Why the Facts Matter and Science is Important

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips, Global Warming, Rocket Science, Solutions, US At Home - Domestic Policy, US Government, US budget, US and State budget deficits, budget cuts, Constitutional issues, US economic crisis, US debt

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

architects, civil engineering, cricketdiane, Engineering, facts, GOP, gop war on science, science, science funding, scientific research, scientist, scientists, trump, trump budget, us science, war on science

Published on

Saturday, March 25, 2017

by The Boston Globe

Citizens Must Hold Government Accountable on Climate

by Bill McKibben

A spokesman for the White House said last week that the federal government was no longer going to “waste money” on climate research. Money to maintain even existing climate satellites is disappearing. NASA has been told to stop worrying about our home planet and focus on Mars.

[ . . . ]

Which means that the rest of us need to add our weight to the political balance. Upset by EPA chief Scott Pruitt and his assertion that carbon dioxide isn’t driving global warming? Scared by Trump’s insistence that climate change is a Chinese hoax? Inspired by the plucky local officials determined to try and keep the fight alive? Then show up in Washington on April 29, for the next great mobilization of the cresting resistance. More than 100,000 people have already RSVP’d for the People’s Climate March — it’s our chance to say we won’t stand silently by as the planet melts.

A few things that happened this week: one set of researchers announced that February was the planet’s fourth-warmest month on record, which is especially bad news since the El Niño that produced last year’s record-breaking heat is over and we’re supposed to be cooling a little.

Another group of scientists published data showing that, for the third year in a row, Arctic ice has set a new record winter low. Still other statisticians showed that, to date, this has been by far the worst wildfire season on record in the United States — two million acres burned against an average of 200,000.

In Peru, last fall’s record drought has given way to record flooding, with dozens dead and 100,000 homes damaged. In Namibia, the worst flooding in history . . . I could go on.

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/25/citizens-must-hold-government-accountable-climate?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=socialnetwork

For years, some scientific data was classified as businesses, corporations, oil companies, politicians and the Republican Party pursued a war on information about climate change, ecology, pollution, pollutants, harm from pollutants, health and community damage from specific pollutants and pollution, climatology, sea level rise, arctic and glacial ice loss, CO2 levels, smog, rivers and ocean pollution, global warming, and resource removal damages from mining and drilling to refining and shipping / transportation of those natural resources.

Yes, disinformation and sequestering of scientific data created harm during the decades when this war on science occurred in the United States and around the world where US political and business leaders got their way. Today, we face the same disinformation efforts on a massive scale that threaten to sidetrack, derail and even to decimate data and research that have been collected as well as to alter those facts beyond recognition in pursuit of invalidating their merit in order to support a political and business agenda.

Unfortunately, when these political and business agendas are served this way, as we have seen before – the facts do not change. The basis of the facts do not change. The reality suggested by the facts do not change. Good sound reasoning that would have been based upon those facts does not change, but that reasoning and the judgments for actions that would come from it cannot be adequately and appropriately made when facts are altered to suit, or when facts are deleted or withheld.

Inasmuch as that is the purpose of political and corporate interests to call lies as facts and facts as lies – without realizing it, they are causing immediate and long-term harm to themselves, their businesses and efforts as well as to others, to our country, our world and to future generations. Without accurate data and research openly available, it is not only science that cannot reasonably make sound research and discoveries, but also that every applied science will err and pursue unsound practices as well – from engineering, civil engineering, structural engineering, materials engineering to architects, builders, developers, academics, teachers, professors, project managers, and every kind of scientist and scientific discipline or focus.

Businesses and corporations along with their products and services being offered in the marketplace rely on these disciplines whether they are truly aware of it or not.Without accurate demographics and financial data or only part of it in order to make the picture look better, businesses will be hindered as they will also fail when their buildings are not built on sound principles of structural engineering based upon real and complete scientific data, scientific research and peer reviewed for accuracy.

When a politician looks at a smokestack pouring pollutants into the surrounding communities and says it is not pollution, or it is not happening, or that those are not the facts, altering scientific data or withholding scientific data or preventing the collection of that data – does not change the facts about those pollutants coming into the air, water, soil, surrounding communities and the people who live there. But, that is what politicians and businesses are trying to do and currently making a war on science once more to try and accomplish their short term agenda without understanding the consequences.

In a small way, it is obvious where harm has been done and lives damaged or lost by denying facts whether it is to see people drown when they drive across flooded streets rushing with water, or pretend that a windchill of two degrees and an air temperature of twelve doesn’t make any difference running for the subway to go to work. The facts were the same regardless of how they were interpreted to be something different than they were in each case. In more massive ways, efforts that could have been made for very small amounts of money to diminish the level of pollutants in streams, rivers, the ocean, the air, the soil – were not made because facts were altered and withheld for decades that indicated those pollutants. It didn’t change the harms being done nor did it change the need to fix it – but doing it that way certainly made fixing it and those harms done into a much more massive problem with an exponentially greater price tag and necessity.

cricketdiane, 03-25-2017

U.S. releases unclassified spy images of Arctic ice | Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-arctic-images-idUSTRE56F6N220090717

Jul 17, 2009 – U.S. releases unclassified spy images of Arctic ice … A satellite image released by the Interior Department shows ice on the East Siberian Sea in 2000. … The images were derived from classified images made as part of the ..

1960’s satellite imagery of polar ice discovers “enormous holes” in the sea ice

Anthony Watts / September 4, 2014

NSIDC has announced the discovery and recovery of space footage of Earth’s polar icecaps, dating back to 1964.

With funding from NASA, the researchers located and made operational an old film reader that could digitize the images. The team figured out how to determine geographic location for each image, given the orbit of the satellite. And they’ve now made more than 250,000 images public.

Links:
Check out and download Nimbus data.
Learn more about the data rescue project.

=====================================================

Note: I attempted to look at the files myself, and discoverd that the vidicon imagery is stored in Hierarchical Data Format (.hdf). If anyone wants to make use of it, they’ll need a viewer, which can be obtained here: http://www.hdfgroup.org/products/java/hdfview/index.html

Source: NSIDC press release. h/t to Eric Worrall

In the Arctic, sea ice extent was larger in the 1960s than it is these days, on average. “It was colder, so we expected that,” Gallaher said. What the researchers didn’t expect were “enormous holes” in the sea ice, currently under investigation. “We can’t explain them yet,” Gallaher said.

“And the Antarctic blew us away,” he said. In 1964, sea ice extent in the Antarctic was the largest ever recorded, according to Nimbus image analysis. Two years later, there was a record low for sea ice in the Antarctic, and in 1969 Nimbus imagery, sea ice appears to have reached its maximum extent earliest on record.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/04/1960s-satellite-imagery-of-polar-ice-discovers-enormous-holes-in-the-sea-ice/

Many people in the United States today that I meet, do not understand the importance of science. They believe they’re not using science everyday and seem to feel it is something far beyond where they live. Many times, people tell me they did not do well in science (meaning, in school) so therefore they don’t do any of that “science stuff”.

But, the same people every day, use science without realizing it and are very, very good at it. They cook their food which is a vast array of chemistry knowledge to do it successfully, along with using math and scientific methods. They use scientific knowledge generally to make calculations about things from rolling a ball across the floor to their child – to getting ready for work without scalding themselves in the shower – to running for the bus or subway and getting seated on it without flying into the windows or walls.

When they make change to buy their coffee and bagel, they’re use of both science and math is in action without a thought and using no more than seconds to calculate their caloric needs, the temperature of the coffee, the time it takes to get it all and still get to work on time and what will be required to get across the street without spilling it all over their nice work clothes (among other things from wind and temperature and surface footing of the sidewalk and roadway, and timing and conditions and the basic physics of it all.)

Scientific facts underlie all of these things and all of the actions listed above along with many others in our every day use now – science and engineering have provided materials that allow our foods to be kept longer, to get to us, to be stored safely, to be nutritionally adequate, among many other aspects that it takes for our supply chain to get it to us.

People who believe they are not using science or that it doesn’t mean anything important – or that engineering it something “out there” beyond their daily experience simply fail to grasp the reality they are engaging every single moment as they go about their daily life.

Unfortunately, as politicians and people generally, denigrate the importance and value of science then make decisions about science and scientific policy or funding it – or today, de-funding science, research, engineering and scientific advances, they may not realize the damage of their choices until it is too late as it impacts their lives in obvious, immediate and harmful ways.

That effect has happened for instance, when infrastructure funding has been removed, de-funded, or arbitrarily and summarily cut, or vastly insufficient to the tasks and projects required of it. At some point, infrastructure failures occur which were preventable and often, lives lost or permanently maimed as a result. The facts were still the facts. Political interpretation of the facts did not change the reality and once the damage was obvious in immediate and harmful ways, people could see where the choice to swing those funds into something else rather than support infrastructure was not a sound judgment based upon the real facts.

cricketdiane, 03-25-2017

How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support

They’re a very particular form of deception that can build solidarity within groups

By Jeremy Adam Smith on March 24, 2017

[ . . . ]

“People condone lying against enemy nations, and since many people now see those on the other side of American politics as enemies, they may feel that lies, when they recognize them, are appropriate means of warfare,” says George Edwards, a Texas A&M political scientist and one of the country’s leading scholars of the presidency.

