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Dianne Feinstein Town Hall Shows Why She’s a Conservative by San Francisco Standards

Mother Jones

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Before they could enter the San Francisco Scottish Rite Masonic Center, the roughly 1,200 people who showed up for California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s town hall meeting yesterday morning had their bags searched and their bodies scanned for metal objects. As they filed into the thickly carpeted auditorium, attendees passed several tables covered with literature laid out by Indivisible, the liberal grassroots group that had helped organize this rare public meeting with the senator. The leaflets included a list of recommended questions for a senator who doesn’t often field questions from constituents, even here in her liberal hometown.

When the 83-year-old Democrat walked onto the stage in a jet black suit, the crowd, largely women, awarded the four-term senator a warm round of applause. But the mood quickly soured and tension between the famously moderate Feinstein and the highly charged, anti-Trump audience was a motif of the 70-minute event. A man interrupted Feinstein’s opening remarks to loudly ask his fellow audience members to “wake up,” before they shushed him and audibly told him “shut up.” Feinstein waved it off and plowed forward with a metered explanation of the need to reform Social Security and Medicare before indicating she was ready to take questions.

Questioners were selected at random by raffle. Once called, they made their way to the front of the auditorium where stood just a few yards from Feinstein. The first was a woman who was worried that “trigger happy” President Donald Trump might deploy her son to Syria, and wanted to know what Feinstein would do to ensure peace in the Middle East. “The world is not an easy place, and it is not a stable place,” Feinstein replied. She continued, somewhat confusingly, with an explanation of how North Korea presents an “existential” threat and an “acute danger” to the United States. After speaking for some time about the “ruthless” Kim Jong-un’s attempts to build a nuclear tipped missile capable of striking “anywhere in the United States,” Feinstein pivoted back to the Middle East. When she mentioned, without reservation, Trump’s recent missile attack on a Syrian air base, the crowd erupted with a cacophony of boos.

A few minutes later, a man asked the senator if she would support a single-payer health care system. “If single payer healthcare is going to mean a complete government takeover over of the healthcare system, I am not for it,” Feinstein replied, again to boos.

After Feinstein was asked to eschew “business as usual” politics and to vocally resist Trump, the senator tried to explain her model of politics. “I would be surprised if you found too many senators, if any, that have gotten more done,” she said, visibly frustrated by the crowd’s repeated interruptions. “I don’t get there by making statements I can’t deliver. I get there through some caution, some discussion, some smart help, our lawyers—and we generally get where we need to go.”

Feinstein found some common ground with her constituents, however. In her response to a question about Trump’s laundry list of ethical conflicts, she hinted at both impending legislation and litigation targeting the president’s conflicts of interest, which elicited broad agreement from the crowd.

Monday’s town hall was the product of more than two months of work by several dozen Indivisible activists. Several Bay Area Indivisible chapters had expressed interest in holding a town hall with the senator in January. Feinstein didn’t show at a meeting at an Oakland high school in late February. The event was branded as an “Empty Chair Town Hall where attendees presented questions to caricature of the senator.

In February, Indivisible members confronted Feinstein at a tony lunch event at the Public Policy Institute of California. Feinstein politely expressed interest in attending a town hall but didn’t commit to a time. After two months of calls and meetings between Indivisible members and Feinstein staffers, two town hall events were announced—this one in San Francisco, and another on Thursday in Los Angeles.

Amelia Cass, one of the leaders of Indivisible East Bay, said the need for a town hall was born out of the senator’s notorious inaccessibility. “It’s our government, and they’ll listen to us if we speak up. There’s a quote I saw in a newspaper that said ‘It’s not that Senator Feinstein doesn’t want to have town halls, it’s that nobody’s ever asked before.’ She has many opportunities to speak her mind. But her constituents don’t have very many opportunities to speak directly to the senator.”

Many who attended the town hall said they were grateful that the senator took the time to listen to their queries. Yet many left the meeting feeling less than confident that Feinstein is really representing their interests on Capitol Hill. “What we’re saying is that we have an existential threat from our own president, not North Korea,” said Steve Rapport of Indivisible San Francisco. “We want to hear some fighting talk and feel like our representatives have our back.”

That sentiment was echoed by Linh Nguyen, an organizer with Indivisible East Bay. “If Feinstein has this coalition that she’s built over the decades that she’s served in the senate working across party lines, I want to see evidence of it,” Nguyen said. “Where is your coalition from the middle and right to push against this? If she does have this large coalition, let us use it to our advantage.”

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Dianne Feinstein Town Hall Shows Why She’s a Conservative by San Francisco Standards

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Live Coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa

Mother Jones

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The Democratic debate is on CBS tonight at 9 pm Eastern. I had a great football-program-related excuse not to liveblog it, but it turned out that USC played on Friday this week. So now I have no excuse, and I’ll be here with bells on my toes.

