Chris Hedges's Blog, page 414

November 18, 2018

The Destructive Weed Killer the EPA Refuses to Ban

Every August, Andrew Joyce used to hunker down in the field beside his house, picking juicy, ripe tomatoes in the blazing sun. He’d load them onto his golf cart, along with buckets of okra, squash and other summer crops, and zip over to the farm stand he runs with his wife, Sara, off a two-lane highway near the Arkansas border. Sara’s Produce fans would drive hours to stock up on the artisanal fare, grown amid the fields of soybeans and cotton that reach toward the horizon of Missouri’s Bootheel.

“Everybody brags on my stuff,” said Joyce, 58, a wistful pride crossing his bronzed, weathered face.

But now, he has nothing to sell.

Joyce leans against the greenhouse he’s building, hands in the pockets of his overalls, peering at the field where he started nearly 800 tomato plants in the spring. It was early August when the telltale signs of trouble emerged. The plants’ broad, flat leaves shriveled and curled, their branches twisted and buckled. Then blossom rot set in. Joyce knew they couldn’t be saved. He climbed onto his tractor and mowed down his bestselling crop – for the third year in a row.

The plague that struck Joyce’s farm in Malden, Missouri, was not a natural disaster, but a man-made weed killer called dicamba. Farmers had applied the drift-prone chemical sparingly for decades. But in the past two years, its use has grown exponentially, and now dicamba is destroying millions of acres of crops worth millions of dollars, pitting farmer against farmer and scientists against manufacturers.

A joint investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and the Food & Environment Reporting Network has found that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – which is required by law to ensure pesticides don’t impose unreasonable environmental and economic costs – could have averted the destruction.

Two weeks ago, even though dicamba is causing widespread damage to crops and wild plants, the EPA approved the weed killer for another two years, stating that new label instructions will minimize the harm.

The EPA ignored scientists’ warnings and extensive research that showed dicamba would evaporate into the air and ruin crops miles away, according to documents obtained through public records requests and lawsuits. Instead, the EPA’s approval was based on studies by the companies that manufacture dicamba, which independent scientists say were seriously flawed. One scientist called the studies “shockingly insufficient.”

The agrochemical giant Monsanto Co. orchestrated the massive deployment of dicamba on tens of millions of acres of crops in the Midwest and mid-South when it lobbied the EPA to allow the chemical to be used on its genetically modified seeds for cotton and soybeans. The seeds – which the company engineered so that farmers could use dicamba to kill invasive weeds without hurting their crops – were worth $3 billion last year.

Issues with dicamba began to emerge under the Obama administration, which approved its expanded uses on a trial basis in late 2016. But even though the problems proved dire, President Donald Trump’s administration agreed twice to approve its use until at least the end of 2020.

For decades, U.S. farmers applied this weed killer mostly on corn and other grass crops, which tolerate it. They took care not to spray it around soybeans, tomatoes and other broadleaf plants, which flinch at the slightest drop. Soybean and cotton growers never used dicamba during the growing season because it would have damaged their crops.

That changed when Monsanto launched an aggressive campaign in 2015 to sell soybean and cotton seeds genetically modified to resist dicamba. As a result, use of the weed killer has skyrocketed. In 2012, hardly any cotton or soybean farmers in Missouri and Arkansas used dicamba. But five years later, they sprayed more than 1 million pounds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over the past two years, under Trump’s watch, U.S. farmers have planted more than 50 million acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton.

As farmers sprayed these crops in 2017 and 2018, scientists estimated that dicamba had damaged nearly 5 million acres of soybeans in 24 states, mostly Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee and Illinois. (No one tracks damage to specialty crops such as tomatoes or home gardens, trees and wild plants.) Only two crops have been engineered to resist dicamba: soybeans and cotton. Every other broadleaf plant, including non-genetically modified soybeans and cotton, is at risk.

David Mortensen, an agricultural ecologist at the University of New Hampshire, is among the most passionate and vocal critics of allowing dicamba on genetically modified crops.

The EPA and Monsanto created a worst-case scenario, Mortensen said, by allowing and encouraging farmers to use an herbicide that kills a wide variety of plants at very low doses: “Dicamba-resistant crops should never have been released, period.”

An old herbicide granted a new life

Beginning in the 1960s, farmers had tended to spray dicamba only in late winter or early spring. In cooler weather, the chemical has less chance of evaporating, drifting through the air and harming other crops.

But a biochemist’s discovery 21 years ago ultimately would shatter those best practices.

Mortensen remembers listening, dumbstruck, as the biochemist described how he’d found a gene in soil bacteria that could make soybeans resistant to the weed killer. Mortensen knew that dicamba isn’t just prone to drifting to other fields. It’s also extremely hard to wash out of a spray tank. Farmers who rotated corn with soybeans or many other plants could kill their own crops inadvertently with the residue in their tanks. The idea of pursuing dicamba-resistant crops, Mortensen said, was “unfathomable.”

The biochemist, Donald Weeks, filed a patent on the gene in 1997. A worried Mortensen funneled his energy into research on dicamba while Monsanto developed Xtend seeds and a “low volatility” dicamba formula that wasn’t supposed to evaporate from fields and migrate through the air.

Then starting in 2015 – a year before the EPA approved the use of dicamba on genetically modified crops – Monsanto flooded magazines and social media with promises that its Xtend system would “extend your yield” and leave fields “spotless.” Monsanto’s marketers knew their audience: Growers in cotton and soybean country have few tools to control profit-stealing pigweed and other “superweeds.”