If we see Trump’s lies not as failures of character but rather as weapons of war, then we can come to see why his supporters might see him as an effective leader. From this perspective, lying is a feature, not a bug, of Trump’s campaign and presidency.

[. . . ]

For millions and millions of Americans, climate change is a hoax, Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring out of a pizza parlor, and immigrants cause crime. Whether they truly believe those falsehoods or not is debatable—and possibly irrelevant. The research to date suggests that they see those lies as useful weapons in a tribal us-against-them competition that pits the “real America” against those who would destroy it.

[ . . . ]

What can the rest of us do in the meantime? We must make accuracy a goal, even when the facts don’t fit our emotional reality. We start by verifying information, seeking out different and competing sources, cultivating a diverse social network, sharing information with integrity—and admitting when we fail. That’s easy. But the most important and difficult thing we can do right now, suggests this line of research, is to put some critical distance between us and our groups—and so lessen the pressure to go along with the herd.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-the-science-of-blue-lies-may-explain-trumps-support/

There was a time in the US when satellite images of the polar regions were classified and not available for scientific study and comparison. If they had continued to be classified, the understanding we are gaining today could not be accurately made.

During the years predating this article, a great deal of climate change, ecological data and research, global warming and sea level rise, CO2 data and global sea current changes data along with the science being done with any of it – was actively being derided and publicly devalued. Many scientists were denigrated to the point of losing their careers in this war on science. As information became available, the evidence of global changes became obvious to the extent that denying those changes bordered on delusion. Today, we have the same fight for facts and truth again, for science and scientific inquiry to be held in high regard and protected rather than denigrated by some political pursuit of power over public opinion.

I found this page from 1999 when the satellite photos from polar icecaps was made available by the Clinton administration such that science could utilize them –

Clinton Releasing Antarctica Images
Associated Press, September 14, 1999

President Clinton, warning that global warming could bring cataclysmic consequences, announced the release Wednesday of classified satellite images of part of Antarctica to help scientists chart world climate changes. He said the two sets of images taken 10 years apart were “one small contribution” to the understanding of climate change studies. “The overwhelming consensus of world scientific opinion is that greenhouse gases from human activity are raising the Earth’s temperature in a rapid and unsustainable way,” the president said in a speech at the International Antarctica Center. “The five warmest years since the 15th century have all been in the 1990s.” “Unless we change course,” Clinton said, “most scientists believe the seas will rise so high they will swallow whole islands and coastal areas. Storms like hurricanes and droughts both will intensify. Diseases like malaria will be borne by mosquitoes to higher and higher altitudes and across borders, threatening more lives, a phenomenon we already see today in Africa.”

The data include seven previously classified images taken by US spy satellites in the mid-1970s and 1980s of the so-called Dry Valleys environment. Satellite pictures traditionally are classified because they reveal US intelligence-gathering capabilities. The new images are intended to give scientists a baseline for environmental studies, including the monitoring of the Antarctic ozone hole and the West Antarctic ice sheet. “Together with data gathered on the ground, the newly released images will help scientists better understand ecological dynamics in this extreme environment and their response to climate change,” a White House statement said. …

The pristine areas of Antarctica are closely watched because scientists expect climate changes to be more significant in the polar regions. Moreover, the Antarctic ice sheet helps regulate the climate of the entire Earth, and preserves a climate history going back more than 400,000 years. The pictures released by Clinton, taken by military satellite, show a detailed view of the Dry Valleys region of the Transantarctic Mountains, a 1,900-foot-long range that splits the east and west regions of Antarctica. The region pictured is near the US McMurdo Station, an observatory for the international global positioning system. The newly released pictures are modified versions of fine-resolution images taken by spy satellites. … Last month, Gore announced the declassification and release of 59 satelllite images of the Arctic to help scientists study the interaction between polar ice caps and global warming.

http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tword15x.htm

And one more from Scientific American –

CLIMATE

Arctic Sea Ice Sets Record-Low Peak for Third Year

Sea ice was also thinner this winter than in the past four years

By Andrea Thompson, Climate Central on March 23, 2017

Constant warmth punctuated by repeated winter heat waves stymied Arctic sea ice growth this winter, leaving the winter sea ice cover missing an area the size of California and Texas combined and setting a record-low maximum for the third year in a row.

[ …]

“I have been looking at Arctic weather patterns for 35 years and have never seen anything close to what we’ve experienced these past two winters,” Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, which keeps track of sea ice levels, said in a statement.

Definitely go read this one – and share –

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/arctic-sea-ice-sets-record-low-peak-for-third-year/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_ENGYSUS_NEWS

Trump and GOP gutting internet privacy, science, weather agency, consumer protections in US

23 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

bureau of land management, federal lands, federal lands being mined, federal lands being sold, GOP, gop congress, gop legislation, gop senate, national parks, NOAA, public lands, public lands being drilled, science, science changes by trump, scientists, trump, trump gop, us research, war on science

MARCH 23, 2017 | BY KATE TUMMARELLO

Senate Puts ISP Profits Over Your Privacy

ISPs have been lobbying for weeks to get lawmakers to repeal the FCC’s rules that stand between them and using even creepier ways to track and profit off of your every move online. Republicans in the Senate just voted 50-48 (with two absent votes) to approve a Congressional Review Action resolution from Sen. Jeff Flake which—if it makes it through the House—would not only roll back the FCC’s rules but also prevent the FCC from writing similar rules in the future.

[ . . .]

That would be a crushing loss for online privacy. ISPs act as gatekeepers to the Internet, giving them incredible access to records of what you do online. They shouldn’t be able to profit off of the information about what you search for, read about, purchase, and more without your consent.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/senate-puts-isp-profits-over-your-privacy

Call your representative

Electronic Frontier Foundation –

EFF‏Verified account @EFF 7h7 hours ago

‏Verified account @EFF

Trans-Atlantic consumer groups lay down their demands on trade transparency to USTR nominee Robert Lighthizer.

(etc.)

Follow Electronic Frontier Foundation on twitter for more information about Trump and GOP controlled Congress & Senate changes to the internet, privacy, mass surveillance by police and security agencies, efforts to keep the internet freedoms, rights and privacy we have.

‏Verified account @EFF

EFF’s @lynch_jen makes the case for tighter regulation of facial recognition in this clip from yesterday’s hearing

https://twitter.com/i/cards/tfw/v1/844931639167766528?cardname=player&autoplay_disabled=true&forward=true&earned=true&lang=en&card_height=130&scribe_context=%7B%22client%22%3A%22web%22%2C%22page%22%3A%22profile%22%2C%22section%22%3A%22profile%22%2C%22component%22%3A%22tweet%22%7D#xdm_e=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com&xdm_c=default3526&xdm_p=1

from Google search on NOAA budget cuts – (by GOP and Trump admin)

Trump’s proposed NOAA budget cuts rattle scientists – USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2017/03/06/noaa-budget-cuts…/98809886/

Trump’s proposed NOAA budget cuts rattle scientists. Doyle Rice , USA TODAY Published 3:30 p.m. ET March 6, 2017 | Updated 6:35 p.m. ET March 6, 2017.

What You Need to Know About Trump’s Proposed Climate Cuts

news.nationalgeographic.com/…/trump-cuts-epa-noaa-environmental-science-climate-…

Mar 10, 2017 – SOURCE: BUDGET OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT, FISCAL …. He says that if enacted, the proposed cuts to EPA and NOAA would …

‏Verified account @NationalNOW

Disgusting: The AHCA now has a clause that allows states to revoke Medicaid if a women hasn’t gotten a job 8 weeks after giving birth!

Trump Data Gurus Leave Long Trail of Subterfuge, Dubious Dealing

“Previously we were able to do our job in the background.”

by Stephanie Baker, David Kocieniewski, and Michael Smith

March 23, 2017, 6:30 AM EDT

From Bloomberg BusinessWeek

While Cambridge Analytica has faced scrutiny before over whether its data models actually work, a closer look at the past practices of its London-based affiliate, SCL Group Ltd., reveals a corporate DNA less predisposed to dazzling technologies to sway voters than to using old-fashioned tricks and political subterfuge.

[ . . . ]

In the past year, Nix, 41, has become a darling in tech and marketing circles, popping up on the international speaking circuit to promote the firm’s data-driven approach. He says Cambridge Analytica is active in national campaigns on four continents, . . .

In Latvia, SCL said it ran a campaign in 2006 designed to stoke tensions between Latvians and ethnic Russian residents: “In essence, Russians were blamed for unemployment and other problems affecting the economy,” an SCL document said. Nix confirms the firm’s role, saying that its research found that such tensions would “influence voting behavior.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/trump-data-gurus-leave-long-trail-of-subterfuge-dubious-dealing?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

This article was on my twitter feed appearing like this – (and filled with good information about the shady backhanded tricks used in our election and being done to others by these same practices.)

