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Javier E

Opinion | Covid-19 Came for the Dakotas - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-north-south-dakota.html

response dakotas history crisis pandemic politics culture policy

shared by Javier E on 06 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • The Dakotas are a horror story that didn’t have to be, a theater of American disgrace. Want to understand the tendencies — pathologies might be the better word — that made America’s dance with the coronavirus so deadly? Visit the Dakotas.
  • “It’s mind-boggling,” Jamie Smith, the leader of the Democratic minority in South Dakota’s House of Representatives, told me. He was referring primarily to how politicized such basic safety measures as social distancing and masks became, but also to many South Dakotans’ distrust of science and unshakable belief that the virus wouldn’t come for them.
  • the most stubborn, he said, have been the loudest. Throughout the pandemic, he said, he was deluged with communications from constituents adamantly opposed to any mask-wearing requirement, which North Dakota didn’t even have. He heard almost nothing from the other side.
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  • after Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, used an executive order on Nov. 13 to institute precisely such a mandate, a poll showed that a significant majority of North Dakotans favored it.
  • the state definitely should have taken that step last spring or summer — before the number of coronavirus cases skyrocketed, before hospitals were so overrun that sick North Dakotans had to be sent to neighboring states and before his own mother tested positive and died in early October.
  • Until recently, Governor Burgum was loath to exert much pressure on North Dakotans and steered clear of the social-distancing orders put in place by so many other states. But he did invest heavily in testing and never merrily shrugged off the threat of the coronavirus the way his Republican counterpart in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem, did.
  • South Dakota, in contrast, was No. 1. Still no mask mandate there, and no leadership at all from Noem, who didn’t just welcome but beckoned President Trump to Mount Rushmore for that enormous Independence Day rally, the one at which his perpetually maskless entourage clustered near a similarly maskless crowd
  • Just before Thanksgiving, Noem announced the passing of her 98-year-old grandmother, one of 13 residents of a South Dakota nursing home who died in a two-week period. The home’s administrator told The Daily Beast that the other 12 residents, along with many of the nursing home’s workers, had tested positive for the coronavirus, but not Noem’s grandmother. (Hmmm …) While Noem publicly mourned her lost family member, she drew no particular attention to Covid-19’s rampage among her grandmother’s companions.
  • wrote to him to share a famous quotation from Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
  • They “scream at you for a magic medicine” and warn that Joe Biden will ruin America even as they’re “gasping for breath,” she wrote. She added: “They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘stuff’ because they don’t have Covid because it’s not real.”
  • “They stop yelling at you when they get intubated,” she wrote. “It’s like a horror movie that never ends.”
  • The truth is that the Dakotas are as emblematic as they are exceptional
  • In resisting the lockdowns, slowdowns and sacrifices that many other states committed to, they indulged and encouraged a selective (and often warped) reading of scientific evidence, a rebellion against experts and a twisted concept of individual liberty that was obvious all over the country and contributed mightily to our suffering.
  • “North Dakotans will come to each other’s aids in a heartbeat, but when asked to give up personal freedom for an amorphous common good — that’s difficult,
  • When I said “horror story,” I was cribbing. That was a description used in a series of mid-November tweets from a South Dakota emergency room nurse, Jodi Doering, that went viral. Doering was reeling from tending to dying Covid-19 patients who continued to insist that the coronavirus was some kind of hoax.
  • “We maybe believed that our rural nature sheltered us from what cities like yours were experiencing,” Carson said. “Then we found out, very brutally, that was wrong.”
Javier E

North Dakota coal sector sees opportunity in electric vehicles - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...dakota-ev-coal

