The Supreme Court And The Wild Leaker Chase

June 1, 2022

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“You can’t get rich in politics unless you’re a crook.” — Harry Truman

DINO Pushes Fossil Fuel

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is a DINO — a Democrat in name only. He almost single handedly quashed President Biden’s signature $1.9 trillion ‘social infrastructure’ and climate change-tackling legislation. Manchin joined with Republicans in blocking a bill that would have federally protected abortion rights. He doesn’t support voting rights legislation or weakening the Senate’s filibuster rules to enable his party to pass much needed, small “d” democratic protections. Arguably, Manchin isn’t truly concerned about legislation that could increase the national debt, spur inflation, or hurt his home state’s coal mining cultural roots. His decades-long opposition to tougher environmental regulations for coal plants, or more recent opposition to significant federal spending aimed at reducing greenhouse gasses, shows he’s really just another self-interested politician. Why? Because Manchin has quietly been making millions from Enersystems, the coal business he and his brother founded in 1988 when Manchin was a state senator.

At the time, West Virginia was considering building a power plant in Grant Town, a small former mining community north of Fairmont. Manchin helped clear the way for the plant’s construction while negotiating a deal to become the only supplier of its fuel. Not just any fuel, but discarded coal known as “garbage of bituminous” or “gob,” which is much more polluting than regular coal. When the EPA raised concerns, Manchin intervened and the objections went away. Later, Governor Manchin used his influence to win a rate hike for electricity charged by the plant, increasing bills for ordinary West Virginians. It was subsequently revealed Manchin was getting a cut of those higher utility charges.

Sometime after his 2010 election to the U.S. Senate, Manchin became chair of the Energy Committee, positioning him to block environmental regulations that would have impacted the Grant Town plant and other gob-burning facilities. Biden’s Build Back Better agenda envisioned spending billions to fight climate change, threatening Grant Town with tighter federal climate regulations. Recently many West Virginians were surprised to learn that Manchin made almost a half million dollars from Enersystems in 2020, and $5.6 million over the previous decade. Years ago Manchin painted prominent Republican officials in the state as “involved in self-service as opposed to public service.” Now more people are asking if Manchin is one of those politicians primarily involved in self-service. (CNN, NYT, WaPo, Politico, Guardian)

A Precautionary Freeze

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Monday he is introducing new gun-control legislation that, if passed, would implement a “national freeze” on buying, importing, transferring and selling handguns, effectively capping the number of such weapons already in the country. The bill includes “red flag” laws allowing judges to temporarily remove firearms from people deemed a danger to themselves or others, and stiffer penalties for gun smuggling and trafficking. Officials call the legislation “the most significant action on gun violence in a generation.”
“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible and follow all necessary laws,” Trudeau said. “We are, however, facing a level of gun violence in our communities that is unacceptable.” The proposed legislation came after mass shootings in Texas and across the U.S.-Canada border in Buffalo, NY. Trudeau said gun violence was increasing and “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter.” (WaPo)

Mercenaries in Mali

Mali has fought armed militants for years, initially with help from French and European forces. But as French forces began withdrawing, the Wagner Group moved in — a step denounced by 15 European countries, Canada and the U.S. The Wagner Group is a network of operatives and companies serving as a “proxy force” of Russia’s ministry of defense, thought to be led by Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin.
The mercenaries ally with embattled political and military leaders who pay for their services in cash or with lucrative mining concessions for precious minerals. Wagner operatives appeared in Ukraine in 2014, and later in Libya, Syria and countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Mozambique, Sudan, and now Mali. In late March, Malian soldiers and their Russian allies stormed the town of Moura in central Mali; for days they looted houses, held captives in dry riverbeds and indiscriminately executed hundreds of men. The violations fit a pattern of horrific abuses reported in other countries where Wagner mercenaries have been deployed. (NYT)

Additional World News

The Supreme Court And The Wild Leaker Chase

Supreme Court officials are escalating their search to find the “criminal” who leaked to Politico Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. SCOTUS law clerks — overwhelmingly graduates of Ivy League law schools who’ve had prior clerkships with prominent U.S. appellate court judges — are being required to sign affidavits and provide their cell phone records. Some clerks are so alarmed by these unprecedented moves, particularly the sudden requests for private cell data, that they’ve begun exploring whether to hire outside counsel.
Chief Justice John Roberts ordered the investigation on May 3, tapping the Court’s marshal to lead the extraordinary probe. Scrutiny of the law clerks may be heating up, but they’re not the only insiders who had access to Alito’s draft opinion. It would have been circulated to the nine justices, their clerks, and key staffers within each justice’s chambers, and select administrative offices. Overall, former law clerks say, the document could have been sent through regular channels to nearly 75 people. (CNN)

A Golden (State) Example

Hours after the Uvalde school shooting, Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz told reporters that policies to restrict guns were off the table, saying “That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.” He’s wrong. California has the toughest gun laws in America, and they are working. The Golden State has significantly lowered gun deaths through its stringent firearm legislation.
California’s rate of firearm mortality is among the nation’s lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas. Californians are 25% less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states. California lawmakers have done a lot to keep firearms out of the hands of high-risk people, like those with mental illness; people convicted of a violent misdemeanor can’t have a gun for the next ten years. Background checks are required for purchases from licensed dealers and private parties. Data indisputably show that the lower the prevalence of ownership, the lower the rate of firearm violence. (Texas Tribune, NYT, cdc.gov, pplc.org.)

Additional USA News

A Bone To … Eat?

The world is producing over three times the quantity of meat that it did 50 years ago. Pig meat is the most popular globally, but the production of poultry is increasing most rapidly, from 15% in the early 1970s to 36% today. Beef production is about half of what it was for the same time period. Livestock production has large environmental impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, land and water use, and cattle and sheep have a much larger environmental impact than poultry and pigs.
The pursuit of a never-ending supply of low-cost lean protein has turned chickens into meat machines. Today’s chickens have been bred and fed to grow five times fatter than their mid-century ancestors — putting on weight so quickly that their organs can’t keep up and death rates soar if the birds are kept alive much past six weeks. The majority of the world’s chickens are reared in industrial farms, which again drives down costs at the expense of animal welfare.
A Finnish startup says it has come up with a new way to squeeze more meat out of a single chicken. All it takes is a little ground-up bone. In a small pilot plant in the Finnish city of Kotka, the founders of SuperGround have figured out how to process chicken bones so they can be incorporated into ground chicken products like nuggets or meatballs. The startup’s founders point out that using more of the bird lowers the environmental footprint of every pound of meat and drives the cost of it down at a time when chicken prices are soaring. Bon Appétit! (ourworldindata.org., Journal of Animal Science, Wired)