‏Verified account @business

Trump’s data gurus leave a long trail of subterfuge and dubious dealing http://bloom.bg/2nNTjW3

The Hidden Risks of Trump’s EPA Cuts: Birth Defects, Bad Air

Fifty former federal and state environmental officials detail what the president’s budget could do to the agency and to human health.

Eric Roston

March 23, 2017, 4:01 PM EDT

President Donald Trump pledged during the 2016 campaign that he would only “leave a little bit” of federal rules that protect human health and the environment. Now about 50 former officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are firing back in a lengthy analysis that details, program by program, what amounts to a starvation diet for the EPA.

Calling themselves the Environmental Protection Network, they worked through both Republican and Democratic administrations. The group’s members are putting aside their differences over policies and programs to stop what they say “appears to be nothing less than a full-throttle attack on the principle underlying all U.S. environmental laws—that protecting the health and environment of all Americans is a national priority.”

[ . . . ]

the network has put together a 50-page analysis of the president’s proposed EPA budget, based partly on the White House’s fiscal 2018 budget blueprint. The blueprint, released on March 16, sketched out top-line cuts of 31 percent of the agency’s budget and 21 percent of its staff.

The analysis on pdf is found here – bookmark, read it and certainly save a copy and share –

https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r7SgoeV8KC7c/v0

Definitely – go read the whole article found here –

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-23/from-bad-air-to-birth-defects-5-hidden-risks-of-slashing-the-epa

RoseAnn DeMoro‏Verified account @RoseAnnDeMoro Mar 22

More

Since the 90’s, we’ve lost 90% of bumble #bees. Defunding the #EPA will only exacerbate this problem. #ScienceMarch

**

Corbin Hiar‏Verified account @CorbinHiar 4h4 hours ago

More

Penn’s @RepScottPerry defends EPA cuts to constituents by claiming God pollutes. It doesn’t go over well. http://www.yorkdispatch.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/22/perry-makes-waves-implying-god-pollutes/99517416/ …

from twitter

**

Indigenous‏ @AmericanIndian8 Mar 22

More

EPA seeks public comment on draft permits and aquifer exemption for uranium mining Black Hills,SD http://goo.gl/QtOdQp #INDIGENOUS

**

Neta Hamou‏ @nhamou83 Mar 22

More

@RepThomasMassie@maggieNYT perhaps you can also take back that bill you sponsored to abolish the US Dept of Education and the EPA?

**

From White House website –

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/signed-legislation

Signed Legislation

Signed on March 21, 2017

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017

Signed on March 13, 2017

H.R.609 – To designate the Department of Veterans Affairs health care center in Center Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, as the “Abie Abraham VA Clinic”.

Signed on February 16, 2017

H.J.Res.38 – Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule.

Signed on February 14, 2017

H.J.Res.41 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers”.

Signed on January 31, 2017

H.R.72 – GAO Access and Oversight Act of 2017

Signed on January 20, 2017

S.84 – A bill to provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces.

**

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/pending-legislation

Pending Legislation (to be signed)

Pending & posted on March 16, 2017

H.J. Res. 37 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

Pending & posted on March 16, 2017

H.J. Res. 44 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Bureau of Land Management regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pursuant to the Federal Land

Pending & posted on March 16, 2017

H.J. Res. 57 – Joint Resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to accountability and State plans under the Elementary and Secondary Educ

Trump and GOP War on Science Roaring Like a Freight Train

23 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Air Quality, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips, Global Warming

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anti-science congress, climate change, cricketdiane, Ecology, GOP, march for science, science, selling public lands, trump, trump changes, trump science changes

Some things that have recently been changed to insanity – plus a first quick note about one thing that can be done about it – something called Salons or Paris Salons where people meet and strategize to combat these inappropriate and in some cases, insane policies from the Trump administration and GOP power drunk Congress and Senate.

Salons first gained fame in France during the Enlightenment, with citizens gathering to engage in political conversations and arguments; they acted as a place to plan revolution and discuss philosophy. The concept has continued ever since, with the author Gertrude Stein and the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright both known to have hosted them.

from –

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/18/political-salons-us-trump-protest?CMP=share_btn_tw

March for Science – on twitter

April 22, 2017

From Washington, D.C. to wherever you are and around the world

March for Science Retweeted

NYAS‏ @NYASciences Mar 10

The Academy is proud to support @ScienceMarchDC & @ScienceMarchNY. Find the march nearest to you. #ScienceMarch

SCIENCE, NOT SILENCE

The March for Science demonstrates our passion for science and sounds a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. Recent policy changes have caused heightened worry among scientists. The incredible and immediate outpouring of support has made clear that these concerns are also shared by the support of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

The mischaracterization of science as a partisan issue, which has given policymakers permission to reject overwhelming evidence, is a critical and urgent matter. It is time for people who support scientific research and evidence-based policies to take a public stand and be counted.

ON APRIL 22, 2017, WE WALK OUT OF THE LAB AND INTO THE STREETS.

We are people who value science and recognize how science serves. We come from all races, all religions, all gender identities, all sexual orientations, all abilities, all socioeconomic backgrounds, all political perspectives, and all nationalities. Our diversity is our greatest strength: a wealth of opinions, perspectives, and ideas is critical for the scientific process. What unites us is a love of science, and an insatiable curiosity. We all recognize that science is everywhere and affects everyone.

The March for Science is an international movement, led by organizers distributed around the globe. This movement is taking place because of the simultaneous realization by thousands of people who value science in their lives that staying silent is no longer an option. There are marches being planned across the United States and internationally.

from – (please visit this page link below to find March for Science events near you throughout the world and across the United States April 22, 2017.)

https://www.marchforscience.com/

Senate repeals Obama-era workplace safety regulation http://hill.cm/ipkvI9M

Federal Agencies Told to Halt External Communications

By CORAL DAVENPORT JAN. 25, 2017

WASHINGTON — Scientists and environmentalists reacted with fear this week as the Trump administration purged nearly all mention of climate change programs from the White House and State Department websites and ordered a freeze on federal grant spending at the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies.

{. . . }

But the White House and State Department did delete nearly all mentions of climate change policy — which had been a top priority for Mr. Obama — and have begun replacing them with pages detailing Mr. Trump’s plans to roll back those policies — a top priority for the new president.

“People can’t tell whether data is being purged or not — it’s a confused situation,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University and a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which supplies scientific reports to world governments.

Such memos or oral communications landed this week at the E.P.A. and the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture and Health and Human Services, in a broad halt to external communications while the Trump administration struggles to put political appointees into position. (. . . )

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/some-agencies-told-to-halt-communications-as-trump-administration-moves-in.html?_r=0

Definitely go read the NYTimes article above. It has a lot of good info in it and balances that some of these changes are simply the result of a new administration putting in place their own agency appointee heads and to enact their own agenda

Unfortunately, the agenda in this case is anti-science and overtly so. Many people around the world have been working to save data and research from US government sites that could very well be obliterated by the Trump administration’s obtuse perspective.

Haven’t checked this fact from the above article recently, but it needs checking under the circumstances of Trump budget cuts to science, scientific research NOAA, EPA, and others announced a few days ago.

The full contents of the Obama administration’s White House and State Department websites, including working links to climate change reports, have been archived and are readily available to the public.

from

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/politics/some-agencies-told-to-halt-communications-as-trump-administration-moves-in.html?_r=0

US science agencies face deep cuts in Trump budget

The Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health are big losers — but planetary science at NASA stands to gain.

16 March 2017 Updated:

16 March 2017

Corrected:

16 March 2017

When it comes to science, there are few winners in US President Donald Trump’s first budget proposal. The plan, released on 16 March, calls for double-digit cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It also lays the foundation for a broad shift in the United States’ research priorities, including a retreat from environmental and climate programmes.

http://www.nature.com/news/us-science-agencies-face-deep-cuts-in-trump-budget-1.21652

Senate votes to block Obama coal rule

BY DEVIN HENRY – 02/02/17 03:07 PM EST

Senators voted 54-45 Thursday to kill an Obama administration coal mining rule, giving President Trump his first chance to formally take off the books an environmental rule from the previous administration.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) challenge passed by the Senate undoes the Interior Department’s Stream Protection Rule, a regulation requiring coal firms to clean up waste from mountaintop removal mining and prevent it from going into local waterways.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/317616-senate-votes-to-block-obama-coal-rule

President Trump Signs First Congressional Review Act Disapproval Resolution in 16 Years

Thursday, February 16, 2017

On February 14, 2017, President Donald Trump signed a resolution nullifying a Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) regulation that required energy companies to disclose foreign payments. [. . . ]

Congress’s first CRA target was an SEC regulation that would have required energy companies to disclose payments made to foreign governments. The rule, which implemented a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act, was intended to fight perceived corruption in countries with extensive oil, gas, coal, and mineral resources.

