Idiots wasting taxpayer money on fake Climate Change.
Los Angeles officials are going forward with a $40,000-a-mile program to coat public streets to fight climate change, despite the city’s many financial challenges — including a $73 million budget shortfall for dealing with the ever-expanding homeless population.
The program uses a light-colored sealant to cover the streets, which decreases the pavement temperature of so-called “heat-islands,” according to media reports.
The LA Street Services began rolling out the project last May, which preliminary testing shows has reduced the temperature of roadways by up to 10 degrees.
The project involves applying a light gray coating of the product CoolSeal, made by the company GuardTop.
Los Angeles painting city streets white in bid to combat climate change
California officials are hoping their latest attempt to stem the rising tides of climate change leads to a more socially conscious — and cooler — summer.
“CoolSeal is applied like conventional sealcoats to asphalt surfaces to protect and maintain the quality and longevity of the surface,” according to the company website. “While most cool pavements on the market are polymer based, CoolSeal is a water-based, asphalt emulsion.”
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Last year, the L.A. Daily Newsreported on the high cost of the project — and that local officials approved it nonetheless.
The morning temperature of the black asphalt in the middle of a nearby intersection read 93 degrees. The new light gray surface on Jordan Avenue read a cool 70 — on what would turn out to be the first heat wave of the year.
“It’s awesome. It’s very cool — both literally and figuratively,” exclaimed Councilman Bob Blumenfield, whose Los Angeles district includes Canoga Park, squinting into the laser handheld thermometer. “We are trying to control ‘the heat island effect’ ” — or hotter temperatures caused by urban sprawl.
“The downside: we won’t be able to fry eggs on the streets,” Blumenfield said.
Los Angeles painting city streets white in bid to combat climate change
California officials are hoping their latest attempt to stem the rising tides of climate change leads to a more socially conscious — and cooler — summer.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is eyeing a run for the White House in 2020, has embraced the program “as part of an overall plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2025,” according to Fox News.
And environmental activists are praising L.A.’s street-sealing project.
“Advocates are confident that advances in asphalt technology will drive down the cost,” Mother Nature Network reported on Sunday.
“There’s also the related economic benefits to consider: in once-sweltering neighborhoods where streets are now painted white, residents will be less likely to crank the air conditioning on full blast, leading to significant savings on energy bills and decreased emissions,” the website reported.
“What’s more, the highly reflective nature of white-coated asphalt means that street lighting doesn’t have to kick in quite as early in the evening, saving additional energy.”
During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, former FBI Director James Comey’s wife, Patrice, confessed that she supported Hillary Clinton and was “devastated” when Donald Trump won.
“I wanted a woman president really badly, and I supported Hillary Clinton,” Patrice Failor Comey told Stephanopoulos. “A lot of my friends worked for her. And I was devastated when she lost.”
James Comey admitted that his wife and girls all took part in the Women’s March in response to Donald Trump’s election.
“My wife and girls marched in the Women’s March, the day after President Trump’s inauguration,” he said. “At least my four daughters — probably all five of my kids, wanted Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president. I know my amazing spouse did.”
In some of the Mexican towns playing host to a “caravan” of more than 1,200 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. border, the welcome mat has been rolled out despite President Donald Trump’s call for Mexican authorities to stop them.
Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants, participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The officials have conscripted buses, cars, ambulances and police trucks. But the help may not be entirely altruistic.
“The authorities want us to leave their cities,” said Rodrigo Abeja, an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “They’ve been helping us, in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions.”
At some point this spring, the caravan’s 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey that began at Tapachula near the Guatemalan border on March 25 will end at the U.S. border, where some of its members will apply for asylum, while others will attempt to sneak into the United States.
Abeja said there was a lot of pressure from authorities to stop the caravan “because of Donald Trump’s reaction.” The Mexican government issued a statement late on Monday saying it was committed to “legal and orderly” migration.
The government said the caravan had been taking place since 2010 and was largely made up of Central Americans entering Mexico who had not met the necessary legal requirements.