Because of the terrorist attacks in Paris, CBS has promised lots of questions about foreign policy. At the risk of being crass, this is probably good for Hillary and not so great for Bernie Sanders. Even among Democrats, there’s likely to be more taste than usual for a hawkish, Hillary-esque foreign policy tonight. We’ll see.

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Live Coverage of the Democratic Presidential Debate in Iowa

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The Top 10 MoJo Longreads of 2013

Mother Jones

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Conventional wisdom says that people won’t read lengthy magazine stories online, but MoJo readers regularly prove otherwise. Many of our top traffic-generating stories have been deeply researched investigations and reported narratives—and we find that plenty of readers stick with them to the bitter end. Our readers also comment, Tweet, Facebook, and Tumble enthusiastically, citing details found deep within these stories. So here, for your New Year’s pleasure, is a selection of 10 of our best-loved longreads from 2013. (Click here for last year’s list and here for our 2011 list, or, for something totally different, check out our hate-reads list for the stories that made us pull out our hair in 2013.)

Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business
With big profits on the line, the drug industry is pulling out campaign-style dirty tricks to keep selling the meds that cooks turn into crank.
By Jonah Engle

America’s Real Criminal Element: Lead
New research finds Pb is the hidden villain behind violent crime, lower IQs, and even the ADHD epidemic. And fixing the problem is a lot cheaper than doing nothing.
By Kevin Drum

Gagged by Big Ag
Horrific abuse. Rampant contamination. And the crime is…exposing it?
By Ted Genoways

Schizophrenic. Killer. My Cousin.
It’s insanity to kill your father with a kitchen knife. It’s also insanity to close hospitals, fire therapists, and leave families to face mental illness on their own.
By Mac McClelland

Welcome, Robot Overlords. Please Don’t Fire Us?
Smart machines probably won’t kill us all—but they’ll definitely take our jobs, and sooner than you think.
By Kevin Drum

My Heart-Stopping Ride Aboard the Navy’s Great Green Fleet
With Washington frozen solid on climate, the Navy is breaking the ice.
By Julia Whitty

Is PTSD Contagious?
It’s rampant among returning vets—and now their spouses and kids are starting to show the same symptoms.
By Mac McClelland

Why Your Supermarket Sells Only 5 Kinds of Apples
And one man’s quest to bring hundreds more back.
By Rowan Jacobsen

Are Happy Gut Bacteria Key to Weight Loss?
Imbalances in the microbial community in your intestines may lead to metabolic syndrome, obesity, and diabetes. What does science say about how to reset our bodies?
By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

What’s It Like to Wake Up From a Tea Party Binge? Just Ask Florida!
Kids locked up in nursing homes. Leaky sewers. Mosquitoes unleashed. The Sunshine State has buyer’s remorse.
By Stephanie Mencimer

Click here to browse more great longreads from Mother Jones.

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The Top 10 MoJo Longreads of 2013

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The Sad Story Behind Down & Feather Harvesting

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The Sad Story Behind Down & Feather Harvesting

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As Expected, Student Test Scores Have Plummeted in New York City

Mother Jones

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Just to follow up on a post from a couple of days ago, the scores on New York’s new, more difficult school tests are in. Here’s how New York City did:

Across the city, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the state exams in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department….Under the old exams last year, the city fared better: 47 percent of students passed in English, and 60 percent passed in math.

….The results galvanized critics of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has often pointed to improvements in test scores as evidence that his stewardship of city schools has been a success.

….Anticipating the outcry, the city and state arranged for the United States secretary of education, Arne Duncan, to participate in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. In his remarks, Mr. Duncan said the shift to Common Core was a necessary recalibration that would better prepare students for college and the work force.

“Too many school systems lied to children, families and communities,” Mr. Duncan said. “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable as educators.”

This is all pretty silly. The only thing it proves is that you can pass or fail as many kids as you want by fiddling with a test. Make it hard enough, and even a national merit scholar will fail. Make it easy enough, and even a moron will pass. You can set the bar anywhere you like.

Is the new test a “better” measure of how much students know? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s different, which means it tells you exactly nothing about how good Bloomberg’s stewardship of New York City schools has been over time. If you think test scores are a good way of measuring student performance, we already know the answer to that question: he’s done OK, but not great.

