How Absurd Are Trump's Lies About Coal? The Entire Industry Is Hiring Less Than Tesla.
Monday, 05 June 2017 13:01
Gross writes: "The numbers, and the eagerness of coal partisans to inflate the importance of coal employment, only serve to highlight how irrelevant coal is becoming - as an economic force, to be sure, but also as an employment force."
Where the jobs are. (photo: Getty Images)
How Absurd Are Trump's Lies About Coal? The Entire Industry Is Hiring Less Than Tesla.
By Daniel Gross, Slate
05 June 17
n the wake of the decision to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Trump administration has been touting the salutary impact of its policies and general attitude on the beleaguered coal sector. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said on Meet the Press on Sunday that “in fact since the fourth quarter of last year to most recently added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.”Aside from being ungrammatical, that’s wrong. And it represents a willful misreading of the data from one of the reportedly central voices behind Trump’s decision to withdraw from the climate pact. (Needless to say, Chuck Todd didn’t correct him.) As the government’s own numbers show, there were only 51,000 coal-mining jobs in the entire U.S. in May. Last month, 400 coal jobs were added—not 7,000. It was the overall mining sector, which includes oil, gas, and metals mining in addition to coal, that added 7,000 jobs in the month and 50,000 since last 2016.
Regardless of the facts, the Trump administration seems committed to puffing up high-emissions, high-carbon businesses like coal as massive job producers. The administration is touting the planned opening this week of the Acosta coal mine in Pennsylvania. It will create between 70 and 100 jobs.
The numbers, and the eagerness of coal partisans to inflate the importance of coal employment, only serve to highlight how irrelevant coal is becoming—as an economic force, to be sure, but also as an employment force. And if Trump & co. are really eager to boost the employment prospects of people who live in Appalachian communities that used to subsist on coal wages, he might suggest they look for jobs in nearby new-economy hubs like Pittsburgh or Louisville, Kentucky, which has 30,000 job openings. The few jobs that could theoretically come back one day from a revival of East Coast coal are significantly dwarfed by the actual number of open positions in noncoal industries in the region right now.
Here’s the reality. Regardless of the attitudes of those in the executive branch, and in spite of efforts to roll back environmental protection, the low- and no-emissions economy has an immense amount of momentum behind it and is growing as an economic force. At the same time, the high-emissions economy is in a long-term secular decline. Culture and policy have something to do with it. But powerful underlying trends—the cost advantage of natural gas and, increasingly, renewables—are really driving the train. The day after Trump announced the withdrawal from the Paris accord, Kansas City Power & Light announced it will shut down several generating units that burn coal.
The same trend can be seen when we look at jobs—and the wages, livelihoods, dignity, and purpose that go along with them. The coal mining industry added 400 jobs in May—a significant achievement. Meanwhile, back in the real world, low- and no-emissions companies are hiring like crazy. I spent a few minutes at the career site of Tesla, which not only makes electric cars but also solar roof shingles, solar panels, and batteries. I adjusted the filter so it would show North American jobs, and then I excised any Canadian jobs from the list.
By my count, Tesla—which is just one company—has 1,861 job openings in the U.S. And the company isn’t just looking for coders. These positions are blue-collar, white-collar, skilled, unskilled. And while they are generally concentrated in Tesla’s home state of California, there are openings all over. Sales positions in Texas; global supply managers and human resources staffers in Palo Alto, California; a customer experience specialist in Pittsburgh; a material handler at a factory in Buffalo, New York; mobile service technicians in Tennessee, Florida, and Illinois; engineering technicians in Fremont, California; a supercharger installation program manager in Seattle; a pre-owned sales adviser in Decatur, Georgia; a service detailer in Richmond, Virginia. And on and on and on.
Tesla isn’t a Silicon Valley employment paradise. It’s a high-pressure manufacturing environment, and conditions in the factory can be challenging. But conditions there compare favorably with a coal mine. And, unlike coal mines, Tesla is actually hiring in significant numbers.
FOCUS: The People's Summit: From Resistance to Power
Monday, 05 June 2017 10:46
Galindez writes: "This year the focus is building a movement beyond resistance. Resistance is not enough - we need to reclaim the future."
The People's Summit. (photo: thepeoplessummit.org)
The People's Summit: From Resistance to Power
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
05 June 17
his weekend, Reader Supported News will be bringing you coverage of the People’s Summit in Chicago. Featured speakers include Senator Bernie Sanders, Nina Turner, Amy Goodman, Danny Glover, and many other leaders of the Progressive Movement.