But the Reveal/FERN investigation shows that Mortensen amassed years of evidence on dicamba’s ability to drift into the air and destroy valuable plants, including the habitat of bees and other beneficial insects. He urged the EPA in 2016 not to register the weed killer for the new uses on genetically modified crops. Applying the product over large areas during the growing season in the heat of summer would cause widespread damage, he said. Plus, overreliance on a single toxic agent – whether herbicides or antibiotics – encourages the evolution of organisms that resist it. And with six weed species already showing resistance to dicamba, Mortensen warned the EPA, accelerating its use would speed weed resistance and at the same time pose “PROFOUND risks to broadleaf crop growers.”

Monsanto, however, told the EPA that weed resistance to dicamba was unlikely. It had made a similar argument in the early 1990s when it petitioned regulators to approve its new Roundup-resistant soybeans. Weeds wouldn’t evolve resistance, Monsanto claimed. But Monsanto was proven wrong when scientists documented resistance to Roundup two years after the genetically modified seeds hit the market. The company also assured the EPA that there was “no concern” about dicamba products drifting and harming other crops. That claim also was quickly proved wrong.

Yet the EPA repeatedly sided with Monsanto over the objections of Mortensen and other university scientists, first by registering dicamba in 2016 and then by keeping it on the market.

In addition, the EPA registered the weed killer with an inordinately complex instruction label that disregarded its tendency to evaporate and spread through the air – ultimately shifting the blame for drift problems to growers and applicators.

During the 2017 growing season, when several million acres of crops were damaged by dicamba, the nation’s top weed scientists formed a special committee to help the EPA avoid a similar disaster in 2018.

But the Trump administration instead focused on salvaging dicamba. The EPA announced new rules for spraying in October 2017 and again last month. In both cases, the agency said the changes would minimize drift. Yet the revised labels are even harder to follow – and do not ensure that dicamba won’t vaporize off fields.

Documents show that Trump’s EPA relied mostly on Monsanto’s advice last year when it decided to change the instructions on the label rather than restrict its use.

“Our expectation was for you all to send the EPA your proposed label changes,” Reuben Baris, acting chief of the herbicide branch of the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, emailed top executives from Monsanto, along with dicamba manufacturers BASF and DuPont Co., last year.

“Our goal,” Baris wrote, “is to ensure these technologies are available to growers for the 2018 season.”

EPA officials declined to answer specific questions.

“The Agency looks at all of the evidence to inform our decision,” a spokesman wrote in an email. “EPA registered dicamba (with restrictions on its use) but placed time limits on the registration to allow the agency to either let it expire or to make the necessary changes in the registration if there are problems with resistant weeds or pesticide drift.”

A farm disaster unfolds

Use of the herbicide is ratcheting up tensions in farm communities, even costing one man his life. A 55-year-old Arkansas soybean farmer died in October 2016 after a man he confronted over dicamba drift shot him. The man is now serving a 24-year sentence for second-degree murder.

“It’s just a very emotional thing because it can impact people’s livelihoods and, in some cases, their lives. That’s just tragic,” said Steve Eddington, a vice president for the Arkansas Farm Bureau.

Bees from Bobby Coy’s hives once pollinated neighbors’ farms. But now, Coy, who runs Coy’s Honey Farm with his wife and two sons, said they might leave Arkansas because those neighbors are spraying dicamba and bees don’t feed on dicamba-injured plants.

Coy will be 81 in a year and a half, when he’ll have paid off the $360,000 the family owes on the building where they extract honey.

“But if the dicamba don’t stop,” he said, “there’ll be no need for this building.”

The EPA denies that hives are at risk when dicamba is used according to the label instructions.

“We expect there will be no adverse impacts to bees or other pollinators,” the agency announced Oct. 31, when it approved dicamba for two more years.

But such assurances ignore evidence that dicamba harms bees by destroying the flowers they feed on. And they carry no weight with farmers such as Coy and Joyce, who’ve heard them from the EPA before. Joyce has been hit with losses three years in a row, costing him $30,000 – nearly as much as the typical household in this part of Missouri earns in a year. He complained to the state Department of Agriculture, as did several of his neighbors. An inspector confirmed dicamba was to blame, Joyce said, took pictures and left.

“I don’t have a bit of confidence in (Missouri officials) because they have failed to react,” he said. “And that goes for the EPA, too. They’re the ones that approved it.”

Joyce said he also worries about health effects from dicamba because he spends most of his days outside when his neighbors spray it. But there is no solid evidence that it poses human health risks.

Bill Bader, Missouri’s largest peach farmer, has lost tens of thousands of trees worth more than $1 million, according to a lawsuit he filed against Monsanto in 2016. Dozens of farmers seeking millions of dollars in compensation have joined Bader’s case.

Missouri and Arkansas issued emergency bans for the growing season in early July 2017, though it was too late for Joyce and Bader.

Just a few months into the 2017 growing season, the first time it was legal to spray dicamba on genetically modified crops, more than 1,400 complaints and more than 2.5 million acres of injured soybeans had been reported.

Those official complaints miss most of the damage. Many people don’t file complaints for fear of jeopardizing insurance claims, which typically address sprayer errors, not problems with the product itself.

Growers think they either can’t live with dicamba or can’t live without it, said University of Arkansas weed scientist Jason Norsworthy.