As we noted previously, House Republicans have targeted a wide array of Obama-era financial regulations for nullification under the CRA. Furthermore, the Trump Administration issued an executive order that establishes a framework to roll back the financial regulations imposed under the Dodd-Frank Act.

http://www.natlawreview.com/article/president-trump-signs-first-congressional-review-act-disapproval-resolution-16-years

Senate approves CRA resolution to nullify SEC’s foreign payments rule

WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 3

02/03/2017

By Nick Snow
OGJ Washington Editor

Sen. Benjamin J. Cardin (D-Md.), who co-wrote with then-Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) Section 1504 of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that created the requirement, said, “It should be lost on no one that in less than 48 hours, the Republican-controlled Senate has confirmed the former head of ExxonMobil to serve as our Secretary of State, and repealed a key anti-corruption rule that ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute have erroneously fought for years.”

http://www.ogj.com/articles/2017/02/senate-approves-cra-resolution-to-nullify-sec-s-foreign-payments-rule.html

Also found in the Oil and Gas Journal –

OZONE LIMITS IMPLEMENTATION REFORM BILL REINTRODUCED IN US SENATE

03/20/2017

ByNick Snow

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has reintroduced legislation aimed at giving states and communities more time to implement 2015 ground-level ozone limits under National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The measure, S. 452, also would revise the US Environmental Protection Agency’s existing timeline for reviewing NAAQS and air-quality criteria from 5-year intervals to 10-year intervals.

http://www.ogj.com/articles/print/volume-115/issue-3b/general-interest/ozone-limits-implementation-reform-bill-reintroduced-in-us-senate.html

The coming GOP assault on regulations

Behind the scenes, the war has started over the main Senate bill to roll back the administrative state.

And House Republican leaders and rank-and-file members are beginning to strategize on employing the Congressional Review Act to attempt to block dozens more of President Obama’s regulations. The leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus said the group hopes 300 rules can be scrapped with that parliamentary maneuver.

The “Midnight Rules Relief Act,” H.R. 21, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), would bundle final rules under one expanded Congressional Review Act joint resolution of disapproval, allowing for the en bloc disapproval of multiple regulations that would otherwise be subject to individual review under a simple CRA.

The CRA only requires a simple majority to pass, making it an ideal vehicle for roll-back supporters.

[, , , ]

Environment, energy and health

The House passage of the “Midnight Rules Relief Act,” with the “REINS Act” likely to follow, has many environmental and public health advocates nervous.

Harold Wimmer, national president and CEO of the American Lung Association, is urging members to reject the “REINS Act,” calling it “a dangerous attack on public health protections.”

In addition to delaying or stopping meaningful oversight of tobacco products, the “REINS Act” would block critical clean air protections, he said.

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a track record of cost-effectively saving lives and improving public health under the Clean Air Act. The REINS Act would block or delay critical clean air protections against deadly pollutants, as well as the pollution that causes climate change,” Wimmer said in a statement.

Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union for Concerned Scientists, called the “REINS Act” and the “Midnight Rules Relief Act” two “egregious” attacks on science-based safeguards.

“It’s very discouraging to see this Congress, in its first week, launching this attack on science-based policies. Americans didn’t vote to have public health and environmental protections gutted,” he said. “They didn’t vote to give corporations yet another tool to nullify the laws that keep our homes, neighborhoods and workplaces safe. But that’s what these two bills would do.”

Conversely, the industry-backed American Energy Alliance supported passage of the “Midnight Rules Relief Act” and is asking members to vote in favor of the “REINS Act,” saying the measures would increase accountability and transparency in the federal regulatory process and roll back “overbearing” regulations. The group said it would consider the measure a “key vote” that would be used on a scorecard of lawmakers.

http://www.eenews.net/stories/1060047867

DISMANTLING OF EPA BEGINS

PRESIDENT’S EXECUTIVE ORDER WILL POTENTIALLY MAKE OCEAN POLLUTION A WHOLE LOT EASIER

FEBRUARY 28, 2017 BY JUSTIN HOUSMAN

Back in 2015, President Obama signed into law the Water of the United States Rule, a provision that restricts pollution in streams and tributaries that flow into lakes and rivers. It took years and years of studies by both the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers to compile the data the rule is based on, which essentially boils down to this: Shit flows downhill.

To be more specific, pollution flows from small rivers to large ones, then into the ocean or lakes.

This probably shouldn’t have been a shock, but there you have it. A rule was put in place that basically codified common sense, so, naturally, businesses that make a living involving work with oil, chemicals, mining tailings, fertilizers, and other nasty pollutants near waterways immediately hated the rule. Especially Scott Pruitt—the new head of the EPA—who sued the EPA over the rule back when he was Attorney General of Oklahoma.

Pres. Trump will sign an executive order today ordering the EPA to “review” the rule, which is wonky language for “figure out how to work around it or get rid of it altogether,” and, as far as I’m concerned, Pruitt should recuse himself from any say in this since he already tried to sue the very agency he leads over the implementation of the rule.

COMMODITIES | Wed Jan 11, 2017 | 1:14pm EST

Trump taps well of protest with calls for more drilling in national parks

By Annie Knox and Kim Palmer

President-elect Donald Trump aims to open up federal lands to more energy development, tapping into a long-running and contentious debate over how best to manage America’s remaining wilderness.

The U.S. government holds title to about 500 million acres of land across the country, including national parks and forests, wildlife refuges and tribal territories stretching from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico. They overlay billions of barrels of oil and vast quantities of natural gas, coal, and uranium.

[. . . ]

In December, Trump nominated U.S. Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who backs coal mining on federal lands, to lead the Interior Department. Officials for Zinke and Trump declined to comment.

Trump has vowed to lift the coal moratorium – imposed in 2016 as part of Obama’s broader plan to combat climate change – within 100 days of taking office.

Separately, a coalition appointed by Trump’s team to guide his Native American policy is researching proposals to ease energy development on tribal lands – including the controversial idea of transferring them to private ownership. [nL5N1DZ0OY]

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-energy-nationalparks-idUSKBN14V1EP

(from same site — )

U.S. crude stockpiles at record high as imports surge: EIA

U.S. crude oil stocks rose to a fresh record last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, as a surge in imports and rising domestic production more than offset a hike in refinery runs.

Oil bounces off November lows, but bloated U.S. stockpiles pressure market

SINGAPORE Oil prices recovered on Thursday from losses chalked up the session before, but the market remained under pressure as bloated U.S. crude inventories and rising output dampen OPEC-led efforts to curb global production.

Congress just made it easier to sell off federal land, including national parks

Heather Hansman, The Guardian

Jan. 20, 2017, 8:00 AM

In the midst of highly publicized steps to dismantle insurance coverage for 32 million people and defund women’s healthcare facilities, Republican lawmakers have quietly laid the foundation to give away Americans’ birthright: 640m acres of national land.

In a single line of changes to the rules for the House of Representatives, Republicans have overwritten the value of federal lands, easing the path to disposing of federal property even if doing so loses money for the government and provides no demonstrable compensation to American citizens.

At stake are areas managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), National Forests and Federal Wildlife Refuges, which contribute to an estimated $646bn each year in economic stimulus from recreation on public lands and 6.1m jobs. Transferring these lands to the states, critics fear, could decimate those numbers by eliminating mixed-use requirements, limiting public access and turning over large portions for energy or property development.

[ . . . ]

Republican eagerness to cede federal land to local governments for possible sale, mining or development is already moving states to act. Western states, where most federal land is concentrated, are already introducing legislation that pave the way for land transfers.

In Wyoming, for example, the 2017 senate has introduced a joint resolution that would amend the state constitution to dictate how public land given to the state by the federal government after 2019 is managed. It has little public support, but Wyoming Senate President Eli Bebout said that he thought the state should be preemptively thinking about what it would do with federal land.

The Congressional devaluation of national property is the most far-reaching legislative change in a recent push to transfer federal lands to the states. Because of the Republican majority in Congress, bills proposing land transfers could now swiftly diminish Forest Service and BLM lands across the country. [JUST GO READ IT]

http://www.businessinsider.com/congress-lays-groundwork-to-get-rid-of-federal-land-and-national-parks-2017-1

Republicans in Congress Set Value of All Public Lands and Buildings to $0 for Easy Sell Off at Taxpayers’ Expense

by
January 08, 2017 1:54 PM

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a rules change this past week by a vote of 234 to 193, that would allow Congress the ability to essentially give away federal lands and buildings for free. The new rule, authored by GOP Rep. Robert Bishop of Utah, Chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, codifies that any legislation to dispose of federal land and natural resources would have a net sum zero cost to taxpayers. As the rule applies only to the House legislative rules, it is not subject to approval by the Senate or a presidential signature and is effective immediately.

[ . . . ]

Since the House is required to account for any cost associated with any legislation it considers under Congressional Budget Office accounting rules and guidelines, legislation put forward now shall skip several steps in the normal legislative process, coming up for a vote without any discussion of the costs and benefits. This means that the House does not need to render an assessment or cost analysis of estimated financial losses resulting in legislation giving away public lands or buildings.