fossil fuel denial interest economic dependence Culture politics history

shared by Javier E on 13 Nov 21 - No Cached
  • Carbon capture has been a popular idea within the coal, oil and gas sectors for years now. The technology is not out of reach. Plenty of pilot projects have been launched. But so far no one has been able to make it a paying proposition. A pioneering $7.5 billion carbon capture power plant in Mississippi was razed with dynamite on Oct. 9 after its owners wrote it off as an 11-year-old economic failure. North Dakota hopes to break through that last barrier, for both coal and oil.
  • “True wealth is created by a partnership between man and earth,” said Bohrer. If Project Tundra can show that stuffing carbon dioxide back into the earth is economically feasible, he said, “it’s opening the door for a CO2 economy. It gives the lignite industry a way to survive.”
  • His group has launched a promotional campaign called Drive Electric North Dakota, which sponsors promotional events, conducts public attitude surveys and lobbies for EVs in the state capital. It has been an uphill struggle so far, but the idea is that the electricity needed to charge cars and trucks can’t all come from unreliable wind or solar, and this will give coal a way to stay in the mix and help keep the grid in fine tune. “The more demand we have in North Dakota,” Bohrer said, “the easier it is to soak up our domestically produced electricity.”
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  • Not only is the process still prohibitively expensive, research has shown that so far it hasn’t been very effective. A 2019 study at Stanford University found that current carbon capture projects miss well more than half of the carbon dioxide in emissions.
  • Project Tundra’s managers hope they can achieve a significant breakthrough, aiming to capture 90 percent of the CO2 once they have the project in operation. Essentially, the carbon dioxide would be absorbed out of the “flue gas,” or exhaust, by amine-based solvents, which would be pumped to a regeneration unit that would heat the solvents and free the CO2 again, in a pure form. Then it would be condensed and pumped to natural caverns deep underground.
  • For now the project is still in the design and engineering phase, together with financial analysis. Equipment at the site has been used to test the process; now the results are being analyzed. If the pieces fall into place and the project gets a green light from regulators and company officials, construction could get started as early as next year.
  • “This carbon sequestration project really gets us excited,” he said. “It gives coal a role in stabilizing the grid.” He added: “If there are better solutions than coal out there, so be it. We just believe those solutions don’t exist.”
  • Destiny Wolf, 39, an upbeat advocate for electric vehicles, also feels the stigma of driving a Tesla — in her case a Model 3.Oil workers, Wolf said, see electric vehicles as an attack on their livelihoods. “You know, sitting there at a red light, they drive up, roll down their windows, they start yelling and cursing at me,” she said. “If that’s your existence, it’s really sad.”
  • Her attitude about the coal-powered electricity she uses in her car is that it’s not great, it’s probably on the way out, it’s better than using gasoline.“Gas is a continuous circle of energy wastage,” she said. “You have to use energy to extract it, you have to use energy to transport it, you have to use energy to refine it, you have to use energy to transport it back.
  • Kathy Neset moved to the Bakken with a degree in geology from Brown University in 1979 and built a successful oil-field consulting company on the vast, windswept jumble of low hills and ridges, once good only for cattle raising. She understands perfectly well that electric cars are coming, yet she has faith that new uses for petroleum will keep the oil sector in business.
  • “Do we blow away like tumbleweeds? Or do we evolve?” she said in an interview at her gleaming office building in Tioga, N.D. “This is an industry that has a history of adopting, evolving and changing with the nation. I don’t see oil going away in any of our lifetimes. It’s our way of life. Where we lose out on transportation we will gain on new technologies.”
  • There are warning signs, nonetheless. Even though the price of oil has bounced back after the disastrous months when the pandemic struck last year, and production at existing wells is humming along, there’s little new drilling in the Bakken. The number of rigs has fallen from 55 in early 2020 to 23 today.
  • Neset said she believes that investment firms, especially those that have signed on to corporate governance protocols that embrace environmental and social goals, “just don’t want to put their capital into new drilling until we figure out a way to handle this in a clean way.”
  • So the oil sector, too, is putting its chips on carbon capture.
  • Charles Gorecki, CEO of an incubator at the University of North Dakota called the Energy and Environmental Research Center, is promoting a plan similar to the coal industry’s Project Tundra. But it would go further — he envisions the injection of carbon dioxide into deep caverns as a way of enhancing the extraction of more oil. More carbon would go into the ground than would come out of it as petroleum, he said. North Dakota could even import carbon dioxide from other states.
  • “There is an enormous amount of space to store CO2,” he said. “What we need to do is make it an economically attractive option. The goal is to reduce carbon emissions. It should be by any and all means.”
  • A new state body called the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority is charged with promoting clean-energy technologies — with the understanding that the energy being talked about is from coal, oil or natural gas. Carbon capture is one idea; another is hydrogen-powered vehicles, using “blue” hydrogen from natural gas.
  • “Even if we transition to all electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles, North Dakota will have a part to play,” said Joel Brown, a member of the CSEA. “I think of it as a moonshot for the state of North Dakota.”
  • In the history of the Bakken, 3 billion barrels of oil have been pumped out. Brown said 30 billion to 40 billion more barrels is still in the ground and recoverable.
  • “We have to make that Bakken barrel just a little bit cleaner than every other barrel in the world,” said Ron Ness, head of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a trade group. “You look at the standard American family and the affordability of the combustion engine, and I think gasoline is going to be around for a long time.”
  • North Dakota went from being the 10th-largest oil-producing state in 2005 to the second in 2015.
  • Watford City is in McKenzie County, which between 2010 and 2019 was the fastest-growing county in the United States, according to census figures. In the late 1990s, said Steve Holen, the school superintendent, people thought the county would soon have nothing but bison and nursing homes. Oil changed all that, and residents are reluctant to let that go.
  • “In rural America there is very little you can do without that [oil],” Ness said. “We just don’t have opportunities here. It enables us to build schools, rather than close schools.”
  • Consequently, there’s a widespread conviction in the Bakken that electric vehicles will never amount to much. “It’s a cultural challenge,” said Neset. “I’m not sure how many of these cowboys and cowgirls are going to want to jump in an electric car.”
  • A question about EVs that was put to a Bakken Facebook group elicited scathing, vulgar responses. “Let the retirees living in Florida, Arizona and California buy them. I am from North Dakota, give me a gas guzzling ‘truck,’” wrote one.
  • “Anyone that supports electric over gas and works in the Bakken is a hypocrite. Your job revolves around oil. No oil = No job for most. Easiest math I have ever done,” wrote another.
  • “Never, ever, ever,” wrote a third.But there are signs this hostility to electric is cracking.
katyshannon