This is the second annual People’s Summit. Last year, instead of holding their yearly convention, National Nurses United held the first People’s Summit. Bernie was still a candidate for president so several of his surrogates, including Nina Turner and Tulsi Gabbard, brought down the house.
This year the focus is building a movement beyond resistance. Resistance is not enough – we need to reclaim the future. Of course, we have to survive the next four years, but unless we build a movement for the future, we will be in resistance mode for a long time.
It will not be enough to say Trump is wrong, vote for us. We have to offer the American people a future they can believe in. Bernie understands this and is continuing to show us the path forward. But as he always says, it is not about him, but us.
On Friday night, several of the convening organizations will have speakers who will make a case for “why we are here.”
According to one of the conveners, RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United: “What has consistently unified us is a common vision of opposition to policies of austerity and neo-liberalism, and solidarity in supporting each others’ work on health care, environmental, racial, social, and economic justice, and breaking the corporate grip on our political and economic system”
On Saturday morning, the day kicks off at 9 am with a fantastic panel that includes Jane Sanders, Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, and Katrina vanden Heuvel. The discussion, titled “From Resistance to Power,” will be moderated by Amy Goodman.
Vanden Heuvel recently said, “Resistance can’t be about restoration. It must be about fundamental reform. That’s why progressive movements, media and leaders must take the lead – both in exposing Trump’s betrayals and driving bold alternatives and solutions.”
The next big panel discussion, “Media, Our Movement, and the Political Revolution,” will feature Shaun King, David Sirota, Winnie Wong, Sarah Leonard, and Glenn Greenwald.
Winnie Wong, of People For Bernie, said: “With our institutions of liberal democracy severely eroded and fascism knocking at our front doors, the time is now for activists, organizers, and Berniecrats to come together and imagine an America and world that looks far beyond the horizon of establishment politics as usual.”
Van Jones will deliver an address on Transformation, Opportunity and Justice at Noon.
There will be several workshops and plenary sessions in the afternoon leading up to the keynote address at 7 pm by Bernie Sanders. Nina Turner will wrap things up Sunday morning with a speech called “Wake Up for Justice.”
Throughout the weekend I will be seeking interviews with the participants so that we can bring you coverage that you will only see on RSN and Uphill Media.
The organizers of the People’s Summit issued the following call:
“At a time of tremendous turmoil and progressive opportunity, we invite you to participate in a historic convening of organizations and individuals committed to social, racial and economic justice. On June 9-11 2017, in Chicago, we seek to bring together activists committed to a different kind of agenda: a People’s Agenda that can enhance and expand issue campaigns and hold all elected officials accountable to popular demands for justice, equality and freedom. We envision this Summit as further deepening the relationship between participating organizations rooted in principled anti-corporate politics, development of community leaders, direct action not based on partisan identification, and strategic organizing to build power. The Summit itself will include plenary and workshop sessions devoted to key issues such as the Fight for 15, mass incarceration and criminal justice reform, voting rights and expanding democratic participation, a tax on Wall Street speculation to fund human needs and jobs, climate justice toward a sustainable economy, improved Medicare for All, the fight for free and debt-free higher education, secure retirement through expanding social security, ending HIV/AIDS, achieving Constitutional pay equity for women, and ending deportations and support for DREAMers, among others. We will take action in Chicago against the big money system of politics that expands the power of the wealthy and corporations at the expense of the people. We will also celebrate with music and a ‘festival of joyous rebellion.’ We hope to see you in Chicago, June 9-11, at McCormick Place.”
If you can’t make it to Chicago, you can watch this important event here:
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott moved to Des Moines in 2015 to cover the Iowa Caucus.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
Bamford writes: "Like a scene from Minority Report, the 2002 film where criminals are caught and punished by a 'precrime' police force before they can commit their deeds, IARPA hopes to find terrorists, hackers, and even protesters before they act."