“I’ve been in this discipline for nearly 20 years and I’ve been in agriculture all my life, and I’ve never seen anything as divisive,” Norsworthy said.

For soybean farmer Perry Galloway, dicamba is the only thing that works against his nemesis, the pernicious pigweed.

“They’re so prolific and they’re resistant to all the herbicides,” said Galloway, a sixth-generation farmer in Augusta, Arkansas. A pigweed can produce a million seeds that can make a plant larger than a Christmas tree, he said, adding, “Dicamba was the only thing we had to fall back on.”

Galloway and five other farmers filed a lawsuit challenging the Arkansas ban last year. Galloway, who planted 4,500 acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans last year, said he hasn’t seen drift problems other farmers have complained about.

“I’m not saying that the widespread use of the newer formulations isn’t causing some of the problems,” he said. “But a lot of the complaints are not even related to herbicides, I don’t believe.”

Bayer Crop Science, which took over Monsanto in June, said dicamba complaints have dropped dramatically in the past year because applicators now are better trained. The company declined requests for interviews.

“Our customers tell us they’re seeing some of the cleanest fields in years and that they’ve had successful on-target applications of XtendiMax over broad acreage,” Bayer spokeswoman Charla Lord wrote in an emailed statement.

“The number of inquiries we receive each day is dropping, particularly compared to this same time last season,” she wrote. “Based on grower and applicator feedback and the decrease in off-target movement inquiries this season, especially among applicators, we continue to see that training and education are working.”

But Norsworthy said education and training will not fix a pesticide that doesn’t stay where it’s applied.

“Our commercial applicators did not wake up last year and forget how to spray,” he said.

Studies refute Monsanto’s claims

Monsanto was well aware that the chemical’s propensity to drift could imperil its chances of EPA approval. In a 2013 meeting with investors, Monsanto’s chief technology officer, Robert Fraley, said its new formula, XtendiMax with VaporGrip, “basically reduces the volatility to zero,” meaning that the product never would drift to unintended crops. Even so, Monsanto executives met with top EPA officials, notes from a February 2016 meeting show, to learn what would be needed “to create a defensible approach” to the concerns about drift.

That solution involved submitting studies that the company claimed proved XtendiMax was safe. Monsanto told the EPA that its research provides “multiple lines of evidence (to) demonstrate that there should be no concern of off-site movement due to volatility.” The company also reported that there was no need for a buffer zone to protect other plants as long as applicators used a specific spray nozzle.

But it turned out that these studies didn’t capture what happens in actual fields. In one type of study, called humidome experiments, soil is sprayed, then covered with plastic to measure how much turns to vapor.

“One thing we’ve learned this year, there is not a correlation between humidome data and what we see in the field,” Norsworthy told growers last year.

Monsanto also submitted field studies to support its claims. But the studies were not done in Arkansas, Missouri or other places where extreme summer heat favors vaporization. And they were too small to mimic the effects of applying the weed killer across vast acres, which loads the atmosphere with the chemical, making it more likely to drift, Mortensen said. He called the company’s studies “shockingly insufficient” in a statement supporting a lawsuit that rural farmers and environmental advocates filed against the EPA last year.

Monsanto refused to let independent university scientists test its product’s ability to drift before it hit the market in 2017. Then Norsworthy, University of Arkansas weed scientist Tom Barber and colleagues in other states quickly got to work. They mapped wind direction and damage to neighboring fields after spraying. They took greenhouse plants to fields a day after spraying and covered some with buckets during spraying. The results were consistent: Even when dicamba is sprayed exactly as directed, it evaporates over several days and damages plants.

For Barber, there’s a simple explanation for the gap between Monsanto’s findings and what he and his colleagues found: “I’m not trying to sell it.”

The scientists told EPA and Arkansas officials what they’d discovered in the summer of 2017.

“This is a product that is broken,” Norsworthy told state officials. “That’s what the data says, and … that’s a problem I can’t fix.”

But that same day, a top EPA official assured dicamba manufacturers that the agency is “working in partnership with our state regulatory colleagues to overcome any potential hurdles in the state registration process,” according to emails released through litigation.

State officials, however, urged the EPA to follow the science. If the product is “beyond salvaging – that call needs to be made,” an Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries official said in an EPA conference call in August 2017. “Listen to research scientist(s).”

The EPA didn’t listen. But an Arkansas task force did. The panel recommended prohibiting dicamba applications on crops after April 15, when the risk of damage is greatest.

Monsanto fought Arkansas’ proposed ban, claiming it was based “on unsubstantiated product volatility theories.” Monsanto also attacked the scientists, accusing Norsworthy of endorsing a competing product. This, his university employer insisted, was not true. Many of Norsworthy’s colleagues expressed outrage at Monsanto’s attempt to discredit one of the nation’s most respected weed scientists, though they would not speak on the record about it.

“It’s difficult to make progress when there is denial, when individuals are unwilling to recognize the science,” Norsworthy said. “And there’s a wealth of science out there at this point.”

Now it appears that dicamba’s benefits to farmers trying to kill weeds could be short-lived: Pigweed can evolve resistance to the chemical in just three growing seasons, Norsworthy’s research shows. It’s just a matter of time, he said, before weeds survive dicamba, rendering it useless, just as he and other scientists warned.

A new wave of damage

Meanwhile, more farmers are buying the genetically modified seeds in self-defense. In the 2018 growing season, acres planted with dicamba-resistant crops doubled, accounting for more than half of the 90 million acres of soybeans grown in the United States.

