PNN - N.O.W. and Zevon and Fred too

PNN - NOW & Zevon
PNN Brings you More Progressive Voices. Insights and perspectives on the daily challenges on the TRUMPERIUM.
Our Senior Political Commentator Brook Hines discusses her latest political Insights and then is joined by her colleague Fred Barr her partner in their Political Consulting firm PROGRESSION PARTNERSHIP.


Brook and Fred will discuss in a New Segment on POP-CULTURE - a report on the FSOCIETY from the Mr. Robot Show.
Next we are joined by Crystal Zevon an ACTIVIST Extraordinaire who works as a Highly Committed Peace Activist spends much time and Energy on Indigenous Peoples Rights from the East Coast to the West Coast and is very engaged in a wide range of Environmental Issues. This is a voice you need to hear.

Our final guest this week is, another Giant of Human Rights Meredith Ockman who's efforts so many of us are aware of as SE District Director of the NATIONAL ORGANIZATION of WOMEN and President of the Board of the South Florida Women's Health Foundation, her tireless human rights efforts, her ongoing work with Planned Parenthood and on a local level she's actually also somehow finds time to work on Animal Welfare projects

LISTEN


PNN - 10/15/17

1. Top Trump Official for Pipeline Safety Profits from Selling Oil Spill Equipment
A newly appointed federal regulator charged with overseeing pipeline safety personally profits from oil spill responses, a DeSmog investigation has found.
Drue Pearce is the acting administrator for the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), an agency in the Department of Transportation responsible for ensuring oil and gas pipeline integrity. However, she is also associated with a company specializing in the sale of oil spill equipment.
Pearce, a Republican from Alaska, was appointed on August 7 by the Trump administration to serve as PHMSA’s deputy administrator, a position that does not require U.S. Senate confirmation. However, since at the time the administration had yet to nominate an administrator for the agency, Pearce stepped into the role as acting administrator.
In early September, Trump finally nominated, and last Friday the Senate confirmed rail transport executive Howard Elliot as PHMSA administrator. Once Elliot formally takes the helm at PHMSA, Pearce will serve as his deputy.


Pearce’s Oil Spill Business
Business records filed in the state of Alaska and reviewed by DeSmog show that since 2009 Pearce and her husband, Michael F. Williams, have owned Spill Shield Inc., an Anchorage-based company selling equipment for oil spill responses. The company’s website offers various products, including booms, baffles, skimmers, absorbents, and oil spill response kits.
The company advertises itself as “the Arctic’s preferred partner for environmental compliance products & Oil Spill Response,” and says its products “are very popular in small northern communities, in mining industrial and construction industries, and fishing and hunting lodges.”

2. SLAVE LABOR... by any other name PLEASE!
RSN 
California inmates are fighting on the front lines to contain raging wildfires, all while state leaders secretly worked to keep them imprisoned and fighting fires for little to no cost.
In recent weeks, parts of the drought-stricken state have ravaged by wildfires, leaving at least 34 people dead and forcing some 20,000 residents to evacuate. The flames have charred over 190,000 acres of land and damaged and/or destroyed around 3,500 structures.
Among those battling the blazes are 3,800 inmates, both men and women, who make up 13 percent of California’s firefighting force and whose cheap labor saves taxpayers $124 million per year, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Working on salaries of just $2 a day and an extra $1 per hour for their time on a fire line, inmates earn next to nothing for their work, compared to civilian firefighters who have a starting salary of $40,000 per year.
Some have compared the work to slave labor.
“The pay is ridiculous,” La’Sonya Edwards, a female inmate who battles blazes in Southern California, told The New York Times in August. “There are some days we are worn down to the core — and this isn’t that different from slave conditions. We need to get paid more for what we do.”
Former mayor of Richmond, Calif., and lieutenant governor candidate Gayle McLaughlin agreed, telling NBC News, “No matter how you may want to dress it up, if you have people working for nothing or almost nothing, you’ve got slave labor, and it is not acceptable.”
Using prison labor to battle blazes is nothing new for the Golden State, however. A recent New York Times report said the state has been employing inmates to fight fires during fire season since the mid-19th century. In 2014, the federal court system began talks to shrink California’s inmate population of almost 115,000 men and women.
State leaders hesitated on the plans, however, because inmates (including those who are eligible for release) serve as a cheap, yet critical source of labor as firefighters.
Lawyers from the office of then-Attorney General Kamala Harris argued that releasing too many inmates “at this time would severely impact fire camp participation — a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought.” Harris, who now represents California in the U.S. Senate, told Buzzfeed News she was shocked upon hearing her attorneys’ reasoning.
Her office’s argument was one recently echoed by Louisiana Caddo Parish Police Chief Steve Prator, who was upset over the release of “good,” nonviolent inmates “you could work — the ones who can pick up trash.”
“I don’t want state prisoners, [but] they’re a necessary evil to keep the doors open, that we keep a few,” Prator said during a news conference, drawing an immediate backlash from critics who said his comments evoked slavery.

