1960s. (He knows he joined a group of students who shut down a bridge, but he can’t remember why.) The last time he participated in an event of national importance was when he and my grandmother drove to Washington in 1963 to pay their respects to President Kennedy. (The line was too long for them to make it inside the Capitol, so they turned around and went home.) My grandpa didn’t go to the 1963 March on Washington because he “didn’t think it was that important at the time.”

But after the Parkland shooting, my grandpa told me, “I said to myself, you know what, you have missed so many moments in history because you hesitated and didn’t pay attention. Don’t miss this one.”

[...]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/03/grandpa-march-for-childrens-lives/556532/

March 26, 2018

TheCut: Stormy Daniels's Boring Interview Was Actually Brilliant

[Full headline:]

Stormy Daniels’s Boring Interview Was Actually Brilliant

Once again, she proves she’s a worthy adversary for Trump.

By Rhonda Garelick March 26, 2018

Last night’s 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels set off so few fireworks, with so little new information, that it would be tempting to dismiss its importance. As Slate put it, “If you were hoping for a TV event that would do serious damage to the Trump presidency … [it] was a let down.” Let’s not be hasty here, though. Buried within the interview’s vanilla blandness lay some lessons worth pondering — if we want to save our republic. But the important parts were easy to miss.

[...]

But in her conversation with Anderson Cooper, Stormy mainly rehashed details she’d offered before: How she met Trump; how he compared her to Ivanka (still not that shocking, folks); and how he’d strung her along by “dangling” (the very word she’s used before — evoking atrophied flesh) the hope of an appearance on The Apprentice.

She did elaborate, though, on the most profoundly disturbing element in all this: the alleged personal threat made to her (to keep silent and “leave Trump alone”) in 2011. The story she told of being menaced by a thug in a parking lot while with her infant daughter was chilling but also, sadly — given what we already know about the world of Trump — not that shocking, and entirely credible.

[...]

Everything about this interview screamed legitimacy. 60 Minutes is the 50-year-old doyenne of broadcast journalism, a network show watched by grandparents and Trump supporters (and apparently even Trump himself). This was Stormy’s chance to take her case to the widest American public, to clear her name and tell her truth, even at the risk of being penalized for breaching her non-disclosure agreement (and possibly even at risk to her personal safety).

[...]

https://www.thecut.com/2018/03/stormy-danielss-60-minutes-interview-was-actually-brilliant.html

March 26, 2018

USAToday: Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump, brought to you by Mike Pence and the religious right

Thank Mike Pence and evangelicals for Donald Trump and Stormy Daniels. As they force their religion on everyone but their allies, the hypocrisy has never been more naked.

Jason Sattler, Opinion columnist
March 26, 2018

Congratulations, Mike Pence!

Since Donald Trump gave America’s kids the chance to learn about “Stormy Daniels,” his approval with self-identified white evangelical Protestants has risen 6%. Yes, amid a controversy about hush money to hide an affair involving a woman best known for performing in adult films, an alleged affair that took place just months after Trump’s third wife gave birth to their son, the president’s standing has actually improved with a group of voters who spent most of this century fretting about the sanctity of marriage.

The hypocrisy here is as obvious as Trump’s hundreds of conflicts of interests. American evangelicals, by and large, have decided that they can ignore Trump’s personal morality because they are getting something far more important in return — the chance to impose their personal morality on others.

And their role model for this devil’s deal is the evangelical who made the Trump presidency possible: Mike Pence.

“Trump’s got the populist nationalists,” said Steve Bannon, CEO of the Trump-Pence campaign in 2016. “But Pence is the base. Without Pence, you don’t win.”

[...]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/26/stormy-daniels-donald-trump-thanks-mike-pence-evangelicals-column/457212002/

March 26, 2018

Texas lawmaker shares Facebook meme connecting gun control protesters to Holocaust victims

[Even worse, it came from Ted Cruz's page]

By Jackie Wang

A Houston-area state representative linked gun control advocates to Holocaust victims on Monday, with a meme that appeared to blame gun control for the genocide of six million Jews during World War II.

Spring Republican Valoree Swanson shared a Facebook post Monday from the “Ted Cruz Meme Page.” She did not add a comment to the post, which showed two photos. The first was from March 13, when 7,000 pairs of shoes were left at the U.S. Capitol to represent the children who have died from gunshot wounds since the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012. It was captioned: “Shoes left by gun control supporters, 2018.”

The second photo, of a pile of shoes in a concentration camp, was captioned: “Shoes left by victims of gun control, 1945.”

[...]

Swanson's page has since deleted the post. It still exists on the Ted Cruz Meme Page.

The original post had over 100,000 shares and 300,000 "reactions." Most of the comments on Swanson's post decried the picture.

[...]

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/guns/2018/03/26/texas-lawmaker-shares-facebook-meme-connecting-gun-control-protesters-holocaust-victims

[I don't do facebook; maybe someone who does can confirm whether or not Cruz is still pushing this shameful meme.]

March 26, 2018

State A.G.s demand answers from Facebook as regulators swoop in on scandal-tarnished company

[Full headline:]
State attorneys general demand answers from Facebook as regulators swoop in on scandal-tarnished company

BY Terence Cullen Monday, March 26, 2018

Facebook got more thumbs down from law enforcement and investors Monday as scandals continue to embroil the social media giant.

Attorneys general from nearly 40 states and U.S. territories on Monday fired off a full-throated letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg — asking how Cambridge Analytica got its hands on data for 50 million accounts.

“Users of Facebook deserve to know the answers to these questions and more,” reads the letter.

“We are committed to protecting our residents’ personal information. More specifically, we need to understand Facebook’s policies and procedures in light of the reported misuse of data by developers.”

The missive — whose signators include New York AG Eric Schneiderman — comes as Facebook falls under regulatory scrutiny.

[...]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/group-ags-answers-facebook-regulators-swoop-article-1.3896822