This time, most complaints about damage came from small farmers like Joyce, beekeepers with plummeting production and master gardeners with nothing to harvest.

Joyce isn’t sure whether he will grow tomatoes next year. He’s not sure he can continue farming at all. Looking around at his blighted vegetables, trees, rosebushes and flowers, it’s hard for him to grasp the scale of the destruction that dicamba has caused throughout soybean country.

“I don’t see how they can allow anything to go on damaging that much stuff,” he said.

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Published on November 18, 2018 02:03

November 17, 2018

1 Dead, 227 Hurt in Huge French Protest on Fuel Taxes

PARIS — One protester was killed and 227 other people were injured — eight seriously — at roadblocks set up around villages, towns and cities across France on Saturday as citizens angry with rising fuel taxes rose up in a grassroots movement, posing a new challenge to beleaguered President Emmanuel Macron.

Police officers lobbed tear gas canisters at demonstrators on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris as groups of “yellow jackets,” as the protesters called themselves, tried to make their way to the presidential Elysee Palace. Later, hundreds of protesters entered the bottom of the street dotted with luxury shops where the palace is located — and where Macron lives — before being pushed back by security forces with shields.

In a similar scenario, police cleared out the huge traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, paralyzed for hours by protesters.

French Interior Ministry officials counted nearly 283,000 protesters, mostly peaceful, throughout the day at more than 2,000 sites, some setting bonfires or flying balloons.

However, some demonstrations turned violent. In Troyes, southeast of Paris, about 100 people invaded the prefecture, the local representation of the state, damaging the inside, Interior Ministry officials said. In Quimper, in Brittany, security forces used water cannon to disperse hostile protesters.

The protester who died, a 63-year-old woman, was killed when a driver caught in the blockade accelerated in a panic at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, near Chambery, in eastern France, according to Louis Laugier, the prefect, or top state official, in the Savoie region. A confrontation with protesters “got heated up for no reason” and the driver accelerated her minivan after “people started rattling her car,” a protester who witnessed the incident told BFMTV, identifying himself only as Philippe. He said the woman told them she was taking her daughter to a doctor.

An investigation into the death was opened.

Eight of the 227 people injured were in serious condition, ministry officials said at an evening briefing, without providing details. A police officer and a firefighter who intervened when protesters attacked a closed service station were among the eight.

A total of 117 people were arrested with 73 of them held for questioning.

The protesters had pledged to target tollbooths, roundabouts and other strategic traffic sites. They called themselves “yellow jackets” because most were wearing the fluorescent yellow vests that must be kept in vehicles of all French drivers in case of car troubles.

The daughter of the woman killed called for calm as she protested in Cavaillon, in southern France.

“I really want people not to let themselves become submerged by anger,” Alexandrine Mazet told RTL radio. “The yellow jackets must understand this is a peaceful movement,” she said. The young woman appeared later on BFMTV still wearing her yellow vest.

The nationwide protest was unusual because it arose from within the citizenry, backed neither by unions nor politicians, although some took part in a clear bid for supporters. It was unclear whether the upstart movement, without a leader, would survive, and what problems it might pose for Macron.

The grassroots nature of the protests, which drew supporters angry over an array of issues, made it a political hot potato for Macron’s government. Security officials treaded lightly, ordering police to use dialogue rather than force but to stop protesters from completely blocking major routes or endangering lives or property. About 30 canisters of tear gas were fired to disperse protesters at the entrance of the Mont Blanc tunnel.

“They have sent a message,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said. “It is heard. The government is attentive to all demonstrations and, of course, we must continue to answer the expectations of the French including those about their purchasing power.”

The planned increase in fuel taxes, notably for diesel fuel, spoke to those French who feel the president has asked ordinary citizens to make the largest efforts in his bid to transform France. Those French who have a hard time making ends meet often rely on cheaper diesel fuel.

Macron wants to close the gap between the price of diesel fuel and gasoline as part of his strategy to wean France off fossil fuels. A “carbon trajectory” calls for continued increases. Taxes on diesel fuel have risen 7 euro cents (nearly 8 U.S. cents) and are to keep climbing in the coming years, Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne has said. The tax on gasoline is to increase 4 euro cents.

Many drivers see this as emblematic of a presidency they view as disconnected from day-to-day economic difficulties and serving the rich.

Macron’s popularity has plunged, hovering around 30 percent.

Robert Tichit, 67, a retiree, referred to the president as “King Macron.”

“We’ve had enough of it. There are too many taxes in this country,” he said.

More than 1,000 protesters congregated at the Place de la Concorde at the bottom of the Champs-Elysees, shouting “Macron resign” as police looked on.

Michel Euler and Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed to this report.

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Published on November 17, 2018 21:07

Democrat Gillum Concedes Bid for Governor; Florida Recount Wraps Up

TALLAHASSEE, Fla.—Democrat Andrew Gillum ended his hard-fought campaign for Florida governor on Saturday, just hours before counties must turn in their official results following days of recounting ballots.

Gillum, in a video that he posted on Facebook, congratulated Republican Ron DeSantis but vowed to remain politically active although he gave no clues as his future plans. His term as Tallahassee mayor ends next week.

“This has been the journey of our lives,” said Gillum, who appeared in the video with his wife, R. Jai Gillum. “Although nobody wanted to be governor more than me, this was not just about an election cycle. This was about creating the kind of change in this state that really allows the voices of everyday people to show up again in our government.”