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/brody_levesque/republicans_in_congress_set_value_of_all_public_lands_and_buildings_to_0_for_easy_sell_off_at_taxpayers_expense

GOP begins public land overhaul

BY DEVIN HENRY – 02/12/17 09:00 AM EST

In the last two weeks, the House has passed several Congressional Review Act resolutions undoing Obama-administration environmental regulations, including several opposed by industry groups and land reformers.

One of those resolutions ends a Bureau of Land Management rule restricting venting and flaring at natural gas drilling sites on public land. The rule would limit methane pollution, but industry groups say it would be duplicative, unnecessary and costly.

[… ]

Activists pushing their allies to hold the line against the GOP are working to kick up grassroots opposition to public land changes, an effort that they say has had at least some success so far.

Conservationists blistered a House rule change in January that makes it easier for the government to shed its public land holdings. And, earlier this month, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was forced to rescind a bill to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land after a backlash from sportsmen’s groups.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/319017-gop-begins-public-land-overhaul

DEC. 9, 2016, 11:37 A.M.

REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON

Trump said to pick drilling advocate Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Interior

Donald Trump has chosen Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), a member of the GOP congressional leadership and a strident advocate for increased oil and gas drilling on federal lands, to head the Interior Department, according to multiple news reports.

McMorris Rodgers, the highest ranking Republican woman in the House of Representatives, would take the helm of a 70,000-person agency that manages hundreds of millions of acres of federal lands, including the National Parks system. She would be charged with implementing Trump’s plan to aggressively roll back many of the environmental restrictions the Obama administration has placed on federal lands, which the president-elect wants to open up for substantially more drilling and mining.

[ . . . ]

“Selling off our public lands to the highest bidder and opening them to drilling, mining and logging is not in the best interest of our country,” said a statement from Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, “but that is exactly what Rep. McMorris Rodgers has voted to do over and over again.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-trump-said-to-pick-mcmorriss-rodgers-1481305993-htmlstory.html

ENVIRONMENT

4 Major Environmental Rules That the GOP Congress Is Overturning in Massive Gift to Polluters

Congress is considering eliminative more than 40 Obama administration environment and energy-related rules.

By Matt Lee-Ashley, Jenny Rowland / Center for American Progress

In the 24 days since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Republican-controlled Congress has already moved to overturn four major rules that the oil, gas, and coal industries spent millions of dollars fighting during the Obama administration. First, Congress eliminated the Stream Protection Rule, which would prevent toxic mine waste from being dumped in streams. Then Congress voted to get rid of a rule that limited bribery and corruption in oil operations around the world. And in the coming days, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote to overturn a rule that limits methane pollution when oil and gas companies drill on public lands and to eliminate a rule that increases public input in public lands management decisions.

Of the more than 40 Obama administration environment and energy-related rules that anti-environment advocates have identified for Congress to consider for elimination under the Congressional Review Act, or CRA, why have Republican leaders in Congress chosen these four as their first targets?

Which environmental rules is Congress scrapping—and why?We examined each of the four CRA resolutions that have received votes by at least one chamber in this new Congress to better understand special interests’ role in pushing for their repeal. Below is a summary of our findings:

(check the article for detailed explanation of each)

http://www.alternet.org/environment/4-major-environmental-rules-gop-congress-overturning-massive-gift-polluters

Rogue Scientists Race to Save Climate Data from Trump

AT 10 AM the Saturday before inauguration day, on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly 60 hackers, scientists, archivists, and librarians were hunched over laptops, drawing flow charts on whiteboards, and shouting opinions on computer scripts across the room. They had hundreds of government web pages and data sets to get through before the end of the day—all strategically chosen from the pages of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—any of which, they felt, might be deleted, altered, or removed from the public domain by the incoming Trump administration.

Their undertaking, at the time, was purely speculative, based on travails of Canadian government scientists under the Stephen Harper administration, which muzzled them from speaking about climate change. Researchers watched as Harper officials threw thousands of books of aquatic data into dumpsters as federal environmental research libraries closed.

But three days later, speculation became reality as news broke that the incoming Trump administration’s EPA transition team does indeed intend to remove some climate data from the agency’s website. That will include references to President Barack Obama’s June 2013 Climate Action Plan and the strategies for 2014 and 2015 to cut methane, according to an unnamed source who spoke with Inside EPA. [ . . .]

https://www.wired.com/2017/01/rogue-scientists-race-save-climate-data-trump/

(Yeah, go read this one too – seriously important)

Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump

By Brady Dennis December 13, 2016

Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference.

The efforts include a “guerrilla archiving” event in Toronto, where experts will copy irreplaceable public data, meetings at the University of Pennsylvania focused on how to download as much federal data as possible in the coming weeks, and a collaboration of scientists and database experts who are compiling an online site to harbor scientific information.

[ . . . ]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/13/scientists-are-frantically-copying-u-s-climate-data-fearing-it-might-vanish-under-trump/?utm_term=.abd60cf65425

A REPORTER AT LARGE

MARCH 27, 2017 ISSUE

THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency.

By Jane Mayer

[ . . . ]

Magerman told the Wall Street Journal that Mercer’s political opinions “show contempt for the social safety net that he doesn’t need, but many Americans do.” He also said that Mercer wants the U.S. government to be “shrunk down to the size of a pinhead.” Several former colleagues of Mercer’s said that his views are akin to Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand. Magerman told me, “Bob believes that human beings have no inherent value other than how much money they make. A cat has value, he’s said, because it provides pleasure to humans. But if someone is on welfare they have negative value. If he earns a thousand times more than a schoolteacher, then he’s a thousand times more valuable.” Magerman added, “He thinks society is upside down—that government helps the weak people get strong, and makes the strong people weak by taking their money away, through taxes.” He said that this mind-set was typical of “instant billionaires” in finance, who “have no stake in society,” unlike the industrialists of the past, who “built real things.”

Another former high-level Renaissance employee said, “Bob thinks the less government the better. He’s happy if people don’t trust the government. And if the President’s a bozo? He’s fine with that. He wants it to all fall down.”

[ . . . ]

Press accounts speculated that Robert Mercer may have targeted DeFazio because DeFazio had proposed a tax on a type of high-volume stock trade that Renaissance frequently made. But several associates of Mercer’s say that the truth is stranger. DeFazio’s Republican opponent was Arthur Robinson—the biochemist, sheep rancher, and climate-change denialist. The Mercers became his devoted supporters after reading Access to Energy, an offbeat scientific newsletter that he writes. The family has given at least $1.6 million in donations to Robinson’s Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Some of the money was used to buy freezers in which Robinson is storing some fourteen thousand samples of human urine. Robinson has said that, by studying the urine, he will find new ways of extending the human life span.

Robinson holds a degree in chemistry from Caltech, but his work is not respected in most scientific circles. (The Oregon senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, has called Robinson an “extremist kook.”) Robinson appears to be the source of Robert Mercer’s sanguine view of nuclear radiation: in 1986, Robinson co-authored a book suggesting that the vast majority of Americans would survive “an all-out atomic attack on the United States.” Robinson’s institute dismisses climate change as a “false religion.” A petition that he organized in 1998 to oppose the Kyoto Protocol, claiming to represent thirty thousand scientists skeptical of global warming, has been criticized as deceptive. The National Academy of Sciences has warned that the petition never appeared in a peer-reviewed journal, though it is printed in “a format that is nearly identical to that of scientific articles.” The petition, however, still circulates online: in the past year, it was the most shared item about climate change on Facebook.

[ . . . ]

By 2011, the Mercers had joined forces with Charles and David Koch, who own Koch Industries, and who have run a powerful political machine for decades. The Mercers attended the Kochs’ semiannual seminars, which provide a structure for right-wing millionaires looking for effective ways to channel their cash. The Mercers admired the savviness of the Kochs’ plan, which called for attendees to pool their contributions in a fund run by Koch operatives. The fund would strategically deploy the money in races across the country, although, at the time, the Kochs’ chief aim was to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. The Kochs will not reveal the identities of their donors, or the size of contributions, but the Mercers reportedly began giving at least a million dollars a year to the Kochs’ fund. Eventually, they contributed more than twenty-five million.

[ . . . ]

The Mercers’ investment in Breitbart enabled Bannon to promote anti-establishment politicians whom the mainstream media dismissed, including Trump. In 2011, David Bossie, the head of the conservative group Citizens United, introduced Trump to Bannon; at the time, Trump was thinking about running against Obama. Bannon and Trump met at Trump Tower and discussed a possible campaign.

[ . . . [

David Magerman, in his essay for the Inquirer, notes that Mercer “has surrounded our President with his people, and his people have an outsized influence over the running of our country, simply because Robert Mercer paid for their seats.” He writes, “Everyone has a right to express their views.” But, he adds, “when the government becomes more like a corporation, with the richest 0.001% buying shares and demanding board seats, then we cease to be a representative democracy.” Instead, he warns, “we become an oligarchy.”

