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Javier E

New Measure of Climate's Toll: Disasters Are Now Common Across US - The New York Times - 0 views

  • a report released on Wednesday uses a different measure: Which parts of the country have suffered the greatest number of federally declared disasters?
  • That designation is reserved for disasters so severe, they overwhelm the ability of state and local officials to respond. The report finds that disasters like these have become alarmingly common.
  • From 2011 to the end of last year, 90 percent of U.S. counties have experienced a flood, hurricane, wildfire or other calamity serious enough to receive a federal disaster declaration, according to the report, and more than 700 counties suffered five or more such disasters.
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  • During that same period, 29 states had, on average, at least one federally declared disaster a year somewhere within their borders. Five states have experienced at least 20 disasters since 2011.
  • The numbers exclude disaster declarations related to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • “Climate change is here,”
  • “Every single taxpayer is paying for climate change.”
  • By focusing on federally declared disasters, the report is able to equalize those differences, offering something close to a true accounting of which places are most exposed to climate shocks they cannot cope with on their own.
  • At the top of that list are five counties that have each experienced, on average, more than a disaster a year since 2011. Those counties are concentrated in two areas: Southern Louisiana (where counties are called parishes) and eastern Kentucky.
  • “Heat has the highest mortality of all climate impacts, but their disaster declarations were so low,” Ms. Chester said. The reason: Federal disaster declarations focus on property damage more than direct human consequences like illness, injury or death.
  • Since 2011, California has received 25 federal disaster declarations, including for wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that resulted in $2.5 billion in federal money to rebuild public infrastructure. Mississippi and Oklahoma have each suffered 22 disasters. Iowa has had 21, mostly for severe storms and flooding
  • Not every type of disaster is associated with climate change. For example, it’s unclear whether there is a link between rising temperatures and earthquakes. But scientists have become increasingly convinced that a warming world is contributing to worsening floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other extreme weather events.
  • The data also shows the areas least exposed to unmanageable climate shocks, at least so far. States in the Midwest, including Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, are among those with the smallest number of federal disaster declarations, with an average of roughly one disaster every two years.
  • At the bottom of the list is Nevada, which has had just three federal disaster declarations since 2011. Next door, Arizona has had just six. Yet, Nevada and Arizona ranked highest for heat-related deaths from 2018 to 2021, according to the report
  • Louisiana outpaces the rest of the United States in another regard. Over the past decade, the state has received more federal disaster money per capita — $1,736 for each resident — than anywhere else in the nation, the report found. Only New York State comes close, at $1,348.
  • “By better understanding risk,” she said, “we can more effectively take action together to accelerate resilience and adaptation in our nation’s most at-risk and disadvantaged communities.”
  • To pay for that new spending, Rebuild by Design proposes, states should impose a 2 percent surcharge on insurance premiums.
  • Using an insurance surtax to pay for disasters is a strategy that is already in use, in a sense. As the report notes, Florida levies surcharges on private insurance policies to make up for shortfalls in its state-run insurance program — something that’s likely to happen in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
  • Rebuild by Design suggests reversing the chronology. Rather than taxing insurance payments to pay for disaster recovery, a state would come up with additional funds before a storm, then use that money to better prepare communities before a disaster strikes, perhaps making it unnecessary for the federal government to declare a disaster at all.
ecfruchtman

Early voting numbers show Clinton's strength in Arizona, other battlegrounds - 0 views

  •  
    More than 7.3 million Americans have already voted. Democrats have improved their positions in North Carolina, Nevada and Arizona compared to this point in 2012, according to a CNN analysis of the latest early voting statistics. Republicans, meanwhile, have good news in Iowa.
Megan Flanagan

Road to 270: CNN's general election map - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • both states appear to be snapping back to their traditional toss-up status
  • back in the "battleground" category
  • districts worth a total of 87 electoral votes.
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  • - Florida (29) moves from "lean Democratic" to "battleground"
  • Nevada (6) moves from "lean Democratic" to "battleground"
  • Florida's 29 electoral votes are the biggest prize on the map among competitive states and both campaigns plan to fight it out there all the way through November 8
  • Florida is also one of the handful of states where the Clinton campaign remains heavily on the air with campaign advertising and where it announced today that two closing argument ads will begin to be seen across the state
  • expected back in the Silver State
  • Trump continues to shore up his Republican support and improve his standing among Hispanics
  • Clinton at 272 electoral votes
  • 179 electoral votes from the states either solidly or leaning in his direction
  • 87 electoral votes currently up for grabs
rachelramirez

Jury acquits militia that occupied Oregon wildlife refuge - but the saga is far from over - VICE News - 0 views