There was no immediate response from DeSantis or his campaign.

Gillum’s announcement came as most Florida counties were winding down their hand recount in the state’s contentious U.S. Senate race.

The smattering of results publicly posted on Saturday showed that Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson was only gaining a few hundred votes in his bitter contest with outgoing Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican.

State officials ordered a manual recount earlier in the week after a legally required machine recount showed that Scott led incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by about 12,600 votes. More than 8 million voters cast ballots in the race.

Florida’s high-profile race for governor was close as well, but not enough to trigger a hand recount.

Counties have until noon on Sunday to file their official results, but it appears the gap is too far for Nelson to close. Nelson’s campaign has remained quiet as the final count has gotten closer.

Nelson and Democrats filed several lawsuits following the close election, challenging everything from the state’s signature mismatch law to deadlines for mail-in ballots.

The Nelson campaign managed to secure only one victory in court. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker gave voters until 5 p.m. Saturday to fix their ballots if they haven’t been counted because of mismatched signatures. Nearly 5,700 ballots were rejected because signatures on ballot envelopes did not match signatures kept on file by election officials.

But Walker rejected additional lawsuits, including one that sought to change the rules used while inspecting hand ballots.

If the 76-year-old Nelson loses, it would likely spell an end to a lengthy political career that stretches back four decades. Nelson was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. A win for Scott would mark his third victory since the multimillionaire businessman launched his political career in 2010. In each race, Scott has barely edged his Democratic opponent.

State law requires a machine recount in races where the margin is 0.5 percentage points or less. Once that recount was complete, if the differences in any of the races are 0.25 percentage points or less, a hand recount is ordered. Local canvassing boards only review ballots where a vote was not recorded by voting machines.

Back in 2000, the state became the target of ridicule during the chaotic recount of the presidential election that was ultimately won by George W. Bush by 537 votes.

The stakes aren’t quite as high this time around, but there have been plenty of problems, especially in two Democratic strongholds in South Florida

On Saturday, the top elections official in Broward County acknowledged publicly that her office had misplaced more than 2,000 ballots.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel posted video in which Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said that 2,040 ballots had been “misfiled.”

“The ballots are in the building,” Snipes in the video tells members of the canvassing board responsible for doing the hand recount.

It was another snag for Snipes, who has already been under fire for the way her office has handled the election and recount. Some Republicans have been calling for Gov. Scott to remove her from office.

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Published on November 17, 2018 15:30

Trump Tours Paradise Area, Calls Wildfire a ‘Really Bad One’

PARADISE, Calif.—From the ashes of a mobile home and RV park, President Donald Trump said Saturday he came to the heart of California’s killer wildfire to fully grasp the scale of the desolation wrought on the landscape.

“We’re going to have to work quickly. … Hopefully this is going to be the last of these because this was a really, really bad one,” said the president, standing amid the crumpled foundations of homes and twisted steel of melted cars.

“I think everybody’s seen the light and I don’t think we’ll have this again to this extent,” Trump said in Paradise, the town largely destroyed by a wildfire ignited Nov. 8 that he called “this monster.”

With that bold and perhaps unlikely prediction, Trump pledged that improved forest management practices will diminish future risks. The declaration evoked his initial tweeted reaction to the fire, the worst in the state’s history, in which he seemed to blame local officials and threatened to take away federal funding.

When asked if seeing the historic devastation, which stretched for miles and left neighborhoods destroyed and fields scorched, altered his opinion on climate change, Trump answered, “No.”

The president has long voiced skepticism about man’s impact on the climate and has been reluctant to assign blame to a warming earth for the increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters.

At least 71 people died across Northern California, and authorities are trying to locate more than 1,000 people, though not all are believed missing. More than 5,500 fire personnel were battling the blaze that covered 228 square miles (590 square kilometers) and was about 50 percent contained, officials said.

For Trump, it was a day to comfort a state grieving from twin tragedies, wildfires in both Northern and Southern California as well as a mass shooting at a popular college bar north of Los Angeles.

Wearing a camouflage “USA” hat, Trump gazed solemnly at the devastation in Paradise.

Several burned-out buses and cars were nearby. Trees were burned, their branches bare and twisted. Homes were totally gone; some foundations remained, as did a chimney and, in front of one house, a Mickey Mouse lawn ornament. The fire was reported to have moved through the area at 80 mph.

“It’s going to work out well, but right now we want to take of the people that are so badly hurt,” Trump said visiting what remained of the Skyway Villa Mobile Home and RV Park. He noted “there are areas you can’t even get to them yet” and the sheer number of people unaccounted for.

“I think people have to see this really to understand it,” Trump said.

The president later toured an operation center, met with response commanders and praised the work of firefighters, law enforcement and representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in California,” he said. “It’s total devastation.”

Trump took a helicopter tour en route to Chico before he toured Paradise. A full cover of haze and the smell of smoke greeted the president upon his arrival at Beale Air Force Base near Sacramento.

“They’re out there fighting and they’re fighting like hell,” Trump said of the first responders.

He pledged that Washington would do its part by coming to the Golden State’s aid and urged the House’s Republican leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, a Trump ally and frequent White House visitor, to “come to the office” to help secure the needed funding.

Trump, who left Washington early Saturday and didn’t expect to return to the White House until well past midnight, planned to travel several hundred miles south to visit with victims of a recent country music bar shooting. A gunman killed a dozen people at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 7 before committing suicide.