(You’ve just got to go read the whole thing – )

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

GOING ROGUE

These heroic guerrilla scientists and librarians are racing to save environmental data from Trump

WRITTEN BY

Jerome WhitingtonVisiting assistant professor of anthropology, NYU

Already, some of our fears are being realized. On Monday, federal staff leaked news that the EPA had frozen its grant funding program, while USDA scientists have had their research funds frozen and were initially told to stop speaking to the media (although that order has since been rescinded.) Meanwhile, the EPA has reportedly been instructed to remove the climate change page from its website.

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) has formed as an organized response to the Trump administration’s plan to undermine federal environmental science resources. Because access to and control over data is a key piece of effective regulation, we have taken action to systematically archive valuable environmental datasets, create usable nongovernmental data access, and preserve records of wide-ranging, ephemeral, web-based policy and program information. This monitoring and tracking work has also created an opportunity for providing rapid analysis of environmental regulation during the transition.

Trump has also hand-picked a wide range of extremists when it comes to environmental policy, from climate-change-denier Scott Pruitt, his nominee to head the EPA, to ex-Koch Industries lobbyist Thomas Pyle, who is the transition leader for the Energy Department transition. These are not just pro-business conservatives trying to keep environmental costs down. These are hardcore anti-environment appointees, many of whom have strong records of anti-science denial and obstructionism. This, coupled with indications that the administration will be working rapidly to roll back federal environmental policy, points toward a wholesale attack on environmental governance, with federal environmental science a key target.

This is where EDGI comes in. Formed as a decentralized team of about fifty social scientists and researchers immediately after the election, EDGI has focused on these two primary goals: documenting and analyzing the transition, and publicly archiving federally maintained data.

(etc.)

https://qz.com/894428/trumps-war-on-science-guerrilla-scientists-and-librarians-are-archiving-environmental-and-climate-change-data-before-trump-erases-it/

((

Women’s March on Washington, D.C. January 21, 2017

18 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Civil Rights, cricketdiane, CricketHouseStudios, Democracy, Helping To Fix Solvable Problems, Human Rights, Liberty, living in America, Sovereignty of the People

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Civil Rights, civil rights march, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, Democracy, disability rights, disability rights march, equality, Freedom, hope, Human Rights, human rights are women's rights, human rights march, january 21 2017, Liberty, rights, Solutions, women's ideas, women's issues, women's march, women's march info, women's march on washington, Women's Rights, women's rights are human rights, women's thoughts

The Women’s March on Washington aims to send a message to all levels of government, including but not limited to the incoming Presidential administration, that we stand together in solidarity and we expect elected leaders to act to protect the rights of women, their families and their communities.

https://cricketdiane.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/121fa-wmwlocationpressrelease.pdf

Women’s March Bay Area Women’s Navy Blue Hoody

by womensmarchbayarea

Before showing the article for what to bring – I’m sharing this article that I found about what not to bring and what is banned from the Women’s March on Washington, D.C. – January 21, 2017. Then right below that will be a great article about things to bring and preparing for the Women’s March event – including snacks and really good walking shoes.

The U.S. Secret Service, the Metropolitan Police Department, U.S. Capital Police and other agencies are collaborating on security efforts for the inauguration. The following items have been banned from public events during inauguration week:

Aerosols

Weapons of any kind, including ammunition, explosives, firearms, mace and pepper spray

Animals other than helper/guide dogs

Backpacks and bags larger than 18 inches-by-13 inches-by-7 inches.

Bicycles

Drones and other unmanned aircraft systems

Balloons

Toy guns

Coolers and glass, thermal or metal containers

Laser pointers

Selfie Sticks, and other sticks and poles

Packages

Structures

Any other items determined to be potential safety hazards

Only cardboard, poster board or cloth signs will be permitted, and all signs must be less than 3 feet in width, 20 feet in length and one-quarter inch in thickness. Sticks and poles are prohibited; do not attach them as supports to any signs you bring.

http://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/01/13/packing-for-inauguration-womens-march/96400218/

Due to Security Considerations – D.C. Area Law Enforcement has enacted the Following Policy for the Women’s March on Washington

Please note all bags may be subject to search.

Backpacks are not permitted.

Bags should be no larger than 8”x6”x4”.

Specifically for people who would like to bring meals, each marcher is permitted one additional 12”x12”x6” plastic or gallon bag.

For marchers who have medical needs or for mothers who need baby bags or breast pumps, one clear bag or backpack no larger than 17″x12″x6″ will be permitted and subject to search (colored transparent bags are not permitted).

https://womensmarch-pa.org/2017/01/11/important-information-for-everyone-attending-wmw/

WOMEN’S MARCH 2017January 16, 20177:00 a.m.

The Ultimate Guide to Preparing for the Women’s March

By Lisa Ryan

http://nymag.com/thecut/2017/01/what-to-bring-to-the-womens-march-plus-how-to-prepare.html

That is an absolutely brilliant article – and definitely worth using to prepare to go to the Women’s March on Washington, D.C. on January 21, 2017.

Also –

If it’s cold, organizers also suggest:

Thermal underwear beneath your clothes

Winter gear such as a scarf, gloves, balaclava and hat

A coat that is insulated comfortable and waterproof with a hood

Waterproof shoes or boots that have been broken in and are suitable for walking long distances.

Travel-sized wet wipes and/or tissues

Hand sanitizer

A paper map of Washington, D.C.

Be sure to charge your cell phone battery and consider bringing a backup battery. Plan to carry essential items, like identification, cash, credit cards and a pre-purchased metro card in a water-resistant pouch, neck wallet or cross-body purse.

from –

http://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/01/13/packing-for-inauguration-womens-march/96400218/

If you are a member of the press, covering the event officially, and have equipment that will not fit into bags of the above dimensions: please contact the National Communications Team to get press credentials in advance in order for your equipment to be allowed into the rally site.
If you require disability accommodations or related equipment, that will not fit into the above bags, please enter via the ADA Accessible route: 4th St. SW from C St. to Independence Ave. For anyone using Metro, please get off at Federal Center SW and use 4th St. to enter the rally area.
Canes, walking sticks, walkers, and portable seats are allowed for individuals who require them for mobility and accessibility on a regular basis.

http://www.stylewise-blog.com/2017/01/how-to-prepare-for-womens-march-on.html

7. Breastfeeding mothers

If you’re breastfeeding or have other medical needs, you are allowed to bring an additional clear bag or backpack no larger than 17 by 12 by 6 inches, but no colored transparent bags are permitted. There will be breastfeeding stations along the root, and the FAQ page will be updated this week with information about where they will be.

8. Children

As to kids, it’s your choice as to whether to bring them, but they are welcome. There is a Facebook page for parents who plan to attend the march with kids, which is a good resource for coordination.

9. Volunteering

If you want to roll up your sleeves and volunteer, head over to this Google Doc to sign up.

http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1131198/womens-march-on-washington-cheat-sheet

From USA Today –

The starting point will be the intersection of Independence Avenue and Third Street SW, near the U.S. Capitol.

Women’s March on Washington FAQ: What you need to know

Editors, USA TODAYPublished 7:06 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2017

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/01/17/womens-march-washington-where-when-logistics/96156298/

Everything You Need to Know for the Women’s March on Washington

By Andrea Swalec

http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-for-the-Womens-March-on-Washington-410966765.html

Start Time for the Women’s March – 10 am.

The main site organizing the event for the Women’s March on DC – says the start time is 10 am. and although it isn’t required to register, nor to have tickets to the event, they are asking people to register to have a better understanding of the numbers of people coming to the Women’s March.

https://www.womensmarch.com/

The page showing the buses and number of buses coming from various states is here –

For NYC, all the buses listed are full but there may be others going not listed including from some churches and organizations throughout the five boroughs.

http://buses.womensmarch.com/

What’s the Purpose of the March?

March organizers said in a mission statement posted to their website that participants will unite to end violence and promote rights for women, LGBT people, workers, people of color, people with disabilities and immigrants.

“The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us,” the site says.

Source: Everything You Need to Know for the Women’s March on Washington | NBC4 Washington http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-for-the-Womens-March-on-Washington-410966765.html#ixzz4W8NDXZex
Follow us: @nbcwashington on Twitter | NBCWashington on Facebook

**

Women’s March on Washington Facebook Page –

https://www.facebook.com/events/2169332969958991/

From their facebook page – to share the info –

Women’s March on Washington, D.C.

January 21, 2017

Saturday at 10 AM – 5 PM

3 days from now · 34–48° Partly Cloudy

Location of the Women’s March in D.C.