A scene from the 2002 film, Minority Report. (photo: DailyMail)
Washington's Ministry of Preemption
By James Bamford, Foreign Policy
05 June 17
To stop security breaches before they happen, U.S. intelligence agencies are surveilling everything.
n April 7, an odd-looking jet landed at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan. Codenamed Constant Phoenix, it was a U.S. Air Force version of a Boeing 707 but with round pods on the fuselage designed to “sniff” the atmosphere for radioactivity. Eight days later, across the East China Sea, North Korea would be celebrating the “Day of the Sun,” marking the 105th birthday of its founder, Kim Il Sung. And because many in the Donald Trump administration were concerned that the festivities would include a very big surprise — the country’s sixth nuclear test — Constant Phoenix was on alert. But when the celebrations ended, the surprise was on the Koreans, whose missile launch failed.
The unexpected has always been the enemy of intelligence. That’s why a small group of Ph.D.s and research scientists are employed by a secretive organization in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., to take the surprises out of intelligence: the spy world’s premier research center, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), which reports directly to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
For decades, from the first World Trade Center bombing to 9/11 to the recent Syrian poison gas attack, U.S. intelligence agencies have consistently been caught off guard, despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent on spies, eavesdroppers, and satellites. IARPA’s answer is “anticipatory intelligence,” predicting the crime or event before it happens.
Like a scene from Minority Report, the 2002 film where criminals are caught and punished by a “precrime” police force before they can commit their deeds, IARPA hopes to find terrorists, hackers, and even protesters before they act. The group is devising robotic machines that can find virtually everything about everyone and issue automatic “precrime” alerts.
That’s the idea behind the agency’s Open Source Indicators (OSI) program: Build powerful automated computers, armed with artificial intelligence, specialized algorithms, and machine learning, capable of cataloging the lives of everyone everywhere, 24/7. Tapping real-time into tens of thousands of different data streams — every Facebook post, tweet, and YouTube video; every tollbooth tag number; every GPS download, web search, and news feed; every street camera video; every restaurant reservation on Open Table — largely eliminates surprise from the intelligence equation. To IARPA, the bigger the data, the fewer and smaller the surprises.
If all this sounds familiar, it is. In 2002, the U.S. Defense Department created Total Information Awareness (TIA). Similar to IARPA’s OSI, TIA’s goal was to create a “virtual, centralized grand database” made up of unclassified, publicly available information. But following press reports and a public outcry, Congress killed it. However, the Pentagon secretly shifted some resources to the National Security Agency’s own research center, the Advanced Research and Development Activity (ARDA). Then, in 2007, ARDA quietly morphed into IARPA.
Even more troubling is IARPA’s secretive program Mercury, which focuses on data mining private communications collected by the NSA. Last year, for example, the agency collected more than 151 million phone call records involving Americans, according to a U.S. intelligence community report released May 2. Worldwide, the number is likely in the billions.
Like OSI, Mercury is outsourced to private contractors who develop computerized robots to scan the ocean of NSA intercepts for clues to potential terrorists, hackers, social unrest, and war. According to IARPA, “The Mercury program seeks to develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of SIGINT in order to anticipate and/or detect political crises, disease outbreaks, terrorist activity, and military actions.” The program manager for the Mercury project, Kristen Jordan, had previously worked at the NSA as the deputy national intelligence officer for signals intelligence connected to weapons of mass destruction.
To process such mammoth amounts of information, both open and secret, IARPA is racing to develop the world’s fastest computer, one capable of “beyond exascale” speeds — 1 quintillion (a million trillion) operations per second — program manager Marc Manheimer told the Next Platform, a news site that covers high-end computing. Under IARPA’s Cryogenic Computing Complexity program, the agency is focused on moving from traditional semiconductors to an energy-efficient superconducting supercomputer able to crunch data and break encryption at unimaginable speeds.
But collecting the data is useless without analysis, and that’s where the dangers of anticipatory intelligence and “precrime” policing are myriad and growing, with the shape of a subject’s face now the latest determinant of his or her likelihood to be or become a terrorist. That capability is, at least, the assertion of Faception, an Israeli company that says its software uses “advanced machine learning techniques” and “an array of classifiers” to “match an individual with various personality traits and types with a high level of accuracy.” Thus, according to the company’s website, its program can simply pick out the likely terrorists, pedophiles, and white-collar criminals from “video streams (recorded and live), cameras, or online/offline databases.”
To its credit, IARPA claims that the open-source data it collects is anonymized to protect privacy — but the group makes no mention of the NSA intercepts. Nevertheless, the hardware, software, and algorithms are already in place, and that administrative decision can be changed at any time by the Trump administration, which has shown little regard for privacy issues.