Trump long has struggled to convey empathy to victims of national disasters and tragedies. His first reaction to the fires came in a tweet last week that drew criticism as unnecessarily critical and tone-deaf given the devastation: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests.”

Nature and humans share blame for the wildfires, but fire scientists are divided as to whether forest management played a major role. Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, the state has been in a drought and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and drying the shrubs and trees that provide the fuel.

He stuck to that theme in his remarks just before departing on Saturday when he outlined what he planned to discuss with Gov. Jerry Brown and Gov.-elect Gavin Newsom, both Democrats: “We will be talking about forest management. … The one thing is that everybody now knows that this is what we have to be doing and there’s no question about it. It should have been done many years ago, but I think everybody’s on the right side.”

Trump, who has long feuded with the political leaders of heavily Democratic California over issues such as immigration and voting, also has threatened to withhold federal payments to the state. After being criticized for his response, Trump has shifted gears, expressing words of encouragement to first responders and those of sympathy for the victims.

But when he was asked by Fox News in an interview set to air Sunday whether climate change played a role in the number of serious fires, he said “maybe it contributes a little bit. The big problem we have is management.”

Brown and Newsom welcomed the president’s visit, with the governor suggesting they set aside political differences since it “now is a time to pull together for the people of California.”

Brown, a fierce advocate of addressing climate change, did not respond to Trump’s statement that he has not changed his mind on the matter but pointed to several causes and they need to deal with them.

“If you really look at the facts, from a really open point of view, there are a lot of elements to be considered,” Brown said after Trump spoke. “The president came, he saw and I’m looking forward over the next months and beyond to really understand this threat of fire, the whole matter of drought and all the rest of it. It’s not one thing, it’s a lot of things and I think that if we just open our minds and look at things we’ll get more stuff done.”

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Published on November 17, 2018 14:54

California Housing Crisis Leaves Fire Evacuees Homeless

A Butte County official has said that thousands of people whose homes were destroyed in the devastating Camp Fire are unlikely to find new housing in California. The fire killed at least 71 people and has left more than 1,000 people unaccounted for. Of the approximately 50,000 people who were evacuated near Paradise, Calif., only 1,000 are staying in state evacuation shelters.

A housing crisis has left very few homes available to rent in the county, let alone the state, and the fire only made the situation worse. Many evacuees are making do for now in makeshift shelters and tents.

“Big picture, we have 6,000, possibly 7,000 households who have been displaced and who realistically don’t stand a chance of finding housing again in Butte County,” said Ed Mayer, the executive director of the Butte County Housing Authority. “I don’t even know if these households can be absorbed in California,” he added. Some people are staying with friends and family or in hotels.

Before the fire, fewer than 2 percent of the houses in Butte County were vacant. Officials estimate that 9,700 single residences and 144 multiple residences were destroyed and there are fewer than 1,000 housing units available in the county.

Hundreds of people were asked to leave their makeshift camp at a Walmart parking lot in Chico, Calif., by Sunday. Most are unsure of where they will go next; some are hesitant to even try to stay in a shelter because four of the facilities have reported recent outbreaks of norovirus, a very infectious stomach bug.

“I’d rather breathe the smoke,” said evacuee Carol Whiteburn.

After a crisis, some property owners—and hotels—exploit people’s housing needs by gouging. Last year’s fires in Santa Rosa, Calif., sent rents as high as $13,000 a month; as many as 7,000 people were unable to return to the city.

“We’re on the edge of a humanitarian crisis,” Mayer said. “We don’t have people sick and dying right now. But we have folks living in a very vulnerable position and could become sick and die.”

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Published on November 17, 2018 14:51

New York Officials Push Aside Public Housing and Schools for Amazon

After learning that New York taxpayers will be forced to finance a helipad for Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, it’s possible many believed Amazon’s sweetheart headquarters deal with the Empire State couldn’t get any worse.

But as additional details of the agreement continue to pour in—and as experts estimate its true cost to taxpayers—critics are warning that the deal is looking increasingly awful for ordinary New Yorkers.

As Politico reported on Thursday, the site where Amazon will build offices for its new headquarters in Long Island City was previously reserved for nearly 1,500 public housing units for needy families—but not anymore.

“Most—if not all—of that intended housing is now off the table,” Politico noted.

News that the public housing plan could be scrapped entirely to make room for Amazon offices sparked immediate outrage on social media and among New York lawmakers.

“The fact that massive public subsidies are helping eliminate affordable housing units is just the latest reason this bad deal needs to be torn up and thrown away,” Democratic state Sen. Michael Gianaris, who represents Long Island City, declared in a statement.

“It just keeps getting worse,” said journalist Sarah Jaffe.

Nothing short of scandalous: trading affordable housing for giveaways to the world’s richest man. Oh, and don’t forgot the *helipad*.#HQ2Scam #NoAmazonNYC pic.twitter.com/HkO8iYPOu5

— Daniel Altschuler (@altochulo) November 16, 2018

It keeps getting uglier. And it still is not a done deal.

Opposed: @Ocasio2018. @SenGianaris, @rontkim, @jessicaramos, @Biaggi4NY, @zellnor4ny, @JumaaneWilliams, @NYCSpeakerCoJo, @SenGillibrand, @JumaaneWilliams. Who am I missing? Esp. state senators. https://t.co/ZleUcGE9iD

— Zephyr Teachout (@ZephyrTeachout) November 16, 2018

That’s not all. In addition to killing plans for a major public housing development, Amazon’s Long Island City headquarters will also reportedly displace over 1,000 New York City public school workers to carve out space for the trillion-dollar tech behemoth.