“For this reason, participants in this (caravan) are subject to an administrative migratory procedure, while 400 have already been repatriated to their countries of origin, in strict accordance with the law and respecting their human rights,” it said.
Those without permission to stay in Mexico or who had failed to request it through the proper channels could expect to be returned to their homelands, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘DOING LITTLE’
Trump railed on Twitter against the caravan on Monday, accusing Mexico of “doing very little, if not NOTHING” to stop the flow of immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally. “They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA,” he concluded.
Mexico’s interior minister Alfonso Navarrete did not directly address the caravan, but he wrote on Twitter that he spoke to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday, and that the two had “agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country.”
Mexico must walk a delicate line with the United States because the countries are in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with Canada.
At the same time, Mexican left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 18-point lead ahead of the July 1 election, according to a poll published on Monday.
A Lopez Obrador victory could usher in a Mexican government less accommodating toward the United States on both trade and immigration issues.
Mexican Senator Angelica de la Pena, who presides over the Senate’s human rights commission, told Reuters that Mexico should protect migrants’ rights despite the pressure from Trump.
Former President Vicente Fox called for Mexican officials to take a stand against Trump’s attacks. Trump keeps “blackmailing, offending and denigrating Mexico and Mexicans,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Under Mexican law, Central Americans who enter Mexico legally are generally allowed to move freely through the country, even if their goal is to cross illegally into the United States.
‘WE’RE SUFFERING’
Migrants in the caravan cite a variety of reasons for joining it. Its members are disproportionately from Honduras, which has high levels of violence and has been rocked by political upheaval in recent months following the re-election of U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando Hernández, in an intensely disputed election.
Maria Elena Colindres Ortega, a member of the caravan and, until January, a member of Congress in Honduras, said she is fleeing the political upheaval at home. “We’ve had to live through a fraudulent electoral process,” she said. “We’re suffering a progressive militarization and lack of institutions, and … they’re criminalizing those who protested.”
Colindres Ortega, who opposed the ruling party in Honduras, said she spiraled into debt after serving without pay for the last 18 months of her four-year term. She decided to head north after a fellow congressman from her party put out word on Facebook that a caravan of migrants was gathering in southern Mexico, leaving home with a small bag with necessities and photos of her children.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped coordinate migrant caravans for the past several years, although previously they had a maximum of several hundred participants. During the journey members of the organization instruct the migrants about their rights.
“We accompany at least those who want to request asylum,” said Alex Mensing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras’ program director. “We help prepare them for the detention process and asylum process before they cross the border, because it’s so difficult for people to have success if they don’t have the information.”
Typically, Central Americans have not fared well with U.S. asylum claims, particularly those from Honduras. A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases, the highest rate of any nationality. Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico, where immigration data shows that 5,000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone, the highest number since May 2016.
Manuel Padilla, chief of the border patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, one of the busiest crossing points on the U.S. Mexico border, said in an interview with Reuters that he worries the caravan could “generate interest for other groups to do the same thing,” but he was not terribly nervous about coping with the group currently traveling.
“Not to be flippant,” Padilla said, “but it’s similar numbers to what we are seeing every day pretty much.”
(This version of the story corrects spelling to Manuel from Maunel in penultimate paragraph
What About All The Killings By Gang Members And Homies In The Hood.
A group of Chicago youth staged a “die-in’ at City Hall to demand that the city defund police and fund marginalized communities instead. The youth, all members of #NoCopAcademy, also announced that the organization is suing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for withholding critical emails regarding construction of the proposed $95 million building for a Police and Fire training center in West Garfield Park.
They Are On Their Way To College I’m Sure.
“Rahm supports schools and resources for cops, not for Black and Brown kids,” their mission reads. “We demand a redirecting of this $95 million into Chicago’s most marginalized communities instead. Real community safety comes from fully-funded schools and mental health centers, robust after-school and job-training programs, and social and economic justice. We want investment in our communities, not expanded resources for police.”
Today, members of the #NoCopAcademy — a movement led by Black youth in Chicago but fueled and organized by a group of multiracial youth— took over Chicago’s City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Dr., to demand that the mayor invests in black and brown communities and resources for the youth.