  • Jury acquits militia that occupied Oregon wildlife refuge — but the saga is far from over
  • In a stunning conclusion to a five-week trial, a jury acquitted seven defendants who faced a slew of conspiracy and weapons charges related to their armed takeover of a wildlife refuge earlier this year.
  • U.S. marshals tackled the attorney for the group’s leader and used a Taser on him.
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  • Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who led a group of armed militia members as they occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Oregon in what they claimed was a protest against federal land management
  • The Bundy brothers, along with their father, Cliven, still face an array of felony charges in Nevada for another armed standoff with federal agents in 2014.
  • Mumford was reportedly taken into custody, cited for both failure to comply with a federal lawful order and disturbance, and released with orders to return to federal court in January.
  • the timing of the verdict with recent events in North Dakota, where Native American tribes have been protesting against the construction of an oil pipeline. Violence erupted on Thursday when riot police descended on the demonstration and tried to clear out the protesters, after hundreds of arrests a few days before. Others claimed the acquittals were proof of a double standard in the U.S. justice system that benefits white men like the Bundys
  • an FBI agent testified that the agency found 16,636 rounds of ammunition and nearly 1,700 spent shell casings, according to the Associated Press.
  • Ammon Bundy even compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. when he took the stand in his own defense.
  • Jurors for the case were pulled from across Oregon, which may have helped the Bundys since many parts of the state are rural, conservative, and distrustful of the federal government. One of the jurors was even dismissed for bias during deliberations
  • It’s exceedingly rare for federal prosecutors to lose one case during a trial, let alone seven at once.
  • But the fallout of Thursday’s not guilty verdict could have troubling implications for the rise of paramilitary groups in the United States.
  • militias operating along the U.S.–Mexico border, more than 275 such groups are believed to be operating in at least 41 states
cjlee29

Bernie Sanders Wins Oregon; Hillary Clinton Declares Victory in Kentucky - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Senator Bernie Sanders prevailed over Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in the Oregon primary
  • a state that she won easily in 2008
  • 1,900 votes
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  • less than half a percentage point
  • The close result meant that she and Mr. Sanders would effectively split the state’s delegates.
  • With a lead in delegates that is almost impossible for Mr. Sanders to overcome, Mrs. Clinton is moving closer each week to claiming the Democratic nomination.
  • Last weekend, bitter feelings from Mr. Sanders’s supporters spilled into view at Nevada’s state convention, which descended into chaos, prompted death threats against Nevada’s Democratic chairwoman and raised the prospect of discord at the national convention in July in Philadelphia.
  • With Mr. Sanders pressing on with his campaign and Mr. Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee, Mrs. Clinton has been campaigning against two opponents at once, trying to defeat Mr. Sanders in state after state while also building an argument against Mr. Trump.
  • where she warned about Mr. Trump while urging voters to support her on Tuesday.
  • she faulted Mr. Sanders for voting against the auto industry bailout, a claim that is not as clear-cut as she suggested it was.
  • He, too, looked toward the general election, arguing that he, not Mrs. Clinton, was the more formidable candidate to take on Mr. Trump, citing polls of hypothetical matchups.
  • “There are a lot of people out there, many of the pundits and politicians, they say, ‘Bernie Sanders should drop out. The people of California should not have the right to determine who the next president will be.’”
  • “We are in till the last ballot is cast.”
  • With her overwhelming support from superdelegates, the party leaders who can vote as they wish, Mrs. Clinton could clinch the nomination by June 7, when six states
  • California and New Jersey
  • based on his strength against Mr. Trump.
  • In this year’s campaign, Mr. Sanders has been embraced by white working-class voters and young people in many places
  • Kentucky is one of the nation’s biggest coal-mining states, and Mrs. Clinton stressed her commitment to coal miners.
Javier E