During his confirmation hearing last February, Dan Coats, the new director of national intelligence and the head of the office to which IARPA reports, expressed his support for the NSA’s warrantless overseas internet spying, which has also scooped up some domestic communications. The authority, contained in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is due to expire in December, but Coats vowed to make reauthorizing it his “top legislative priority.” And, as a senator, Coats voted against the USA Freedom Act, the bill that prohibited the bulk collection of Americans’ phone records.
In Minority Report, the precrime program was shut down after the system was proved to be subject to manipulation. That plot provides a lesson for IARPA. In December 2016, Sean Kinion, a scientist working on a program for IARPA, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to faking data.
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=40905"><span class="small">George Lakoff, George Lakoff's Website</span></a>
Sunday, 04 June 2017 12:57
Lakoff writes: "Donald Trump knows the power of branding and actually makes huge profits by selling the use of his name. But the power of naming and branding can be a double-edged sword."
George Lakoff, 2012. (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Disaster Branding: The Importance of Naming
By George Lakoff, George Lakoff's Website
04 June 17
onald Trump knows the power of branding and actually makes huge profits by selling the use of his name. But the power of naming and branding can be a double-edged sword: when a president creates and perpetuates real human disasters, we can truthfully attach his name to them and allow well-earned disaster branding to spread naturally.
Mr. Trump uses the word “disaster” metaphorically for policies and practices he doesn’t like. But there are real, literal disasters in the world: huge fires, devastating, floods, deadly storms, major droughts — disasters caused systemically by the heating of the earth’s atmosphere and its effects in the global weather system.
The Paris Accords are a worldwide, scientifically-governed effort to reverse the heating of earth’s atmosphere and so to reverse its literal disastrous effects — effects that kill, can start wars, and cost trillions.
When President Trump pulled America out of that worldwide effort, he showed that politics can have deadly systemic effects as well, like significantly slowing efforts to reverse these effects and allowing real climate disasters to get worse.
Political and corporate leaders in America — governors, mayors, CEOs — have pledged to act as if the United States were still part of the world community effort of the Paris Accords. There are substantive things they can do collectively, and they deserve praise for their moral courage and good sense to go on in the face of the powerful opposition of the Trump Administration.
But we need not feel powerless in the face of the Trump government. The citizens of the United States have a power beyond the ballot box: the power of naming, and of disaster branding. Acting together, we can give a brand name to all those major fires, storms, floods, and droughts perpetuated and caused by Mr. Trump’s actions against the worldwide effort to end those disasters.
Name the major disasters after the person most responsible for perpetuating and causing new ones in the future. When sea level rise floods Florida, or when atmospheric heating produces massive evaporation over the Pacific that blows north and east resulting in huge floods throughout the Midwest, name them Trump flood disasters. When continued atmospheric heating systemically leads to massive fires in Texas, name them Trump fire disasters.
When the heating of the Gulf of Mexico above historic norms leads to extra strong hurricanes, name them Trump hurricanes and name their effects Trump devastation. When the systemic effects of unusual atmospheric heating lead to a drought, with water shortages and agricultural loss, name it a Trump drought.
We are not accustomed to using the power that millions of ordinary people have to name what is harming them and their planet and the futures of their children and grandchildren. But the time has come to use that power. Just say it.
If such Trump disaster branding becomes viral, it will illustrate the seriousness of the Trump’s Administration’s opposition to addressing the devastation caused by the heating of the earth’s atmosphere. Environmental activists have struggled to convince the public of the urgency of global warming disasters. But by withdrawing from the Paris Accords, Mr. Trump has created such a deadly situation that an unusual measure is called for. We must name the person most responsible. It’s time for disaster branding — associating real disasters that Trump is responsible for perpetuating or creating with the Trump brand.
All that is necessary is speech — free speech guaranteed by the Constitution. We don’t have to march in protest, or engage in civil disobedience, or do anything the least bit violent. You just have to say the words. There is power in naming.
Pate writes: "Former FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify next week before the Senate intelligence committee, but President Donald Trump may try to stop him by asserting executive privilege. It would not work."
ormer FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify next week before the Senate intelligence committee, but President Donald Trump may try to stop him by asserting executive privilege. It would not work. Trump cannot use executive privilege to keep Comey from testifying about discussions that may point to potential misconduct, and that's especially true now that Trump has already made those discussions public.
Although The New York Times reported that the President is not planning on doing so, he could change his mind, according to two senior administration officials.