Independence Ave & Third St SW

Get Directions

Details

WEBSITE: https://www.womensmarch.com/
FACEBOOK PAGE: https://www.facebook.com/Womens-March-on-Washington-1338822066131069/
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/womensmarch
INSTAGRAM: http://www.instagram.com/womensmarchRSVP on our OFFICIAL EVENTBRITE: bit.ly/womensmarchrsvp (not required, but greatly helpful for planning!)This is an INCLUSIVE march, is FREE to join and EVERYONE who supports women’s rights are welcome.PLEASE SHARE, we need to spread the word everywhere!
————————-

OFFICIAL STATEMENT, National OrganizersOn January 21, 2017 we will unite in Washington, DC for the Women’s March on Washington. We stand together in solidarity with our partners and children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our families — recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the strength of our country.The rhetoric of the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us–women, immigrants of all statuses, those with diverse religious faiths particularly Muslim, people who identify as LGBTQIA, Native and Indigenous people, Black and Brown people, people with disabilities, the economically impoverished and survivors of sexual assault. We are confronted with the question of how to move forward in the face of national and international concern and fear.In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new administration on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us.We support the advocacy and resistance movements that reflect our multiple and intersecting identities. We call on all defenders of human rights to join us. This march is the first step towards unifying our communities, grounded in new relationships, to create change from the grassroots level up. We will not rest until women have parity and equity at all levels of leadership in society. We work peacefully while recognizing there is no true peace without justice and equity for all. HEAR OUR VOICE.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

This is an INCLUSIVE march, and EVERYONE who supports women’s rights are welcome.

PLEASE SHARE, we need to spread the word everywhere! And there are groups forming for EVERY STATE, so search for your local group as well!

We especially need HOSTS and ORGANIZERS from marginalized communities for this to be truly inclusive, please DM your state administrator to get involved!

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Who Is Organizing the March?

After Trump won the presidency, a retired attorney in Hawaii posted to Facebook about marching in Washington, The Washington Post reported. By the time Teresa Shook went to sleep, 40 women said they wanted to march. By the time she woke up, that number had ballooned to 10,000, the Post reported.

The idea for the march took off, and Shook and the initial organizers handed the reins to a group of experienced activists: Bob Bland, a fashion industry entrepreneur; Tamika Mallory, an organizer and gun-control advocate; Carmen Perez, executive director of the Gathering for Justice, a criminal-justice-reform group; and Linda Sarsour, executive director of the Arab American Association of New York.

Source: Everything You Need to Know for the Women’s March on Washington | NBC4 Washington http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Everything-You-Need-to-Know-for-the-Womens-March-on-Washington-410966765.html#ixzz4W8NmAndN
Follow us: @nbcwashington on Twitter | NBCWashington on Facebook

The march, the organizers declared via an ambitious platform released last week, is for gender equality, racial equality, LGBTQIA equality, economic justice and reproductive freedom; for equal pay, paid family leave, labor protections, clean water and air and access to public lands; and for an end to violence against women, police brutality and racial profiling. If that seems like a lot, well, that’s the point.

Sarsour, who serves as executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, tells Rolling Stone that the message the marchers want to send is that “from climate justice to racial justice to immigrant rights, reproductive rights, Native rights, we are united. We are committing to work together.

“We think that that hasn’t happened in a very clear way in a long time – bringing all the movements together and … saying, ‘We are watching you. We are ready. We are fired up. And we’re ready to fight back and protect our communities,'” she says.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/why-hundreds-of-thousands-are-joining-the-womens-march-w461332

What to do if you encounter counter-protesters at the Women’s March on Washington

Be prepared for trolls of the highest order at the Women’s March this weekend

1. Counter-protesters are not a possibility, but a definite entity

There will be counter-protesters whose goal is to goad you into confrontation and violence. So if you’re marching this weekend, coming across counter-demonstrators is not so much an “if” as a “when.” Be on the lookout.

http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1131331/what-to-do-if-you-encounter-counter-protesters-at-the-womens-march-on-washington

GO READ THE REST OF THEIR SUGGESTIONS – REALLY AMAZING and absolutely do-able.

Will the National team have march etiquette information on the National site?
There will be specific safety information posted on the National site related to children’s areas, medical stations, etc. Resources for safety, march etiquette, and peaceful demonstrations can be found through other sources, such as ACLU or googling peaceful demonstrations, rights at demonstrations, etc. Most important – stay positive during the March. We are unified and making sure our voices are heard for the concerns closest to our hearts!

https://mwmde.wordpress.com/safety-information/

Remember: Only sign up for information through the official site of the Women’s March, and be sure to download the app to have access to the latest information at all times. Familiarize yourself with the FAQ and only give your information via this questionnaire, which was created by march organizers. Remain alert — and stand up for women’s rights everywhere.

Want civil disobedience training in your community? Contact Alexis Danzig at alexis@directactiontraining.org

http://www.sheknows.com/living/articles/1131331/what-to-do-if-you-encounter-counter-protesters-at-the-womens-march-on-washington

What about cell phone service interruption from so much use in one area?

This is a known issue and risk of a large march. Suggest to use Firechat app. This app is fueled by bluetooth technology. You do not need cell phone service or wifi to use. The more phones on bluetooth, the strong the signal. You can use this a form of communication to direct message your group or bus captains.

FireChat is an individual and group texting app that works on your phone yet doesn’t need phone data to function. You only need your wifi (even if it says there’s no wifi, keep it on) and Bluetooth turned on, and it uses that to create a mesh network, not a cellular network. FireChat doesn’t need cell service- full stop. It has been used successfully in disasters and protests around the world. The app has private messages and you can make public chatrooms- think of them like Twitter hashtags. It works on iPhone and Android and is free. You don’t need to use your real name to sign up, people don’t see your phone number when they interact with you- they just see the image you choose and your user name. You can make a private group so all the organizers can communicate privately and quickly.

1. Download the app to your phone or tablet. Add something to your username to emphasize that it’s your official account.

2. Encourage people to sign up.

3. Make a private group message for all your organizers or for your travelling group

https://mwmde.wordpress.com/safety-information/

WATCH: Democracy Now! Broadcasts Live from the D.C. Women’s March

SPECIAL BROADCASTJANUARY 21, 2017

On Saturday, January 21, Democracy Now! will bring you a special live broadcast from near the Women’s March main stage area. Tune in from 10 a.m.–3 p.m. ET. This special coverage will include speakers and performers from the stage and interviews with people from around the world who are attending the march and rallies in D.C., as well as reports from other actions around the country.

Use the hashtag #DNlive to join the conversation on Twitter.

How to Watch

Stream this coverage live on this page on Saturday, January 21 starting at 10 a.m. ET.

Or, watch on LinkTV (Dish Network 9410 & DirecTV Ch. 375)

https://www.democracynow.org/live/watch_inauguration_2017_womens_march_live

I understand people maybe too well and yet not enough

02 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, America - USA, Comparative Analysis and Analogic Analysis, Creating Solutions for America

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, american, American Life, americans, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, information sources, life in the USA, modern life, old tv shows, old tv sitcoms, open-mindedness, Social Change, social comment, social commentary, social mores, society, today's living, Tolerance, USA

It is obvious that time is important That seems to me it is a given fact yet many people do not look at it that way. Or, perhaps each of us find a different approach to our use of time and its importance in our lives.

In one sense, I understand people will do certain things in certain ways they find either useful or appropriate from the standpoint of their experience and learned concepts of judgment. That is a fact.

It means in practice, that each person will make many series of choices based on those judgments whether they are truly appropriate or not. And, make those judgments for their choices even where new information may be needed.

That is the part I don’t understand and don’t want to understand anymore either. When people around me choose to use their time as if it is not precious, and as if nothing beyond what they knew sometime long ago about things can be the only way to look at it even now – I just shake my head and try to ignore it.

It is a futile argument to have with them. They are not going to update their files, no matter what I say or show them. But, I don’t understand why they can afford to be that way. I can’t. And, there is nothing comforting to me when I find myself doing it either.

When I’m closed minded and base everything on facts from some past that does not even begin to apply to today, it is a loss and a liability – not an asset for me. But, others around me do not look at it that way for themselves and their own choices.

And, they don’t believe it is important to use their time in ways that will help to understand how things are today and what works, what doesn’t, how it can be done now, and other ways of looking at it (whatever “it” is).

In a quick anecdote, some friends and family members in my world only watch old tv shows from the 70’s, maybe 80’s and before. That is their source of continuing information about what the world is like, what people are like and what attitudes, choices and perspectives are appropriate to use about situations and things – yet, how our daily lives and our world has changed since then.

It isn’t that everything from those tv shows is wrong and they are certainly still entertaining as part of the entertainment we feed ourselves daily, but to have only that for information is dangerous.

Many beliefs from that time have changed, many facts have changed and many attitudes about what is appropriate and what is not, have changed since those shows were made. They are a reflection of a different time and a different society entirely.

So, where that is the only information about what is normal, accepted and appropriate, or commonly believed by “everyone” – as a basis of judgment about situations, people and actions or behaviors in situations today, it can be disastrous and make everything more difficult both for the person and those around them including me.

People in my life who have or who are using these old tv shows on a constant streaming basis as their primary or only source of information, continue to shock me in the level of closed-mindedness they use commonly and overtly in their everyday lives. It is amazing that it has not gotten them killed to be honest.