The Plight of the Overworked Nonprofit Employee - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Many nonprofit organizations stare down a shared set of challenges: In a 2013 report, the Urban Institute surveyed over 4,000 nonprofits of a wide range of types and sizes across the continental U.S. It found that all kinds of nonprofits struggled with delays in payment for contracts, difficulty securing funding for the full cost of their services, and other financial issues.
  • Recent years have been especially hard for many nonprofits. Most have annual budgets of less than $1 million, and those budgets took a big hit from the recession, when federal, municipal, and philanthropic funding dried up. On top of that, because so many nonprofits depend on government money, policy changes can cause funding priorities to change, which in turn can put nonprofits in a bind.
  • The pressure from funders to tighten budgets and cut costs can produce what researchers call the “nonprofit starvation cycle.” The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about the costs of running a nonprofit. In response, nonprofits try to spend less on overhead (like salaries) and under-report expenses to try to meet those unrealistic expectations. That response then reinforces the unrealistic expectations that began the cycle. In this light, it’s no surprise that so many nonprofits have come to rely on unpaid work.
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  • Strangely, though nonprofits are increasingly expected to perform like businesses, they do not get the same leeway in funding that government-contracted businesses do. They don’t have nearly the bargaining power of big corporations, or the ability to raise costs for their products and services, because of tight controls on grant funding. “D.C. is full of millionaires who contract with government in the defense field, and they make a killing, and yet if you’re a nonprofit, chances are you aren’t getting the full amount of funding to cover the cost of the services required,” Iliff said. “Can you imagine Lockheed Martin or Boeing putting up with a government contract that didn’t allow for overhead?”
  • When faced with dwindling funding, one response would be to cut a program or reduce the number of people an organization serves. But nonprofit leaders have shown themselves very reluctant to do that. Instead, many meet financial challenges by squeezing more work out of their staffs without a proportional increase in their pay:
  • “There is this feeling that the mission is so important that nothing should get in the way of it,”
  • These nonprofit employees are saying that their operations depend on large numbers of their lowest-paid staff working unpaid overtime hours. One way to get  to that point would be to face a series of choices between increased productivity on the one hand and reduced hours, increased pay, or more hiring on the other, and to choose more productivity every time. That some nonprofits have done this speaks to a culture that can put the needs of staff behind mission-driven ambitions.
  • In the 1970s, 62 percent of full-time, salaried workers qualified for mandatory overtime pay when they worked more than 40 hours in a week. Today, because the overtime rules have not had a major update since then (until this one), only 7 percent of workers are covered, whether they work in the nonprofit sector or elsewhere. In other words, U.S. organizations—nonprofit or otherwise—have been given the gift of a large pool of laborers who, as long as they clear a relatively low earnings threshold and do tasks that meet certain criteria, do not have to be paid overtime.
  • Unsurprisingly, many nonprofits have taken advantage of that pool of free work. (For-profit companies have too, but they also have the benefit of being more in control of their revenue streams.) B
  • nonprofits like PIRG, for example, have a tradition of forcing employees to work long, unpaid hours—especially their youngest staff. “There’s a culture that says, ‘Young people are paying their dues. It’s okay for them to be paid for fewer hours than they’re actually working because it’s in the effort of helping them grow up and contribute to something greater than they are,’” Boris says.
  • “Too often, I have seen the passion for social change turned into a weapon against the very people who do much—if not most—of the hard work, and put in most of the hours,” Hastings recently wrote on her blog. “Because they are highly motivated by passion, the reasoning goes, they don’t need to be motivated by decent salaries or sustainable work hours or overtime pay.”
  • A 2011 survey of more than 2,000 nonprofit employees by Opportunity Knocks, a human-resources organization that specializes in nonprofits, in partnership with Jessica Word, an associate professor of public administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, found that half of employees in the nonprofit sector may be burned out or in danger of burnout.
  • . “These are highly emotional and difficult jobs,” she said, adding, “These organizations often have very high rates of employee turnover, which results from a combination of burnout and low compensation.” Despite the dearth of research, Word’s findings don’t appear to be unusual: A more recent study of nonprofits in the U.S. and Canada found that turnover, one possible indicator of burnout, is higher in nonprofits than in the overall labor market.
  • for all their hours and emotional labor, nonprofit employees generally don’t make much money. A 2014 study by Third Sector New England, a resource center for nonprofits, found that 43 percent of nonprofit employees in New England were making less than $28,000 per year—far less than a living wage for families with children in most cities in the United States, and well below the national median income of between $40,000 and $50,000 per year.
  • Why would nonprofit workers be willing to stay in jobs where they are underpaid, or, in some cases, accept working conditions that violate the spirit of the labor laws that protect them? One plausible reason is that they are just as committed to the cause as their superiors
  • But it also might be that some nonprofits exploit gray areas in the law to cut costs. For instance, only workers who are labelled as managers are supposed to be exempt from overtime, but many employers stretch the definition of “manager” far beyond its original intent.
  • even regardless of these designations, the emotionally demanding work at many nonprofits is sometimes difficult to shoehorn into a tidy 40-hours-a-week schedule. Consider Elle Roberts, who was considered exempt from overtime restrictions and was told not to work more than 40 hours a week when, as a young college grad, she worked at a domestic-violence shelter in northwest Indiana. Doing everything from home visits to intake at the shelter, Roberts still ignored her employer’s dictates and regularly worked well more than 40 hours a week providing relief for women in crisis. Yet she was not paid for that extra time.
  • “The unspoken expectation is that you do whatever it takes to get whatever it is done for the people that you’re serving,” she says. “And anything less than that, you’re not quite doing enough.
sarahbalick