South Dakota Could Pass 'Bathroom Bill' Affecting Transgender Students | TIME - 0 views

time.com/...athroom-bill-religious-freedom

south dakota pass bathroom bill transgender students lgbt rights discrimination US politics crisis culture

shared by katyshannon on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • South Dakota is on the cusp of becoming the first state in the nation to require public school students to use facilities like bathrooms based on their “chromosomes and anatomy” at birth.
  • The so-called “bathroom bill,” which passed the state House in early February and is being debated by the state Senate Tuesday, marks a revival of the charged fights that played out in states across the country in 2015.
  • At least five other states have considered similar “bathroom bills” this session, and scores of other measures that LGBT rights advocates consider discriminatory are pending in legislatures around the U.S.
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  • Among them are variations on a proposal that exploded in Indiana last year, when controversy over a so-called religious freedom law became a flashpoint in the ongoing debate over religious belief and legal equality. The Hoosier State’s measure led to an estimated $60 million in lost revenue, and after weeks of economic and political pressure, Indiana Governor Mike Pence approved revisions to the law clarifying that businesses couldn’t use it to turn away LGBT patrons.
  • To many supporters, these bills are necessary to protect deeply held religious beliefs and are worth the controversy and lost revenue. To critics, however, the measures seemed aimed at allowing people to treat LGBT citizens differently, based on moral opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism, and serve as a reminder that the lessons of the Indiana fight were fleeting.
  • The fight in South Dakota echoes earlier clashes over gender identity and bathroom use of transgender people. The sponsor of the South Dakota bathroom measure, state Rep. Fred Deutsch, has argued in committee testimony that it is necessary to protect the “bodily privacy rights” of “biologic boys and girls” and that transgender students should be offered alternate accommodations if they do not wish to use the facilities that correspond to their sex assigned at birth.
  • The fight has played out at the state level largely because there is no federal law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The Equality Act, a federal bill that would create such protections, is unlikely to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Congress.
  • Rebecca Dodds, the mother of a transgender son who recently graduated from high school in the state’s famed Black Hills, said compelling students to use a separate facility could force them to out themselves to their peers, which could lead to harassment or violence.
  • Though the bill does not specify what those accommodations would be, schools that have dealt with conflicts over bathroom use have often instructed transgender students to use staff or nurse facilities, or facilities in buildings separate from their peers. The Department of Justice has issued several rulings and opinions that say such treatment of transgender students amounts to sex discrimination under Title IX, though federal courts are still weighing the issue.
  • It extends protections for people with three moral beliefs that are laid out in the bill’s text: (1) Marriage is or should only be recognized as the union of one man and one woman (2) Sexual relations are properly reserved to marriage (3) The terms male or man and female or woman refer to distinct and immutable biological sexes that are determined by anatomy and genetics by the time of birth.
  • While critics worry about such bills being used to turn away LGBT people from housing, jobs or businesses, they also worry it could open the door to a broader insertion of personal morality in the public sphere. A pharmacist might, for instance, refuse to fill a birth control prescription for an unmarried woman or a child care agency might refuse to look after a boy or girl with gay parents, without risk of losing their state licenses.
  • Speaking in support of the bathroom bill, a representative from South Dakota Citizens for Liberty said the measure offers a good compromise: “It allows for the sensitive accommodation of students who are experiencing personal trials,” Florence Thompson testified at a hearing of the Senate education committee on Feb. 11. “And does so without giving preferential treatment to a tiny segment of the student population at the expense of the privacy rights of the vast majority.”
  • Meanwhile, the majority of states lack LGBT non-discrimination laws, although a bill in Pennsylvania will likely add sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s non-discrimination protections.
  • In Georgia, where lawmakers are considering at least four religious freedom bills, a group of businesses—including Coca-Cola, AT&T and Delta—has formed to promote “inclusive” policies, explicitly mentioning sexual orientation and gender identity as qualities that should be respected.
  • In South Dakota, dollars and cents may determine whether the bathroom bill passes too, with the ACLU arguing that the passage of such a law would put the state in direct conflict with federal policy—and therefore all but guarantee costly litigation for school districts that are forced to choose to follow one or the other. Failing to comply with guidance from the Department of Education, which has said that students’ gender identities must be respected, could run the risk of costing local districts hundreds of millions in federal funds.
  • Yet supporters like Deutsch say that the guidance coming from the federal government is the reason such bills are needed, so that South Dakota won’t be pressured into providing facility access for transgender students that is not yet explicitly laid out in federal law.
fischerry

Trump Signs Orders Advancing Keystone, Dakota Access Pipelines - NBC News - 0 views

www.nbcnews.com/...akota-access-pipelines-n711321

trump news environment

shared by fischerry on 25 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Trump Signs Orders Advancing Keystone, Dakota Access Pipelines
  • President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders Tuesday to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
  • Trump signed a total of five orders regarding environmental issues in the Oval Office, including a pair addressing the pipeline projects as well as actions to expedite environmental reviews for high priority projects.
martinelligi