Citing an anonymous school official, Vice News reported on Thursday that “more than 1,000 New York City public school employees will lose their offices to accommodate Amazon’s new secondary headquarters in Queens.”

As Common Dreams reported, Amazon on Tuesday officially announced its decision to split its second headquarters (HQ2) between Long Island City, New York and Crystal City, Virginia.

Since the company’s announcement, details of the behind-closed-doors deals the governments of New York and Virginia cut with Amazon have sparked outrage on social media and protests on the ground, with local communities denouncing the lavish taxpayer-funded gifts and expressing alarm that Amazon’s arrival could further drive up housing prices while exacerbating sky-high inequality.

While Amazon claimed that it will receive $2.1 billion in total taxpayer “incentives” from both Long Island City and Crystal City combined, a new analysis by Good Jobs First found that the actual cost to taxpayers will be at least $4.6 billion, and likely much higher.

“The taxpayer costs of these two deals is high, both in absolute terms and on a per-job basis, contrary to Amazon’s artful spin,” Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, said in a statement. “Together, we believe they exceed $4.6 billion and the cost per job in New York is at least $112,000, not the $48,000 the company used in a selective and incomplete press release calculation.”

“It is very odd that Amazon’s own press release includes information about its economic development incentives,” LeRoy added. “Such information normally comes only from governors or mayors. It suggests Amazon is trying hard to control the narrative about the cost-benefit numerator, i.e., to minimize the perceived subsidy costs while maximizing the benefits.”

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Published on November 17, 2018 10:04

Brothers Tied to Pittsburgh Shooting Suspect Had Neo-Nazi Group’s Flyer

When federal agents searched the Washington, D.C., house of two brothers they had linked to the suspected Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, they found a troubling scene.

There were hollow-point bullets, “ballistic vests and helmets,” a “marijuana grow” operation and a Nazi flag. A noose dangled from a bunk bed, a small toy hung by its neck, and a flyer was found promoting the neo-Nazi organization known as Atomwaffen Division.

Prosecutors indicated that the contents of the house, detailed in a federal court filing submitted Thursday night, bolstered their fear that the brothers might well have been bent on violence. Edward Clark, the younger brother, killed himself the day of the synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh, but Jeffrey Clark, according to federal prosecutors, had saluted the killings and had fantasized about killing blacks and Jews himself.

On Friday, a grand jury in Washington returned an indictment charging Jeffrey Clark with one federal count of illegal possession of a weapon while using or addicted to drugs, and one count of possessing high-capacity magazines. His attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. Clark was arrested on Nov. 9 on weapons charges after his family contacted the FBI, fearing he might harm himself or others.

In an earlier court filing, the authorities said they had been told by Clark family members that the brothers were heavily involved in the white supremacist movement and “that they were connected with the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter through Gab,” the online forum favored by many neo-Nazis. The federal authorities had initially claimed that Jeffrey Clark had referred online to the synagogue killings as a “dry run” and suggested that might mean he had further information about the slaughter. In their filing Thursday, prosecutors appeared to amend that claim, saying it appeared Clark might have been referring to the failed bombing campaign directed at a number of liberal politicians. They make no claim either brother played a role in the planning of the attack.

The revelation about the Atomwaffen flyer comes a day after ProPublica and Frontline reported that Edward Clark, the younger brother who killed himself last month, may have been associated with the organization. Atomwaffen is thought to have scores of members around the country, and the anti-Semitic organization calls for a coming race war and encourages lone-wolf terror attacks like what happened in Pittsburgh. The group’s members or associates have been charged in five murders in the last two years.

“JOIN YOUR LOCAL NAZIS!” the flyer found in the house reads.

Frontline and ProPublica have been investigating Atomwaffen for a film airing on Tuesday, exploring the group’s ideology and its efforts to recruit from the U.S. military. Both brothers were also affiliated with another white supremacist group, Vanguard America, which was at the center of the violence in the 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Many Vanguard America members ended up joining Atomwaffen in the months after Charlottesville.

As part of its ongoing investigation, Frontline and ProPublica matched an online handle, DC_Stormer, prosecutors say was used by Edward Clark with one that also appears in secret chat logs for Atomwaffen. And a former member of the group said that he recognized the handle.

Court filings on Thursday reveal Jeffrey Clark to be an unemployed high school graduate, marijuana user and a self-avowed white nationalist ideologue who supports violence. In late October, he posted a statement online in seeming approval of the pipe bombs mailed to the offices of CNN and prominent Democrats including the Obamas, Hillary Clinton and George Soros: “This was just a dry run for things to come.”

The post on Gab, the fringe social media platform popular among some racists and extremists, was followed by another with praise for Pittsburgh shooting suspect Robert Bowers, whom he labeled a “hero.”

“Every last one of them deserved exactly what happened to them and so much worse,” he wrote.

After Clark’s arrest, prosecutors said in their filing, he agreed to talk and acknowledged his membership in white nationalist groups. Clark also reported that he and his brother became interested in firearms after the 2016 election as they thought a civil war was brewing.