3. Demand an End to BackDoor Web Searches

EFF and 57 organizations, including American Civil Liberties Union, R Street, and NAACP, spoke out against warrantless searches of American citizens in a joint letter this week demanding reforms of the so-called “ backdoor search ” loophole that exists for data collected under Section 702. The backdoor search loophole allows federal government agencies, including the FBI and CIA, to, without a warrant, search through data collected on American citizens. Applying a warrant requirement only to searches of Section 702 data...
Many were shocked to learn that the U.S. indiscriminately vacuums up the communications of millions of innocent people – both around the world and at home – through surveillance programs under Section 702, originally enacted by the FISA Amendments Act. This warrantless, suspicionless surveillance violates established privacy protections, including the Fourth Amendment.
The U.S. government uses Section 702 to justify the collection of the communications of innocent people overseas and in the United States by tapping into the cables that carry domestic and international Internet communications through what's known as Upstream surveillance. The government also forces major U.S. tech companies to turn over private communications stored on their servers through a program often referred to as PRISM. While the programs under Section 702 are theoretically aimed at foreigners outside the United States, they constantly collect Americans’ communications with no meaningful oversight from the courts.
These programs are a gross violation of Americans’ constitutional rights. Communicating with anyone who is potentially located abroad does not invalidate your Fourth Amendment protections.
Tell your representatives in Congress that it is time to let the sun set on this mass Internet spying.

4. WANT TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS? STOP SENDING THEM TO DIE IN MEANINGLESS WARS
I get really emotional when I watch videos of members of the armed forces coming home after a long deployment to surprise their loved ones. I put myself in the shoes of these families who were separated for months and can feel the love.
Then I get angry.
I get angry because these reunions are as touching as they are senseless.
Sixteen years ago yesterday, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan began. Since then, nothing has been gained but so much has been lost.
Thousands of American soldiers — as well as hundreds of thousands of civilians — have been killed. Many more returned irreparably damaged. They might have come home but their limbs — and often their mental health — have remained behind on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
What did they get in return for their sacrifice? Not much. Members of the armed forces are neither well-paid nor particularly well-cared-for once they return home. As WhoWhatWhy has pointed out, one US veteran commits suicide roughly every hour.
The war has also taken a brutal toll on the families of service members. You can see it in those videos. More than 2.5 million American men and women have served in Afghanistan and Iraq. That means hundreds of thousands of families have been torn apart — many of them forever. In addition, countless children had to spend part of their formative years without their mom or dad, constantly worrying about whether they would see their parent again. Think of the strain that places on families.
And all that for what?
The US isn’t one bit safer. Neither is the Middle East. In fact, the region seems much-less stable now than it was 16 years ago, and the worldwide threat of terrorism has only increased.
Americans are being told that their liberties are under attack — and that the troops are defending them abroad. But the only people who have taken anybody’s freedoms away are sitting in the halls of power in Washington.
They happen to be the same people who apparently never have seen a war they didn’t like — regardless of the consequences for millions of Americans and their families.
So excuse me if I can’t get upset about NFL players supposedly “disrespecting the troops” by taking a knee to protest an injustice. Personally, I can’t think of anything more disrespectful to the men and women in uniform than sending them into harm’s way to fight endless wars with no objective.

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