The young protestors first disrupted the Chicago City Council meeting and then staged a “die-in” in the City Hall lobby. The group set up cardboard tombstones with the names of people killed in police shootings, like Laquan McDonald, an unarmed Black teen fatallyshot by Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke. The tombstones also had the names of schools, mental health facilities, and social service institutions that have been shut down by the city due to lack of funding.
“16 shots and a cover-up!” the group chanted as police arrived at the lobby, a twitter video shows.
The youth argue that Chicago already spends $1.5 billion on police every year, an approximately $4 million every day.
“We spend 300% more on the CPD as a city than we do on the Departments of Public Health, Family and Support Services, Transportation, and Planning and Development (which handles affordable housing). This plan is being praised as a development opportunity to help local residents around the proposed site, but when Rahm closed 50 schools in 2013, six were in this neighborhood,” their mission reads.
West Garfield Park is a predominantly Black neighborhood and it was in September 2017 that community leaders decided to take matters into their own hands by creating the #NoCopAcademy Movement, wrote Juanita Tennyson for Teen Vogue. The group of teens met with City Council members, held press conferences, canvassed and door knocked on the West Side to raise awareness of the project.
Maria Mora, described as a lead organizer and canvasser with #NoCopAcademy spoke before City Council and said that the group had surveyed 500 residents of West Garfield Park and communities nearby about the project.
“88% are opposed,” she said. Mora added that the majority agreed that building a police academy was not the “best deal for a $95 million investment” in the neighborhood, and 7% need more information.
Listen. Listen listen listen! Maria has been leading canvassing on the west side asking neighbors of proposed cop academy what they think. She breaks down the results of the 500 people surveyed so far here and it’s
She added that most people agreed that the investment in the West Side should be in community safety, schools, community spaces, mental health clinics, substance abuse clinics, homelessness and to reclaiming abandoned spaces.
During a Council meeting in November 2017, Chance the Rapper spoke out against Rahm’s plan and shortly after took it to social media, making #NoCopAcademy a trending topic.
Today, the Grammy-winning South Side rap artist sent his support to the youth at City Hall through a tweet.
“Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy121 N LASALLE ST,” he tweeted.
Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy
121 N LASALLE ST
“All the aldermen on the West Side voted for this because they understand — they have felt forgotten from the type of public investments that can spur economic growth,” Emanuel said. “It will have its own value of safety for the entire city. It will have its own value of safety… to the West Side. And it will be an investment in the kind of economic activity we want to see.”
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) in charge of the West Garfield Park area said that the academy would provide a way for the department to try to fix some of the training inadequacies and, that way, address the pattern of constitutional violations by police against residents. She added that the training center could be an anchor for economic development and give residents a sense of safety in a part of the city that has been beset by poverty and violence for decades, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The only aldermen to vote no was Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) who in the midst of today’s action in City Hall tweeted a series of photos of an introduction of an ordinance for a “Chicago Civilian Oversight Commission.”
“#LaquanMcDonald, #RekiaBoyd, the victims of police violence deserve TRUE civilian oversight & accountability. This ordinance from Mayor’s Public Safety Committee Chair is a joke and an insult to the victims of police violence and every Chicagoan fighting for justice in policing.”
I got off work early for spring break and headed directly to City Hall where #NoCopAcademy organizers and supporters have taken over the lobby since around noon.
Bringing A Rock To A Gun Fight Is Like Fighting This Creature With A Plastic Fork.
The superintendent of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountain School District says his students avail themselves of rocks with which to defend against mass shooters.
WNEP reports that superintendent Dr. David Helsel told a Pennsylvania House Education Committee, “Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned.”
Bringing A Rock To A Gun Fight Will Get You Put In Boothill Graveyard In Tombstone City.
Helsel explained how the plan to throw rocks came about: “At one time I just had the idea of river stone, they`re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard and they will create or cause pain, which can distract.”
He stressed that doors have been re-enforced, making them difficult to break through, and students have also been trained in “barricading the doors” to make breaching them even more difficult. But the students are armed with rocks in the event that a shooter does get through.