South Dakota Governor Says She Will Sign Bill Restricting Trans Kids' Rights : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...gender-girls-from-sports-teams

Politics policy discrimination

shared by martinelligi on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Monday, the South Dakota state Senate passed a bill that restricts transgender women athletes from competing on high school and college girls' and women's teams. The measure now goes to Republican Gov. Kristi Noem who has said she is excited to sign the bill into law.
  • The legislation requires that schools and athletic associations collect written waivers documenting every student athlete's "reproductive biology." There are roughly 40,000 students who compete in sports in the state and critics say the bill violates Title 7 and Title 9 of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating based on sex.
  • South Dakota is one of more than 20 states this year that has considered legislative measures along these lines, including Mississippi where lawmakers have already passed an identical bill banning transgender women from participating in girls' and women's sports teams.
abbykleman

Trump supports Dakota pipeline - but claims it's not due to his investment in it - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...ss-pipeline-support-investment

shared by abbykleman on 03 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 03 Dec 16
     
    Donald Trump has said that he supports a controversial oil pipeline that runs next to a Native American reservation in North Dakota - a project that the president-elect is personally invested in.
mattrenz16

Biden's Fossil Fuel Moves Clash With Pledges on Climate Change - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ssil-fules-climate-Willow.html

shared by mattrenz16 on 02 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • On Wednesday, the Biden administration defended in federal court the Willow project, a huge oil drilling operation proposed on Alaska’s North Slope that was approved by the Trump administration and is being fought by environmentalists. Weeks earlier, it backed former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to grant oil and gas leases on federal land in Wyoming. Also this month, it declined to act when it had an opportunity to stop crude oil from continuing to flow through the bitterly contested, 2,700-mile Dakota Access pipeline, which lacks a federal permit.
  • The three decisions suggest the jagged road that Mr. Biden is following as he tries to balance his climate agenda against practical and political pressures.
  • As important, Mr. Biden is trying to avoid alienating a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states who will decide the fate of his legislative agenda in Congress. Among them is Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska for whom the Willow project is a top priority and who grilled Deb Haaland about it during Ms. Haaland’s confirmation hearing for interior secretary in February.Editors’ PicksSummertime … and the Sloganeering Is a Little AwkwardThe Murky World of Private Spies and the Damage They May Be DoingThey’ve Given $6 Million to the Arts. No One Knew Them, Until Now.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story
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  • The multibillion-dollar plan from ConocoPhillips to drill in part of the National Petroleum Reserve would produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day until 2050. It is being challenged by environmental groups who said the Trump administration failed to consider the impact that drilling would have on fragile wildlife and that burning the oil would have on global warming.
  • Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, said in an interview that he, Ms. Murkowski and Representative Don Young of Alaska had all met with Ms. Haaland “ad nauseam” about Alaska issues, including the Willow project. Mr. Sullivan said he had repeatedly made the case that Willow’s projected 2,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in revenues should be seen as part of the Biden administration’s focus on environmental equity, as it would directly benefit local and Alaska Native communities in the North Slope.
  • The decision on the Willow project was made as the Biden administration is trying to win Republican support for its infrastructure package and other policies, said Gerald Torres, a professor of law and environmental justice at Yale University. “He is going to need Murkowski’s vote for some things,” he said. “These are political calculations.”
  • Earlier this month, lawyers for the Biden administration also opposed in court shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline, which is carrying about 550,000 barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other activists have fought it for more than five years, contending the pipeline threatens water supplies and sacred sites.
  • A few days later, the Biden administration defended 440 oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration on federal land in Wyoming that is also the critical habitat of the sage grouse, mule deer and pronghorn. Environmentalists successfully sued the government to stop the leases, arguing that they violated a 2015 agreement that protected that land. But in federal appeals court, the Biden administration defended the decision to allow oil and gas drilling.
  • Environmental activists, who campaigned to elect Mr. Biden, said this week that they were “baffled” and “disappointed” by the decisions but avoided criticizing the president.
  • Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Biden’s climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut fossil fuel emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet.
  • Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Biden’s climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut fossil fuel emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet.
  • This month the world’s leading energy agency warned that governments around the globe must stop approving fossil fuel projects now if they want to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will experience irreversible damage.
mattrenz16

Biden Suspends Drilling Leases in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-national-wildlife-refuge.html