DEATH VALLEY: Three suspects ID'd in death of rare Devil's Hole pupfish (UPDATE) - Press Enterprise - 0 views

  • DEATH VALLEY: Three suspects ID'd in death of rare Devil's Hole pupfish (UPDATE)
  • It only lives in one spot – the 93-degree waters of Devil’s Hole, part of a detached unit of Death Valley National Park in Nye County, Nevada.
  • Three men on a drunken spree killed one of the Devil’s Hole pupfish late last month. The men left behind beer cans, vomit and boxer shorts, according to National Parks Service surveillance footage.
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  • On Monday, May 9, the Center for Biological Diversity tripled the reward to $15,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.Initially, the parks service had offered a $5,000 reward
  • Authorities released surveillance video Monday showing the men climbing a fence guarding Devils Hole on April 30. They fired at least 10 rounds from a shotgun, shooting the locks off of two gates, and left beer cans and vomit
  • “The last thing they need are these idiots running amok in the last place on Earth where they still survive,” she said.
Megan Flanagan

First on CNN: Democrats to spend millions across five states in fight for Senate majority - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • has quietly reserved nearly $40 million
  • effort to retake the majority and compete with a presidential campaign consuming much of the public's attention
  • privately hammering out an election-year strategy
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  • defend two of their own seats
  • $10 million in air time to target the state's open Senate seat in Florida
  • $10 million in Ohio
  • $8 million in the race to unseat GOP Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
  • Democrats believe that swing voters in purple states will end up voting for their candidates down-the-ticket and help them take back the Senate
  • $4 million in the race for the Nevada seat
  • air time will be reserved later in other states where there are major Senate races, like Illinois, but unlikely to be contested in a presidential race.
  • declined to comment.
  • 10 seats to defend compared to 24 for the Republicans.
  • $5 million to defend two seats -- Colorado
  • Katie McGinty, has benefited from $1.1 million in advertising by the committee
Javier E

The Electoral Wasteland - NYTimes.com - 1 views

  • the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large.
  • The nine states that have held caucuses or primaries to date are home to roughly 28 million total registered voters, of all political persuasions.
  • So far, three million voters have participated in the Republican races, less than the  population of Connecticut.  This means that 89 percent of all registered voters in those states have not participated in what is, from a horse-race perspective, a very tight contest
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  • Less than 1 percent of registered voters turned out for Maine’s caucus. In Nevada, where Republican turnout was down 25 percent from 2008, only 3 percent of total registered voters participated.
  • In Florida, the largest and most diverse state among the nine, turnout was down 14 percent from 2008. And 84 percent of the state’s total registered voters  did not participate in the Republican contest.
  • In the Palmetto State, 98 percent of primary voters were white, 72 percent were age 45 or older and nearly two-thirds were evangelical Christian, according to exit polls. From this picture, you may think South Carolina is an all-white, aging state, full of fervent churchgoers. But the Census says the state is only 66 percent white, with a median age of 36. Exit polls from 2008 put the evangelical vote at 40 percent of total.
  • Whites are 63.7 percent of the total population of the United States; in 1900, they were 88 percent — still more diverse than Republican primary voters today.
Javier E

Amazon same-day delivery: How the e-commerce giant will destroy local retail. - Slate Magazine - 0 views

  • Amazon’s tax capitulation is part of a major shift in the company’s operations. Amazon’s grand strategy has been to set up distribution centers in faraway, low-cost states and then ship stuff to people in more populous, high-cost states. When I order stuff from Amazon, for instance, it gets shipped to California from one of the company’s massive warehouses in Kentucky or Nevada.
  • now Amazon has a new game. Now that it has agreed to collect sales taxes, the company can legally set up warehouses right inside some of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation. Why would it want to do that? Because Amazon’s new goal is to get stuff to you immediately—as soon as a few hours after you hit Buy
  • Same-day delivery has long been the holy grail of Internet retailers, something that dozens of startups have tried and failed to accomplish. (Remember Kozmo.com?) But Amazon is investing billions to make next-day delivery standard, and same-day delivery an option for lots of customers. If it can pull that off, the company will permanently alter how we shop. To put it more bluntly: Physical retailers will be hosed.
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  • In Seattle, New York, and the United Kingdom, the firm has set up automated “lockers” in drug stores and convenience stores. If you order something from Amazon and you work near one of these lockers, the company will offer to drop off your item there. On your way home from work, you can just stop by Rite Aid, punch in a security code, and get your stuff.
  • I’m a frequent Amazon shopper, and over the last few months I’ve noticed a significant improvement in its shipping times. As a subscriber to Amazon’s Prime subscription service, I’m used to getting two-day shipping on most items for free. But on about a third of my purchases, my package arrives after just one day for no extra charge. Sometimes the service is so speedy it seems almost magical. One Friday afternoon last month, I ordered three smoke alarms, and I debated paying extra for shipping so that I could install them over the weekend. The $9 per item that Amazon charges for Saturday delivery seemed too steep, though, so I went with standard two-day service. The next morning, the delivery guy arrived with my smoke detectors. I’d gotten next-day Saturday service for free
  • I suspect that, over the next few years, next-day service will become its default shipping method on most of its items. Meanwhile it will offer same-day service as a cheap upgrade. For $5 extra, you can have that laptop waiting for you when you get home from work. Wouldn’t you take that deal?
  • Order something in the morning and get it later in the day, without doing anything else. Why would you ever shop anywhere else?
Javier E