When asked what motivated Pittsburgh shooting suspect Bowers, Clark told an agent: “He did it because he’s a white nationalist and he’s mad at Jews. … I know why he did it, or I know why he claimed he did it, I saw the post and everything. He was upset with what … what he sees as Jewish groups destroying America based on what he saw from that caravan, the migrant caravan that was going on, and he decided he wanted to retaliate.”

Clark also told the FBI he “may or may not have” communicated with Bowers on Gab.

“I recognized the name and when I first heard about it. I saw the post and recognized the picture,” he said. “I will say unequivocally that I never had any interactions with him that I remember personally and I certainly never spoke. … I said some very, very extreme stuff, I said some stuff that even like, you know, maybe like expressed like support of violence if certain lines were crossed, but I never told anyone to go do anything or ever issued any credible threat or anything like that.”

In discussing what he meant by “lines,” Clark said, “We should take up arms against the government if they take away our guns,” the filing said.

Prosecutors urged the court in the Nov. 15 filing to keep Clark in detention pending trial. They said his “dry run” post on Gab was “clearly designed to convey a message that he and others who hold his views plan to commit future acts of violence.”

“The Court should not view this statement as simple hyperbole in light of the defendant’s access to weapons, possession of body armor, possession of high-capacity ammunition magazines, glorification of acts of violence, and proclamations that he was ‘committed to the survival of the white race by any means necessary,’” prosecutors said.

On Friday, a judge agreed, ordering that Clark remain in detention.

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Published on November 17, 2018 08:34

November 16, 2018

Storm Sets Off Chaos on Roads, Anger at Officials

TRENTON, N.J. — Exhausted commuters pointed fingers and demanded answers Friday, a day after a modest snowstorm stranded motorists on slippery roads for hours, paralyzed the public transit network serving New York City and its suburbs and even forced some New Jersey children to stay overnight in their schools.

How, they asked, could a few inches of snow in a region used to this sort of weather lead to such chaos?

“Clearly we could have done better and we will do better,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised a “full review.”

“We’re all unhappy with what happened,” he said.

The storm, which had earlier socked the South and Midwest, swept into the New York City metro area just before the evening commute Thursday before heading north into New England overnight.

The snowfall totals were modest in most places — 6 or 7 inches (15 or 18 centimeters) — but it was unusually icy and thousands of slow-speed car crashes led to gridlock that made it tough for plows to get through.

In West Orange, New Jersey, more than a hundred students stayed late into the night, some until morning, at a middle school after buses became stranded for hours and turned back. Staffers stayed overnight and made dinner for students who couldn’t get home.

“It was so long, I’m just excited to go home and go to sleep,” student Breanna Dannestoy told NBC New York.

Some New York City schoolchildren were stuck on buses for up to five hours. The last one got home at 3 a.m. Friday, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said.

Murphy, a Democrat, said “lousy” forecasts were partly to blame.

He took a pounding on social media from people complaining about his handling of the storm, including one of his highest-profile constituents. Former Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, tweeted at Murphy that it took him nearly six hours to travel roughly 30 miles (48 kilometers). Murphy didn’t respond directly to his predecessor.

Gary Szatkowski, former chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service in New Jersey, said on Twitter that it was the state’s poorly executed snow removal plan, not meteorologists, who screwed up.

“They were planning to clean up while freezing rain/sleet were pouring down out of the sky. That’s not a plan; that’s a recipe for disaster,” he tweeted.

De Blasio, a Democrat, said forecasts had led city officials to expect just an inch of snow. That meant city buses weren’t equipped with snow chains and salters weren’t out treating the roads ahead of the storm.

The wintry weather also caused a traffic nightmare in Pennsylvania, with numerous vehicles stuck for several hours from the Lehigh Valley to the New Jersey state line. Police sometimes drove on the opposite side of the highway, honking their horns to wake up drivers who had fallen asleep while sitting in traffic. Tens of thousands of businesses were without power Friday in Pennsylvania, mostly in the western part of the state.

Among the odd storm sights there was a camel named Einstein.

The animal was en route to an event put on by a Jewish organization when the vehicle he was traveling in became stuck north of Philadelphia, the group said. Einstein was not able to make it to his destination, as his handlers turned back to Peaceable Kingdom Petting Zoo where they started.

Some drivers woke up in their cars Friday morning after being stuck overnight on the Major Deegan Expressway in the Bronx. A multicar pileup on the George Washington Bridge partially choked off one of the three vehicle crossings across the Hudson River.

Buses stopped running, causing New York City’s major bus terminal to fill with passengers to such dangerous levels that officials closed the doors and had people line up around the block.

As many as 17 inches (43 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of upstate New York. Many schools in upstate New York and northern New England were delayed or closed.

In Vermont, aside from the region’s traffic nightmare, the storm was a boon for Vermont’s ski resorts. Okemo Mountain and Stowe Mountain Resort opened Friday as the snow continued to fall. Sugarbush is opening Saturday. Killington Resort is already open and other ski areas plan to open later this month.

Some areas of Massachusetts received more than 9 inches (23 centimeters) of snow in the storm, which turned to rain overnight to complicate the morning commute. State police said a stretch of the Massachusetts Turnpike east was closed Friday morning after several tractor-trailer crashes.

___

Associated Press writers Lisa Rathke in Montpelier, Vt., Karen Matthews in New York, David Porter in Newark, N.J., Bob Salsberg in Boston, Kathy McCormack in Concord, N.H., and Mike Catalini and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J., contributed to this story.

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Published on November 16, 2018 21:23

Storm Sets Off Chaos on Roads, Fury Among Drivers