shared by mattrenz16 on 01 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, unspooling a signature achievement of the Trump presidency and delivering on a promise by President Biden to protect the fragile Alaskan tundra from fossil fuel extraction.
  • The decision sets up a process that could halt drilling in one of the largest tracts of untouched wilderness in the United States, home to migrating waterfowl, caribou and polar bears. But it also lies over as much as 11 billion barrels of oil and Democrats and Republicans have fought over whether to allow drilling there for more than four decades.
  • While the move follows President Biden’s Inauguration Day executive order to halt new Arctic drilling, it also serves as a high-profile way for the president to solidify his environmental credentials after coming under fire from activists angered by his recent quiet support for some fossil fuel projects.
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  • Environmentalists have criticized moves by the White House last month to legally defend a major drilling project elsewhere in Alaska, to pass on an opportunity to block the contentious Dakota Access oil pipeline, and to support a Trump-era decision to grant oil and gas leases on public land in Wyoming.
  • Last month, the world’s leading energy agency warned that governments around the globe must stop approving fossil fuel projects now if they want to prevent the pollution they produce from driving average global temperatures above 2 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will experience irreversible damage.
  • Experts observed that the timing of the announcement to suspend the drilling leases in the refuge, coming on the heels of the fossil-fuel friendly actions by the administration, could be designed to appease Mr. Biden’s environmental critics.
  • Still, the suspension of the leases alone does not guarantee that drilling will be blocked in the Arctic refuge. The administration has only committed to reviewing the Trump leases, not canceling them. If it determines that the leases were granted illegally, it could then have legal grounds to cancel them.
  • Policy experts also noted that any moves by Mr. Biden to block Arctic drilling could be undone by a future administration.
  • Environmental groups applauded the move but called for a permanent ban on Arctic drilling.
  • Also last month, Mr. Biden opposed in court shutting down the bitterly-contested Dakota Access pipeline, which is carrying about 550,000 barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. It also could have decided to halt the pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new court-ordered environmental review, but it opted not to intervene.
Javier E

How the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have spread coronavirus across the Upper Midwest -... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...sturgis-rally-spread

motorcycle rally pandemic response crisis infection

shared by Javier E on 18 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • "Holding a half-million-person rally in the midst of a pandemic is emblematic of a nation as a whole that maybe isn’t taking [the novel coronavirus] as seriously as we should.”
  • It’s not just that Sturgis went on after the pandemic sidelined most everything else. It also drew people from across the country, all of them converging on one region, packing the small city’s Main Street and the bars and restaurants along it.
  • State health officials, who linked 125 cases to Sturgis, have not tied the surge to the rally, however. They note it overlapped with school openings and end-of-summer restlessness.
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  • In interviews with The Post, several rally attendees said they didn’t deny the threat of the coronavirus but also didn’t believe they needed to stay home indefinitely. Some noted that they take risks each time they get on their bikes. A number said they wore masks or made other minor concessions but were determined to go on with their lives.
  • “This motorcycle rally was and is such a big thing that people come from miles and miles away and they come from right next door. And it’s not reported anywhere who they are, where they live,” said Benjamin Aaker, president of the South Dakota State Medical Association.
  • But other countries offer examples of more robust and coordinated contact-tracing efforts, Michaud said. Japan uses what’s called retrospective contact tracing — working backward to determine where a person was infected and who else may have gotten the virus there, he said. It’s particularly effective in dealing with the coronavirus, which is often transmitted by a small number of people infecting many others in clusters.
  • It was “fairly obvious” that a gathering the size of the motorcycle rally represented a risk, Michaud said — and more rigorous contact tracing could have revealed the actual impact. It might also have prevented some of the secondary and tertiary spread.
  • And in contrast with participants in the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, many Sturgis attendees spent time clustered indoors at bars, restaurants and tattoo parlors, where experts say the virus is most likely to spread, especially among those without masks.
  • “Anytime you’re bringing individuals together, you’re going to have times where you’re having covid-19 transmission,” state epidemiologist Joshua Clayton said last month. “That’s a risk whether you’re in South Dakota, or in other states.
  • Noem, the governor, attributed the rise in cases to increases in testing, echoing President Trump’s explanation of growing U.S. infections. “That’s normal, that’s natural, that’s expected,” she told the Associated Press. She did not explain how extra testing could have accounted for the rise in hospitalizations in the state, which hit record highs in October.
  • Balcom, whose case was mild, cried in the car, relieved he was coming home. She never said “I told you so,” or got angry with him. She was upset, though, when she found out Cervantes’s case wasn’t included in covid-19 tallies linked to Sturgis.“If we had an accurate representation of what’s going on, then people might say, ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to go to the concert or go to the gathering,'" she said. “Everyone is just muddling through this because no one knows what the hell is going on.”
  • Cervantes now looks at things differently. Watching football, he worried how many of the thousands of fans admitted to a recent Kansas City Chiefs game might become infected, even as he noticed they sat apart. He once put on a mask to humor Balcom; now he says he has to resist the urge to yell at strangers to wear them.
  • After weeks of missed work, his stint in the hospital and a return visit to the ER over a blood clot concern, he’s come to deeply regret his decision.
  • “I was naive,” he said. “I was dumb, you know? I shouldn’t have went. I did; I can’t change that, so I just got to move forward. But sitting here just the past few days, that’s all I keep thinking about. I’m like, Jesus, look at the hell I’m going through, the hell I put everybody through. It ain’t worth it. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”
Javier E

South Dakota nurse Jodi Doering says dying patients deny coronavirus is real - The Wash... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...kota-nurse-coronavirus-deniers

cognitive dissonance pandemic epistemic denial nurse dying patients

shared by Javier E on 18 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be... Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.” pic.twitter.com/tgUgP6znAT— New Day (@NewDay) November 16, 2020
abbykleman