Clovis People Probably Not Alone in North America - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “The colonization of the Americas involved multiple technologically divergent, and possibly genetically divergent, founding groups.”
  • Indeed, new genetic evidence described in the current issue of the journal Nature shows that the Americas appeared to be first populated by three waves of migrants from Siberia: one large migration about 15,000 years ago, followed by two lesser migrations. Such a pattern had been hypothesized 25 years ago on the basis of Native American language groups spoken today, but had not been widely accepted by linguistics scholars.
  • human DNA from the cave, extracted from coprolites, or dried feces, pointed to Siberian-East Asian origins of the people.
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  • The findings lend support to an emerging hypothesis that the Clovis technology, named for the town in New Mexico where the first specimens were discovered, actually arose in what is now the Southeastern United States and moved west to the Plains and the Southwest. The Western Stemmed technology began, perhaps earlier, in the West. Most artifacts of that kind have been found on the West Coast and in Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming. “We seem to have two different traditions coexisting in the United States that did not blend for a period of hundreds of years,” Dr. Jenkins said.
Javier E

Business - Derek Thompson - How Americans Lost Two Decades of Wealth, in 1 Graph - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The typical American family's net worth plunged by 40 percent between 2007 and 2010, from $126,400 to $77,300, wiping out two decades of gains and thrusting the typical family's wealth back to 1992 levels.
  • median household wealth popped in the bubble and collapsed in the bust, as housing prices fell by 30 to 40 percent in the worst-hit metros, in California, Nevada, and Florida. In 2007, barely half of families surveyed by the Federal Reserve reported savings. Just as the boom made families feel richer, the financial shock made families feel poorer. And so falling housing prices led to falling wealth, which led to falling spending, which led to falling private sector revenue, which led to massive job cuts, which dragged down housing prices even further, and around and around we go.
  • this is why stimulus-supporters support stimulus. A nation that controls its currency and has low borrowing costs has not only an obligation but also an easy opportunity to step into the vicious cycle and erect a firewall -- either with (a) massive spending, (b) tax cuts, (c) lower interest rates, (d) higher inflation expectations, or (e) all of the above
Javier E

A gong for anti-corruption campaigners: A witness to change | The Economist - 0 views

  • As Global Witness has tirelessly pointed out, much of the corruption is made possible (or at least easier) by anonymous shell companies, which are open to abuse by drug lords, sanctions-busters, kleptocrats and their cronies. Ms Gooch and her colleagues liken shells to getaway cars—for money launderers rather than bank robbers.
  • the source of the problem is often rich countries. Corporate secrecy is particularly strong in America. Registration agents aren’t even required to collect and hold ownership information in states like Delaware and Nevada. (Just today your reporter received an email containing evidence that a Delaware shell company implicated in large-scale cocaine trafficking last year is still registered in the state and in good standing.)
Javier E

House G.O.P. Sets New Offensive on Obama Goals - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • In the Senate, Republicans are circulating a letter to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, warning they will not approve any spending measure to keep the government operating after Sept. 30 if it devotes a penny to put in place Mr. Obama’s health care law. Signers so far include the No. 2 and No. 3 Republican senators, John Cornyn of Texas and John Thune of South Dakota, as well as one of the party’s rising stars, Marco Rubio of Florida.
  • Taken together, efforts in both chambers amount to some of the most serious cuts to domestic spending since the Republicans in 1995 tried to shutter the departments of Energy, Education and Commerce — and ended up shutting the government down for 28 days
  • Republicans are open about their intentions to target the president’s priorities. The House transportation and housing bill for fiscal 2014 cuts from $3.3 billion to $1.7 billion the financing for Community Development Block Grants, which go mainly to large cities and urban counties for housing and social programs, largely for the poor. That level is below the number secured by President Gerald R. Ford when he created the program — without adjusting for inflation.
James Flanagan