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As Expected, Student Test Scores Have Plummeted in New York City

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In Between Controversies Real and False, Obama Tackles the Biggest Issue Ever

Mother Jones

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The news cycle can be a silly place. The Republicans in recent months have sucked up a lot of oxygen with a phony scandal (Benghazi) and a trumped-up scandal (the IRS’s improper targeting of tea party groups for scrutiny). The White House has been pinned down by some of this, while also contending with a very real and front-page debate over NSA surveillance prompted by leaks regarding two of its super-secret programs. Yet one matter that is perhaps more important than all of this and that is in the news for the moment registers much lower on the media Richter scale: trying to prevent humans from blowing up the one planet they have.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced a new guidance for US nuclear weapons policies, and it’s a big deal. It follows Obama’s 2009 Prague speech, in which he declared the long-term goal of zeroing out nuclear weapons. According to a White House fact sheet, the new guidance “narrows U.S. nuclear strategy to focus on only those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence in the 21st century” and “directs DOD to strengthen non-nuclear capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks.” The fact sheet notes, “the guidance takes further steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy.” In non-wonk terms that means the US military will alter its planning that might entail the use of a nuclear weapon. And Obama’s new guidance declares that it would be reasonable to cut the level of strategic nuclear weapons by a third, beyond the lower levels Obama negotiated with the Russians for the New START treaty. Obama announced this proposed reduction in a Berlin speech.

All of this is receiving some news coverage today, but it won’t draw a smidgeon of the attention the assorted quasi-scandals do. Yet the effort to lower the possibility of a nuclear war is one of the most noble and significant endeavors for a president. (Addressing climate change ranks high, too.) Still, not since the early 1980s, when literally millions of Americans took to the street to protest President Ronald Reagan’s nuclear policies, has this been a hot political subject. It may be that the notion of a nuclear conflagration is too overwhelming to consider on a routine basis. Certainly, it’s more fun to fret about a stolen (or not stolen) Super Bowl ring.

Arms controllers did hail Obama’s actions. The Ploughshares Fund noted that the president “has finally replaced the nuclear guidance issued in 2002 by President George W. Bush with new policies that will reduce the roles, numbers and alert rates of nuclear weapons in US national security strategy.” (The United States currently maintains 7000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal.) And the Union of Concerned Scientists applauded Obama’s nuclear policy reform and urged him to go further, noting the United States “can maintain a robust deterrent with less than a 1,000 nuclear weapons—including strategic and tactical, deployed and stored—independent of Russia’s arsenal. Maintaining more weapons than needed undercuts U.S. security and wastes taxpayer dollars.” Hawks, inevitably, will denounce Obama’s attempt to reduce the United States’ warehouse of nukes and to decrease the significance of nuclear weapons in contingency planning. Yet it’s unlikely that a robust debate will erupt to equal the fuss over, say, Michelle Obama’s latest hair style. But for anyone who is serious about divining crucial national security differences between Obama and his predecessors, Obama’s new nuclear posture is significant and worthy of much notice.

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In Between Controversies Real and False, Obama Tackles the Biggest Issue Ever

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Kansas may mandate unsustainable development

Kansas may mandate unsustainable development

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/ Katherine WellesThe Kansas statehouse in Topeka, where the magic happens.

Legislation introduced in Kansas would ban the promotion or practice by state agencies of sustainable development.

Don’t they know that when sustainable development is outlawed, only outlaws develop sustainably?

House Bill 2366, introduced into the House Energy and Environment Committee, would prevent any state funds from being “used, either directly or indirectly, to promote, support, mandate, require, order, incentivize, advocate, plan for, participate in or implement sustainable development.”

Weird. Maybe the numskulls behind the bill don’t grasp the actual meaning of “sustainable development.” Perhaps they think the term refers specifically to Agenda 21, which Glenn Beck and other right-wingers claim is a diabolical United Nations plot to force Americans to live in cities and ride public transit. The horror!

Checking the bill … nope … no misinterpretation here. The legislation’s definition of sustainable development is surprisingly clear and positive sounding: “[A] mode of human development in which resource use aims to meet human needs while preserving the environment so that these needs can be met not only in the present, but also for generations to come.”

The legislation was introduced in February and hasn’t yet had a committee hearing. But if it does somehow become law, the government of Kansas will be legislatively required to pursue unsustainable development — that is, development that, by its legal definition, degrades the environment so that needs cannot be met for generations to come.

The Energy and Environment Committee is chaired by Rep. Dennis Hedke (R), a geophysicist who the Kansas City Star says “counts at least 18 energy companies as clients.” From a March article in the Star:

Hedke is a decided nonbeliever of man-made global warming. He thinks those claims have been used to impose strict environmental regulations, such as renewable-energy standards, that ultimately dig into consumers’ wallets.

“This is costly,” Hedke said. “It’s already hurt people around the world.”

The notion that carbon dioxide should be regulated as a dangerous gas that’s wreaking havoc on the environment, he said, is a “flat-out lie.” …

Hedke said the [anti-sustainable-development] measure was motivated by complaints from constituents who think there is an insidious attempt to create new layers of government through groups like the Regional Economic Area Partnership in Wichita.

Two years ago, the group received a $1.5 million federal grant for planning sustainable communities. The grant became a sore spot for critics who believed it would open the door for the federal government to impose its will on local officials.

Well, Hedke, so long as your needs and the needs of your clients are met, screw the kids — and their kids!

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Kansas may mandate unsustainable development

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