As North Dakota Pipeline Is Blocked, Veterans at Standing Rock Cheer - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...orth-dakota-standing-rock.html

shared by abbykleman on 06 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • abbykleman on 06 Dec 16
     
    FORT YATES, N.D. - After four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, after being hit by a roadside bomb and losing two friends to explosions, Jason Brocar floated from job to job, earning enough to pay for long solo hikes where his only worries were what he would eat and where he would sleep.
Javier E

Slacktivism for everyone: How keyboard activism is affecting social movements - Salon.com - 1 views

www.salon.com/...cting-social-movements_partner

activism flash activism online campaign movement politics

shared by Javier E on 25 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Social movement scholars have known for decades that most people, even if they agree with an idea, don’t take action to support it. For most people upset by a policy decision or a disturbing news event, the default is not to protest in the streets, but rather to watch others as they do. Getting to the point where someone acts as part of a group is a milestone in itself.
  • Decades of research show that people will be more willing to engage in activism that is easy, and less costly – emotionally, physically, or financially. For example, more than a million people used social media to “check in” at the Standing Rock Reservation, center of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Far fewer people – just a few thousand – have traveled to the North Dakota camps to brave the arriving winter weather and risk arrest.
  • Once people are primed to act, it’s important not to discourage them from taking that step, however small. Preliminary findings from my team’s current research suggest that people just beginning to explore activism can be disheartened by bring criticized for doing something wrong.
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  • Shaming them for making “small change” is a way to reduce numbers of protesters, not to increase them. Shaming can also create a legacy of political inactivity: Turning kids off from involvement now could encourage decades of disengagement.
  • “Flash activism,” the label I prefer for online protest forms such as online petition, can be effective at influencing targets in specific circumstances
  • Numbers matter. Whether you are a high school coach, Bank of America, the Obama administration or a local council member, an overwhelming flood of signatures, emails and phone calls can be quite persuasive
  • Online protest is easy, nearly cost-free in democratic nations, and can help drive positive social change. In addition, flash activism can help build stronger movements in the future. If current activists view online support as an asset, rather than with resentment because it is different from “traditional” methods, they can mobilize vast numbers of people.
  • People who participate in one online action may join future efforts, or even broaden their involvement in activism. For example, kids who engage in politics online often do other political activities as well.
  • Critics often worry that valuing flash activism will “water down” the meaning of activism. But that misses the point and is counterproductive. The goal of activism is social change, not nostalgia or activism for activism’s sake. Most people who participate in flash activism would not have done more – rather, they would have done nothing at all.
  • Scholars and advocates alike should stop asking if flash activism matters. We should also stop assuming that offline protest always succeeds. Instead, we should seek out the best ways to achieve specific goals. Sometimes the answer will be an online petition, sometimes it will be civil disobedience and sometimes it will be both – or something else entirely.
  • The real key for grassroots social change is to engage as many people as possible. That will require flexibility on how engagement occurs. If people want larger and more effective social movements, they should be working to find ways to include everyone who will do anything, not upholding an artificial standard of who is a “real activist” and who is not.
marleymorton

Iowa oil spill underscores pipeline risks day after Trump revives major projects - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...eystone-dakota-access-pipeline

politics US

shared by marleymorton on 26 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • marleymorton on 26 Jan 17
     
    Just a day after Donald Trump signed executive orders to revive the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects, a pipeline rupture spilled 138,600 gallons of diesel fuel in northern Iowa.
cjlee29

Donald Trump's Energy Plan: More Fossil Fuels and Fewer Rules - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...bal-warming-energy-policy.html

shared by cjlee29 on 27 May 16 - No Cached
  • Laying out his positions on energy and the environment at an oil industry conference in North Dakota, he vowed to rescind President Obama’s signature climate change rules and revive construction of the Keystone XL
  • It was the latest in a series of recent policy addresses, including on Israel and foreign policy, intended to position Mr. Trump, the real estate mogul and reality show star, as credible on substantive issues now that he is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
  • skeptical of Mr. Trump’s command of the complexities of the global energy economy.
  • ...17 more annotations...
  • don’t seem to appreciate the complex forces that drive the energy system,
  • A central question confronting the next president will be how to address climate change.
  • denied the established science that climate change is caused by humans,
  • Mr. Trump said that in his first 100 days in office, he would “rescind” Environmental Protection Agency regulations established under Mr. Obama to curb planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants.
  • will not have the legal authority to unilaterally rescind the climate rules
  • justices, rather than the president, will determine its fate.
  • agreement gives foreign bureaucrats control over how much energy we use on our land
  • No government has control over the emissions-reduction plans of other governments.
  • any country wishing to withdraw would have to wait four years to do so.
  • But there would be no legal consequence if the United States, the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas polluter
  • “stop all payment of U.S. tax dollars to global warming programs.”
  • And as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton pledged that rich countries, including the United States, would commit $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries adapt to the ravages of global warming.
  • “We’re going to bring back the coal industry, save the coal industry,” he said. “I love those people.”
  • Mr. Trump also repeatedly emphasized “energy independence” — the idea that the United States could isolate itself from global oil markets and cease importing fuels.
  • “I’m hoping he’s going to support the oil industry, open up some new plays — in Pennsylvania, maybe — keep Texas going and help out in North Dakota,”
  • “I want to see what his stance is on oil fracking, oil renewables and coal,
  • “I would like to see coal be part of the energy mix.”
draneka