Right-wing groups hurt the GOP - 0 views

  • Club for Growth is one of the right-wing groups prone to backing losing, extreme candidates and cheering on silly stunts like the shutdown
  • Opensecrets.org lists the CFG for 2013 as spending $16,584,207 in the 2012 election cycle. Over $9M was spent against Republicans.
  • By pushing unprepared, true-believer candidates in 2010 and 2012 it helped throw away potential pickups in Nevada, Colorado and Texas Alaska while helping Dems win Indiana. That is four seats Republicans don’t have (they need six now to win back the majority). I doubt there is a single Democratic group as effective in undermining GOP attempts to gain the Senate majority.
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  • This is only one example of the dysfunction on the right that winds up playing into the Dems hands. With CFG, Madison Project and Senate Conservatives Fund to do its work both in savaging good GOP candidates and boosting flaky ones, Democrats can focus their funds on hard-to-win swing states and even some long-shot races.
gaglianoj

BBC News - Rifle from 1882 found leaning on tree in Nevada park - 0 views

  • It is unclear exactly how long the Winchester rifle had been left there, but it was long enough to leave the stock cracked and buried in dirt.
  • "But it probably is a story that could have happened to almost anyone living this sort of extraordinary existence out here in the Great Basin Desert".
  • The gun will be preserved in its current state and put on display at the park.
katyshannon

Armed group takes over Oregon wildlife refuge building - CNN.com - 0 views

  • Armed anti-government protesters have taken over a building in a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon, accusing officials of unfairly punishing ranchers who refused to sell their land.
  • One of them is Ammon Bundy, the 40-year-old son of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who is well-known for anti-government action.
  • Asked several times what he and those with him want, he answered in vague terms, saying that they want the federal government to restore the "people's constitutional rights."
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  • Prosecutors said the Hammonds set a fire that burned about 130 acres in 2001 to cover up poaching. They were sentenced to five years in prison.
  • The group is occupying part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns after gathering outside for a demonstration supporting Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son ranchers who were convicted of arson.
  • "This refuge -- it has been destructive to the people of the county and to the people of the area," he said. Read More"People need to be aware that we've become a system where government is actually claiming and using and defending people's rights, and they are doing that against the people."
  • The Hammonds, who are set to turn themselves in Monday afternoon, have said they set the fire to reduce the growth of invasive plants and to protect their property from wildfires
  • The Hammonds have been clear in that they don't want help from the Bundy group. "Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family," the Hammonds' attorney W. Alan Schroeder wrote to Harney County Sheriff David Ward.
  • He said that over the years, law enforcement has learned how to handle a situation like this; one that hasn't erupted in violence and in which a law may be broken, but there's no immediate threat to anyone's life. The best approach now, Roderick said, is to wait the group out and to figure out how to bring a peaceful end to the situation.
  • The protest has prompted Harney County School District 3 to call off classes for the entire week, Superintendent Dr. Marilyn L. McBride said. "Schools will open on January 11," she said. "Ensuring staff and student safety is our greatest concern."
  • After the march Saturday, the armed protesters broke into the refuge's unoccupied building and refused to leave. Officials have said there are no government employees in the building.
  • "We will be here as long as it takes," Bundy said. "We have no intentions of using force upon anyone, (but) if force is used against us, we would defend ourselves."
  • Ammon Bundy said that the group in Oregon was armed, but that he would not describe it as a militia. He declined to say how many people were with him, telling CNN on Sunday that giving that information might jeopardize "operational security."
  • "We are not terrorists," Ammon Bundy said. "We are concerned citizens and realize we have to act if we want to pass along anything to our children."
  • He wouldn't call his group a militia, but others are. "I don't like the militia's methods," local resident Monica McCannon told KTVZ. "They had their rally. Now it's time for them to go home. People are afraid of them."
  • When asked what it would take for the protesters to leave, Bundy did not offer specifics. He said he and those with him are prepared to stay put for days or weeks or "as long as necessary."
  • "We are using the wildlife refuge as a place for individuals across the United States to come and assist in helping the people of Harney County claim back their lands and resources," he said. "The people will need to be able to use the land and resources without fear as free men and women. We know it will take some time."
  • He did not explicitly call on authorities to commute the prison sentences for the Hammonds, but he said their case illustrates officials' "abuse" of power.
  • He said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has taken over the space of 100 ranches since the early 1900s. "They are continuing to expand the refuge at the expense of the ranchers and miners," Bundy said.
  • He also said Harney County, in southeastern Oregon, went from one of the state's wealthiest counties to one of the poorest. CNN has not independently corroborated Bundy's claims.
katyshannon