Executive privilege is not a well-defined legal concept. You can't find the words "executive privilege" anywhere in the Constitution. It's not written down in any federal statute, and it's not part of the rules of evidence.
Executive privilege is a doctrine that has developed over time to allow a president to communicate freely with his Cabinet members and staff about national security issues and other sensitive matters without being concerned those discussions would be disclosed to Congress, the courts or the public.
Presidents have often invoked executive privilege, and they have mostly failed when challenged in court. Richard Nixon tried to use executive privilege and lost. Bill Clinton tried, and he lost, too. The Obama administration asserted a type of executive privilege in connection with a congressional probe into Operation Fast and Furious. Although some documents were protected in that case, most were not.
In striking down a president's attempts to use executive privilege, courts have focused on the reason the privilege was being asserted -- was it to protect sensitive information in the public interest, or an attempt to hide potential evidence of misconduct? No court has ever allowed a president to use executive privilege to cover his own possible wrongdoing.
Courts have also looked at whether the substance of the communications had already been publicly disclosed. The Fast and Furious case is a great example. The Obama administration had already made public disclosures about its deliberations relating to that operation, so there was no need to use the privilege to maintain executive branch secrets.
In this case, Trump's media interviews, his termination letter to Comey and his random tweets have already made his meetings with the ex-FBI chief a matter of public concern. Just like the travel ban litigation, it looks like Trump's mouth has again foreclosed a legal defense he may really need.
The fact the White House is even thinking about asserting executive privilege raises another important question -- why would Trump want to stop Comey from testifying about their meetings? There is only one reason I can think of -- Trump lied.
In his interview with NBC News' Lester Holt last month, Trump said that Comey had assured him "three times" he was not being investigated. If true, then I would think Trump would want to have Comey corroborate that in a public hearing. But is it true? Comey would not have told Trump he is not a potential target because he knows better than to disclose that kind of information.
Immediately after describing his version of discussions with Comey, Trump sent out a tweet warning Comey he "better hope there are no tapes" of their conversations. Why would Trump say that before Comey had a chance to respond to Trump's version of the meetings? Was it because Trump must have known his version was not the truth and wanted to launch a pre-emptive strike against Comey before Comey could respond.
That's the same approach the White House is using now to question Comey's credibility before his upcoming testimony. The White House is worried that Comey will have a very different version of those discussions and that he felt pressured by Trump to drop the pending investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. If I were in the White House, I would be worried, too.
But being worried about potentially embarrassing testimony is not a sufficient basis to invoke executive privilege. If Trump tries to stop Comey from testifying about their discussions relating to the Flynn investigation, Comey should just ignore him and do it anyway. It's highly unlikely a court would prevent Comey, who is now a private citizen and no longer a government employee, from talking.
Trying to stop Comey from testifying by using executive privilege will almost certainly fail, but I understand why the White House would want to do it. It is extremely concerned about what Comey is going to say, and it makes sense to use every trick in the book to try and stop him from publicly humiliating the President.
Asserting executive privilege in this situation would be a desperate act, but we may have a desperate man in the White House right now.
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.
n the wake of the decision to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Trump administration has been touting the salutary impact of its policies and general attitude on the beleaguered coal sector. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt 
his weekend, Reader Supported News will be bringing you coverage of the 
n April 7, an odd-looking jet landed at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Japan. Codenamed Constant Phoenix, it was a U.S. Air Force version of a Boeing 707 but with round pods on the fuselage designed to “sniff” the atmosphere for radioactivity. Eight days later, across the East China Sea, North Korea would be celebrating the “Day of the Sun,” marking the 105th birthday of its founder, Kim Il Sung. And because many in the Donald Trump administration were concerned that the festivities would include a very big surprise — the country’s sixth nuclear test — Constant Phoenix was on alert. But when the celebrations ended, the surprise was on the Koreans, whose missile launch failed.
onald Trump knows the power of branding and actually makes huge profits by selling the use of his name. But the power of naming and branding can be a double-edged sword: when a president creates and perpetuates real human disasters, we can truthfully attach his name to them and allow well-earned disaster branding to spread naturally.
ormer FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify next week before the Senate intelligence committee, but President Donald Trump may try to stop him by asserting executive privilege. It would not work. Trump cannot use executive privilege to keep Comey from testifying about discussions that may point to potential misconduct, and that's especially true now that Trump has already made those discussions public.