Keystone pipeline won't have to use American steel, despite Trump's repeated promises -... - 0 views

abcnews.go.com/...story

trump

shared by draneka on 04 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Trump promised nearly 30,000 jobs as a result of the construction of the Keystone Pipeline while signing the memorandum for that project. He also signed a memorandum on the Dakota Access Pipeline and announced that construction of both pipelines would be "subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us."
  • "This is with regard to the construction of the Keystone Pipeline, something that's been in dispute ... We'll see if we can get that pipeline built," Trump said. "A lot of jobs, 28,000 jobs. Great construction jobs."
  • “Yes, the actual operating jobs are about 50," he said. "But that doesn't include all the other jobs that come with it."
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: Portrait of the President As a Con Man - 0 views

nymag.com/...he-president-as-a-con-man.html

immigration Catholic sexual abuse trump con game history

shared by Javier E on 29 Jul 18 - No Cached
  • One of the talking points for some who support continued mass immigration is the notion that the places where immigration is least popular are the places with the fewest number of immigrants. That’s how irrational xenophobia is, they suggest
  • the Migration Policy Institute complicates the picture a bit. While it finds that the number of immigrants increased by 9 percent between 2010 and 2016, it also notes that it had risen by 15 percent or more in 15 states. And among those states, most are red ones: North Dakota, West Virginia, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Alaska, Indiana, and Iowa among them.
  • , the total numbers are nowhere near where they are in, say, California, but the pace of change really has increased in those states where opposition — especially to immigrants who entered the country illegally — is high. I don’t find this surprising.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • One other small thing to note: More than a fifth of Americans, according to this survey, now speak a language other than English at home. In Nevada and Florida, nearly a third of residents don’t speak English at home.
  • very few previous waves of immigrants have been so homogeneous for as long as the Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and Central America currently are; their numbers are higher than any other previous wave; and few have been so thoroughly dispersed.
  • the sheer scale of the cultural transformation of the last couple of decades — the CDC predicts that close to a quarter of Americans will be Hispanic by 2035 — is undeniable.
  • If you ignore that, or insist that worrying about too fast a pace of cultural change is inherently racist, it’s relatively easy to insist that there is no immigration crisis
  • if you believe that nations require some continuity and cultural unity to cohere and endure, then the picture is somewhat different. There is a reason this issue has become so prominent in this country. And it isn’t entirely bigotry.
malonema1

New alarm among Republicans that Democrats could win big this year - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...7-beb6-c8d48830c54d_story.html

US politics

shared by malonema1 on 15 Jan 18 - No Cached
  • A raft of retirements, difficulty recruiting candidates and President Trump’s continuing pattern of throwing his party off message have prompted new alarm among Republicans that they could be facing a Democratic electoral wave in November.
  • But the trends have continued, and perhaps worsened, since that briefing, with two more prominent Republican House members announcing plans to retire from vulnerable seats and a would-be recruit begging off a Senate challenge to Democrat Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota despite pressure from Trump to run.
  • In the Camp David presentation, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) described scenarios to the president ranging from a bloodbath where Republicans lost the House “and lost it big,” in the words of one official, to an outcome in which they keep control while losing some seats. McCarthy outlined trends over recent decades for parties in power and spotlighted vulnerable Republican seats where Hillary Clinton won in 2016. Eight years ago, before the 2010 midterms swept the GOP to power, he had drafted a similar presentation with the opposite message for his party. Republicans hold the advantage of a historically favorable electoral map, with more House seats than ever benefiting from Republican-friendly redistricting and a Senate landscape that puts 26 Democratic seats in play, including 10 states that Trump won in 2016, and only eight Republican seats.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • At least 29 House seats held by Republicans will be open in November following announced retirements, a greater number for the majority party than in each of the past three midterm elections when control of Congress flipped.
  • Who knows what 2018 will be like? Nobody called 2016, right?” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the second-ranking Republican in that chamber. “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was going to get elected and that Chuck Schumer was going to be the majority leader. And none of that turned out to be true.”
  • In private conversations, Trump has told advisers that he doesn’t think the 2018 election has to be as bad as others are predicting. He has referenced the 2002 midterms, when George W. Bush and Republicans fared better after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, these people said.
  • Trump continually reminds advisers that he remains popular in a number of states, including West Virginia, Montana and North Dakota, according to aides. But slow fundraising and anemic candidate recruitment have caused tensions between the White House and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, White House advisers said. Still, two people with direct knowledge of that relationship said it has improved considerably in recent months. One person said “there is an active effort to professionalize the operation,” and “coordination has improved.”
  • White House officials said they expect a full plunge in upcoming weeks into a special House race in Pennsylvania, with trips from Trump, Vice President Pence and Cabinet members. The race has taken on a larger-than-life role in the White House because officials want to stem the tide of the losses they suffered last year in Virginia and Alabama.
  • But maintaining that message can be a challenge, as the president showed this week when his vulgar comments about some developing countries sparked international outrage. Dave Hansen, a political adviser to Love, the Utah congresswoman, said such conflicts are unavoidable during the Trump presidency. “It’s certainly not like running with Ronald Reagan, that’s for sure,” Hansen said. “What a candidate has to do in a situation like this is, you can’t be all in for the guy. Basically, you support him when you think he’s right and oppose him when you think he’s wrong.”
brookegoodman