Cruz fires spokesman over 'inaccurate' Rubio video - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views

  • Ted Cruz asked his communications director Rick Tyler to resign Monday after Tyler distributed a video that falsely depicted Marco Rubio dismissing the Bible.
  • The incident comes a day before the Nevada Republican caucuses and in the wake of accusations from rival campaigns in recent weeks about Cruz's campaign tactics. Donald Trump has called Cruz a "liar" and Rubio and Ben Carson have also blasted the Texas senator.
  • Trump, Rubio and Carson have all attacked Cruz for his ethics ever since Cruz's victory in Iowa. Cruz later underperformed in South Carolina two contests later.
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  • Cruz says he spent the morning investigating what happened before making his decision. Campaign manager Jeff Roe confirmed that Tyler had formally resigned."I have made clear in this campaign we will conduct this campaign with the very highest standards and integrity," Cruz told reporters Monday, adding that Tyler is a "good man."
  • A former, longtime spokesman for Newt Gingrich, Tyler was a senior aide and one of the Cruz campaign's first hires in the run-up to his presidential announcement.
  • Trump immediately sought to capitalize on the moment."Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!," he tweeted.
  • Tyler had apologized late Sunday for the incident."I want to apologize to Sen. Marco Rubio for posting an inaccurate story about him here earlier today," said Tyler, the spokesman, wrote in a Facebook post.The latest dust-up comes as the two senators' campaigns have been clashing heatedly for days about "dishonesty" and "lies" on the trail.
  • And Rubio's campaign similarly rubbed salt in the wound, praising Tyler's skills but saying he "had the unenviable task of working for a candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected."
  • Rubio said he accepts Tyler's apology, but called for the Cruz campaign to hold someone accountable.
  • The flub by the Cruz campaign comes after Rubio finished narrowly ahead of Cruz for second place in the South Carolina primary Saturday, behind Donald Trump. In the heated contest there, the Cruz campaign was repeatedly accused by both Rubio and Trump for being dishonest and engaging in dirty tactics.
katyshannon

Obama Sends Plan to Close Guantánamo to Congress - The New York Times - 0 views

  • President Obama sent Congress a plan on Tuesday to close the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his latest attempt to deliver on an unfulfilled promise of his presidency, which faces near-certain rejection by Congress.
  • The prison has come to symbolize the darker side of the nation’s antiterrorism efforts, but the series of steps that Mr. Obama outlined at the White House were as much an acknowledgment of the constraints binding him during his final year in office as they were a practical blueprint for transferring prisoners.
  • n presenting them, the president made little secret of his frustration that his quest to close Guantánamo, once regarded as a bipartisan moral imperative, had become a divisive political issue.
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  • I am very cleareyed about the hurdles to finally closing Guantánamo: The politics of this are tough,” Mr. Obama said during a 17-minute address. “I don’t want to pass this problem on to the next president, whoever it is. And if, as a nation, we don’t deal with this now, when will we deal with it?”
  • He said the issue had cost him “countless hours” of consternation as he toiled to craft a workable solution to a problem that he inherited from his predecessor, President George W. Bush, and that forced him to apologize on the world stage for an approach to terrorism he never supported.
  • Reprising arguments he has made since he first campaigned for president, Mr. Obama said the prison had fueled the recruitment efforts of terrorists, harmed American alliances and been a drain on taxpayer dollars.
  • It was also a final bid to erase what has become a painful and persistent blot on his tenure: his inability to tackle an issue that animated his campaign in 2008 and in many ways encapsulates his approach to national security.
  • The White House refused on Tuesday, as Mr. Obama’s advisers have done consistently, to rule out the prospect that he would use his constitutional powers as commander in chief, if Congress refuses to act, to close the prison unilaterally before leaving office.
  • The nine-page plan was immediately rejected by Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress.
  • “Not only are we not going to close Guantánamo, when I am president, if we capture a terrorist alive, they are not getting a court hearing in Manhattan. They are not going to be sent to Nevada,” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, a presidential candidate, said at a campaign rally in Las Vegas before the state’s Republican caucus. “They are going to Guantánamo, and we are going to find out everything they know.”
  • Democrats, too, were skeptical of the strategy, which centers on bringing to a prison on domestic soil 30 to 60 detainees who are deemed too dangerous to release, while transferring the remaining detainees to other countries.
  • The blueprint offered few specifics, refraining from mentioning any of the potential replacement facilities the Pentagon had visited in preparing it, including military prisons in Leavenworth, Kan., and Charleston, S.C., as well as several civilian prisons in Colorado.
  • At the start of his administration, Mr. Obama noted, Republicans — including his predecessor, George W. Bush, and his rival for the White House, Senator John McCain of Arizona — backed the idea of closing the prison. “This was not some radical, far-left view,” Mr. Obama said. But “the public was scared into thinking that, well, if we close it, somehow we’ll be less safe.”
  • The Pentagon argued in its proposal that replacing Guantánamo would cost less than keeping detainees at the naval base in Cuba. Upgrading an existing prison could cost as much as $475 million, but would save the government as much as $85 million annually in operational costs compared with Guantánamo, it found.
  • The president’s plan faces steep obstacles, however. Congress has enacted a law banning the military from transferring detainees from Guantánamo onto domestic soil, and lawmakers have shown little interest in lifting that restriction.
  • Human rights groups and lawyers for detainees were divided. Some oppose bringing detainees who are being detained indefinitely without trial onto domestic soil, saying that would simply relocate the problem without solving it.
  • The Bush administration opened the prison in January 2002 and sent detainees from the Afghanistan war there. It declared that the detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions and that courts had no authority to oversee what the government did to prisoners at the base. In the prison’s early years, interrogators frequently used coercive techniques on detainees.
  • In one of his first acts as president, Mr. Obama issued an executive order instructing the government to shut the prison down within a year. But that proved easier said than done, and as the administration studied how to go about achieving that goal, political support for it melted away.
  • Mr. Obama has refused to add any more detainees to the 242 he inherited, instead working to chip away at the population. Of the 91 who remain, 35 are recommended for transfer if security conditions can be met, 10 have been charged or convicted before the military commissions system, and 46 have neither been charged with a crime nor approved for transfer.
  • A parolelike periodic review board is slowly working its way through their numbers and moving some to the transfer list. It was meeting even on Tuesday, senior administration officials said, as Mr. Obama strode into the Roosevelt Room to say, “Let us go ahead and close this chapter.”
katyshannon