And I Said Yes We Will Put American First You Dumb Jackasses.
The GOP’s business-first leadership has expanded the H-2B visa-worker program, so reducing marketplace pressure on companies to offer higher wages to Americans just months before the November election.
The pre-election giveaway is buried on page 1760 of the 2232-page 2018 omnibus bill, where language allows the Department of Homeland Security to greatly expand the size of the H-2B visa-worker program up to roughly 100,000 imported workers:
SEC. 205. Notwithstanding the [66,000] numerical limitation set forth in section 214(g)(1)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(1)(B)), the Secretary of Homeland Security, after consultation with the Secretary of Labor, and upon the determination that the needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal year 2018 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary nonagricultural labor, may increase the total number of aliens who may receive a visa under section 101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b) of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b)) in such fiscal year above such limitation by not more than the highest number of H–2B nonimmigrants who participated in the H–2B returning worker program in any fiscal year in which returning workers were exempt from such numerical limitation.
The jargon gives the green light to Senators and Representatives to pressure DHS leaders until unless they agree to hand out more H-2B visas to the politicians’ local employers.
Many thanks, @timkaine & @MarkWarner for signing the letter to our Senate leaders urging them to include language in the FY18 omnibus package requiring caps to be increased for temporary worker visas. #SaveH2B. Time is running out for many small businesses.
“This shows that Congress uses the budget process to grant special access to insider lobbyists,” said lawyer John Miano, who opposes visa-worker programs. “By granting the ability to slip special interest provisions into a bill that must pass Congress, it rewards those who supply donations,” he added.
(Mitch Says) “get your hand out of my ass” Paul
The H-2B visa-workers are imported by landscapers, forestry companies, seafood processors, construction firms, resorts, hotels and restaurants to import foreign workers for seasonal work. The imported workers are not cheap — see the data here — but their arrival means that employers do not have to raise their wages to persuade Americans to take seasonal jobs.
Moreover, if they raised their wages high enough to attract Americans to the seasonal jobs, then the companies would also have to raise wages for their year-round and supervisory workers.
Those extra wages would reduce company profits, raise costs and reduce the number of customers, and shrink the number of companies. But the extra wages would also leave hundreds of thousands of American voters working in higher-wage jobs, and would also nudge many additional employers to raise wages.
That free-market outcome is anathema to many GOP leaders, including House Majority Leader Paul Ryan. He has repeatedly said that immigration rules should be tuned to help employers — not employees — and that CEOs should be allowed to hire “any willing worker,” even if those workers live far outside the United States.
In 2015, Ryan sharply increased the size of the H-2B program, but after Donald Trump’s shocking victory in 2016, he let the program return to the 66,000 level.
In 2017, Ryan against pushed to expand the program with a 2018-style rule that encouraged legislators to pressure DHS officials for additional visas. Under then-DHS chief John Kelly, the agency reluctantly granted some additional visas, but far fewer than sought by business groups.
In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security has started distributing the 66,000 regular H-2B visas via a lottery because so many companies asked for a share of the H-2B visas.
The H-2B program is dwarfed by the size of the white-collar guest worker programs, via the H-1B, L-1, J-1, H-4, TN, and OPT programs. Collectively, these white-collar outsourcing visas keep more than 1 million foreign university graduates in healthcare, computer, business, and design jobs sought by American graduates.
The existence of the H-2B visa program creates a “crony-capitalist” economy. Companies which win the government-provided workers get to reduce their payroll costs, win more customers and generate more profits. Companies which do not get H-2B workers shrink and lose business. This dynamic forces many companies and labor-brokers to compete for the H-2Bs and to lobby for even more H-2Bs, so generating business donations and endorsements for politicians — at the cost of cutting wages for many Americans.
The program also distorts local economies. For example, in forest towns, the program allows out-of-state forestry contractors to ignore local job-applicants in favor of foreign H-2B workers.
Caleb Jordan Schulz@Based_Jedi
Andy Oz@AndyOz2