Coronavirus map of the US: latest cases state by state | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...us-latest-cases-state-by-state

us crisis

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • The number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 continues to grow in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, is overseeing the US response to the coronavirus.
  • Confirmed cases 85,919 (Today: +2,083) Deaths 1,297 (Today: +88)
  • State/territory Confirmed cases Deaths New York 39,140 461 New Jersey 6,876 81 California 4,040 82 Washington 3,207 150 Michigan 2,844 61 Illinois 2,542 26 Florida 2,484 29 Massachusetts 2,417 25 Louisiana 2,304 83 Pennsylvania 1,813 18 Texas 1,658 24 Georgia 1,642 56 Colorado 1,430 19 Tennessee 1,097 3 Connecticut 1,012 21 Ohio 870 15 North Carolina 755 3 Wisconsin 728 10 Indiana 657 17 Maryland 583 4 Nevada 536 10 Alabama 531 1 Missouri 520 9 Arizona 508 8 Mississippi 485 6 Virginia 468 10 South Carolina 456 9 Utah 396 1 Arkansas 349 2 Minnesota 344 2 Oregon 317 11 District of Columbia 267 3 Oklahoma 248 7 Kentucky 247 5 Idaho 191 3 Iowa 179 1 Kansas 172 3 Rhode Island 165 0 Vermont 158 9 Maine 155 0 New Hampshire 154 1 Delaware 143 1 New Mexico 136 1 Hawaii 106 0 Montana 90 1 Nebraska 82 0 West Virginia 76 0 Puerto Rico 64 2 North Dakota 57 0 Alaska 56 1 Wyoming 56 0 South Dakota 46 1 Guam 45 1 Virgin Islands 17 0
brookegoodman

A state-by-state breakdown of US coronavirus cases - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

crisis us

shared by brookegoodman on 27 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • (CNN)The first US case of the coronavirus was reported January 21 -- a Washington state man who had recently returned from China. Now, the country has at least 82,250 cases across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.
  • Alabama: 531 (including one death)Alaska: 69 (including one death)Arizona: 508 (including eight deaths) Arkansas: 349 (including three deaths)California: 3,006 (including 65 deaths)Colorado: 1,430 (including 24 deaths)Connecticut: 1,012 (including 21 deaths)Delaware: 143 (including one death)District of Columbia: 267 (including three deaths)Florida: 2,353 (including 28 deaths)Georgia: 1,643 (including 56 deaths)Guam: 45 (including one death)Hawaii: 106 Idaho: 189 (including three deaths)Illinois: 2,538 (including 26 deaths)Indiana: 645 (including 17 deaths)Iowa: 179 (including one death)Kansas: 168 (including three deaths)Kentucky: 248 (including five deaths)Louisiana: 2,305 (including 83 deaths)Maine: 155Maryland: 580 (including four deaths)Massachusetts: 2,417 (including 25 deaths)Michigan: 2,856 (including 60 deaths)Minnesota: 346 (including two deaths)Mississippi: 485 (including five deaths)Missouri: 502 (including eight deaths)Montana: 90Nebraska: 73Nevada: 535 (including 10 deaths)New Hampshire: 137 (including one death)New Jersey: 6,876 (including 81 deaths)New Mexico: 136 (including one death)New York: 37,258 (including 385 deaths)North Carolina: 636 (including two deaths)North Dakota: 52Ohio: 867 (including 15 deaths)Oklahoma: 248 (including seven deaths)Oregon: 316 (including 11 deaths)Pennsylvania: 1,687 (including 16 deaths)Puerto Rico: 64 (including two deaths)Rhode Island: 165South Carolina: 456 (including nine deaths)South Dakota: 46 (including one death)Tennessee: 957 (including three deaths)Texas: 1,424 (including 18 deaths)US Virgin Islands: 17Utah: 402 (including one death)Vermont: 158 (including nine deaths)Virginia: 460 (including 13 deaths)Washington: 3,207 (including 149 deaths)West Virginia: 76Wisconsin: 707 (including eight deaths)Wyoming: 55Repatriated cases: 70
  • CORRECTIONS: A previous version of this story included an incorrect number of cases for Florida. That number has been corrected. On March 14, CNN revised the US death count, taking it down by one after discovering a double count of one death. This article also has been updated with the correct number of deaths for Hawaii, and cases for Wisconsin, Alabama.
katherineharron

Primaries today: States voting, poll hours and how to follow coverage - CNNPolitics - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html

shared by katherineharron on 10 Mar 20 - No Cached
  • Primaries are being held in Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri and Washington, and the North Dakota Democratic caucuses are also taking place the same day.
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