Standoff in Oregon: Protesters may leave Thursday - CNN.com - 0 views

  • The armed occupiers of a wildlife refuge in Oregon say they will turn themselves in on Thursday morning, hours after Cliven Bundy -- the father of protest leader Ammon Bundy -- was arrested by federal agents.
  • Cliven Bundy, who came to the national spotlight in a fight with the federal Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights for his cattle in 2014, was heading to Oregon earlier Wednesday.
  • After landing in Portland, Oregon, Bundy was taken into federal custody, the FBI said.Read MoreIt's not clear what he's been charged with. The FBI said authorities would make charging information available on Thursday morning.
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  • Bundy's son, Ammon, was one of the leaders of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He was arrested last month. The refuge's current occupiers said -- during a purported live stream of a conference call between protesters, activists and conservative Nevada lawmaker Michele Fiore -- they were prepared to leave Thursday morning.
  • Fiore told those on the call that Mike Arnold -- Ammon Bundy's lawyer, who Fiore says was in the car with her -- spoke with the FBI. She said the agency promised it would stand down Wednesday night and allow her to be at the FBI checkpoint on Thursday morning when the occupiers turn themselves in.
  • According to the agency, one of the remaining occupiers rode outside barricades at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. When agents tried to approach him, he sped off back to the refuge.After that, the FBI said agents "moved to contain the remaining occupiers by placing agents at barricades both immediately ahead of and behind the area where the occupiers are camping."The FBI said no shots were fired and it is continuing to negotiate with those inside the refuge.
  • Four people are believed to be still occupying the refuge.
  • Earlier on the call, the occupiers sounded concerned that the FBI planned to move in Wednesday night and that it would lead to their deaths. At times, they seemed to embrace that outcome as fatalistic.
  • When one woman -- presumed to be Fiore -- asked David and Sandy about their families, a man responded, "God has put us on this path. Our families are already taken care of; they weren't in our lives much before all this because God made sure we didn't have that to weigh us down so that we could do this," one man said.
  • The people on the phone could be heard debating conditions for which they'd be willing to leave the refuge. At one point late Wednesday night, more than 66,000 people were listening.Wednesday marks day 40 of the occupation.
  • Ammon Bundy and others started out demonstrating against the sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands in Oregon.But a January 2 march supporting the Hammonds led to the armed occupation of the refuge, with protesters decrying what they call government overreach when it comes to federal lands.Bundy and other members of his group were arrested during an incident along a highway last month.
  • At the same time, law enforcement officers shot and killed LaVoy Finicum, one of the protest group's most prominent members.
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