It certainly makes everything that is different today about our daily lives into a source of aggravation for them, and disdain, and contempt and vicious attacks on others to make it like it “should be”, from a time that doesn’t exist anymore.

A great “for instance” is the social premise that a phone should not be called nor answered at the dinner table where in the picture obvious from old tv sitcoms, the family sits in their entirety around a table with proper plates, and dinner served by Mom.

Yet today, if a text or iPhone isn’t answered at the dinner table which is likely the coffee table in the living room or at some restaurant, a host of difficulties can arise from losing a job, to losing a business opportunity, to losing a friend’s trust, to being shamed and bullied on Facebook because you were too rude and uppity to answer your damn phone or text.

It has changed socially to become rude not to answer because technology has made it possible for that phone to be ever present and everybody knows it. That is not going to be the case in an old tv drama, sitcom or social information from thirty or forty years ago.

The people whose sole information on social conventions, behavior and choices, how to think about things and what is appropriate, comes from those old tv shows will read that phone call during dinnertime as an insult to whoever cooked the food, an infinite insult to the people gathered to eat together, a lack of caring on the part of anyone who takes such a call, and a slap in the face to the family or the friendship in general.

It is a shame to watch actions and choices unfold based on that interpretation when it is so hopelessly out of date and inappropriate to today’s facts in nearly every way possible. But that same person reacting to the situation based upon facts that are out of date, is also the least likely to want to do anything to change the way they look at it.

And, tomorrow and the next day, they will continue to absorb those old tv sitcoms and dramas for agreement with the way they see things and support their own aggravation based on those interpretations of things – based upon how things were at the time when those shows were made and only in the ways it is shown on those tv shows.

The writers of tv shows were not intending to be the voice of knowledge and information when they did their jobs. The views of life and facts given by those shows were never intended to be absolutely accurate in any sense and certainly portray only a fraction of life and thought about social mores at the time.

In the real world, every family’s lifestyle was being played out in a vast array of differences from what the tv world could or would portray for the mainstream audiences. What the appropriate way to consider anything would be in real life and the facts surrounding it, its interpretations and social conventions – would have to be different in many ways to its portrayal for any show whether television, cable, news or movies, simply because of the medium.

So, the part I don’t understand about people around me that use old tv shows as their only information source is why don’t they know it isn’t the same information as what is used and needed in everyday life – even then and certainly, now.

And, how this has anything to do with the importance of time? Think about it – lost in translations of how things should be – from a time period that no longer exists, that was portrayed for a tv show as an entertaining slice of something which didn’t even exist that way in the real world then? And to get aggravated, combative and abusive to everyone, everything and anytime today’s facts and social conventions are viewed through those tv sitcoms as textbooks for judging what is what today?

Hmmm, yes – that is a waste of time that is inherently evil no matter who does it.

cricketdiane, 01-02-2017

Intolerance Simply Cheats Us All And The Time We Have To Share With One Another

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Civil Rights, Freedom, Human Rights, Thoughts, Twenty-first Century, US At Home - Domestic Policy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acceptance, acceptance of diversity, Activism, Civil Rights, closed mindedness, costs of intolerance, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, diversity, Human Rights, intolerance, Tolerance, USA

Intolerance Is Unjustified –

I came into a house to stay awhile

Where books are something in the way

And do not have a welcome.

Where there is only one way to season a chicken

And NOTHING else will do

Even if it is something only for you.

When watching old tele shows all day

Is perfectly okay

But to work on a computer is shameful they say.

Where to be on the internet is nothing

More than a toy

Wasting time and doing nothing but acting like a bore.

Where anything new or exciting that’s offered

Is met with disdain without any bother

As if they have seen everything there is

And nothing new is worth noting as important even if it is.

But where I’ve lived now I can honestly say,

Given intolerance, ignorance plenty of place for its way

That it maims and it stops the most delightful of opportunities

To share and create and to make days more worth living.

My new friends are bored so much of the time

But is it any surprise with the chains on their minds?

I had wished for them joy and happiness and peace

But now all I can think of is death and disease.

It’s truly a shame in a country so free

That people still settle for their own mediocrity

Then force that same vision on others that see

For lack of acceptance of what it is to be free.

cricketdiane 12-31-2016

What damage could Trump and his extreme right wing cabinet do to America? What did the GOP already do?

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, America - USA, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips, Economics, Economy, macro-economics, Macro-economics future forecasting, Tangible from the Impossible, US Government, US Government, US budget, US and State budget deficits, budget cuts, Constitutional issues, US economic crisis, US debt

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

american economics, american homes, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, damage gop will do, damage trump will do, Donald Trump, economic damage, Economics, extreme right wing presidency, Fannie Mae, federal housing finance agency, Freddie Mac, GOP, home mortgages, homeownership federal programs, homeownership help, housing, housing market, housing principle relief, macroeconomics, mortgage relief programs, mortgages, trump, trump presidency, underwater mortgages, US economics

The question of what damage could a Trump extreme right-wing cabinet and Presidency do to America is on many people’s minds.

I found this entry on a draft post on my CricketDiane blog from the GOP run America of the years before President Obama and the Democrats took over the ship (at least partially since the GOP continued to run most states) – and righted our economy.

The cost to taxpayers and homeowners plus Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders is known now, eight years later and it obviously hurt our economy in ways that destroyed lives, decimated communities and degraded the opportunities for massive numbers of Americans and their families for several generations yet to come.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency placed Washington-based Fannie and McLean, Virginia-based Freddie in a so-called conservatorship and ousted the chief executive officers. The Treasury agreed to invest as much as $100 billion in each company through preferred stock purchases as needed and put common shareholders on notice that they will rank last in the government’s consideration. [2008]

I couldn’t remember where this quote came from, so I did a google search with it and these entries came up –

Douglas M. Holmes • View topic – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
www.dmholmeslaw.com/appiesboard/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1236…
Sep 28, 2004 – In a report released Tuesday, OFHEO, Fannie Mae’s chief regulator, found that …. billion in earnings last year, ousted top executives and was fined a record …. based Freddie Mac hold or guarantee half the U.S. mortgage debt and … loans to the two companies and to purchase stock in them if needed for a …

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

by doug » Tue Sep 28, 2004 1:03 pm

Watch out for the hurricane named Fannie

Regulators are starting to take a hard look at the books of Fannie Mae, and they don’t like what they see. That could spell trouble for the largest source of mortgage capital.
By Bill Fleckenstein

VietFun For All – Gov’t may soon back Fannie, Freddie

community.vietfun.com/printthread.php?t=571974

Sep 5, 2008 – 17 posts – ‎7 authors

Gov’t may soon take over troubled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae, … and Freddie and topurchase stock in the two companies if needed. … The Treasury plans to put Fannie andFreddie into a so– called conservatorship and pump … Paulson consulted with Bank of America Chief Executive Officer …

Mudd, the son of TV anchor Roger Mudd, was elevated to Fannie Mae’s top post in December 2004 when chief executive Franklin Raines and chief financial officer Timothy Howard were swept out of office in an accounting scandal. Syron was named Freddie Mac’s CEO in 2003, replacing former chief Gregory Parseghian, who was ousted in after being implicated in accounting irregularities.

He formerly was executive chairman of Thermo Electron Corp., a Waltham, Mass.-based maker of scientific equipment, served head of the American Stock Exchange was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston in the early 1990s.

Fannie Mae was created by the government in 1938, and was turned into a shareholder-owned company 30 years later. Freddie Mac was established in 1970 to provide competition for Fannie.

A government takeover could cost taxpayers up to $25 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

[from – AP 2008 – Gov’t may soon take over troubled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac] (included in post above)

Plus these entries –

Freddie Mac – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freddie_Mac

The Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), known as Freddie Mac, is a public government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), headquartered in the Tyson’s Corner CDP in unincorporated Fairfax County, Virginia. … On September 7, 2008, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director James B. Lockhart III …

[PDF]An Overview of the Fannie and Freddie Conservatorship Litigation

brooklynworks.brooklaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000…

by DJ Reiss – ‎2014 – ‎Cited by 2 – ‎Related articles

The litigation surrounding Fannie and Freddie’s conservatorship raises all … 2 See FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE AGENCY (FHFA), ENTERPRISE SHARE OF …. Preferred Stock PurchaseAgreements (PSPAs) with the Treasury. … make unlimited equity and debt investments in the two companies‘ securities through.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Investors Win Court Round Against …

fortune.com/2016/10/04/fannie-mae-freddie-mac-ruling-government/

Oct 4, 2016 – Kenneth C. Griffin, chief executive officer of Citadel Inves … “and gave the government every benefit of the doubt as she did so, and … Judge Sweeney, in the Court ofFederal Claims in Washington, D.C., and a … placed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac intoconservatorship, with … Sponsored Financial Content.

Fannie Mae’s Last Stand | Vanity Fair

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2009/02/fannie-and-freddie200902-2

But, for decades, Fannie Mae had been under siege from powerful enemies, who … with astock-market value of more than $70 billion and more earnings per … an obscure government agency known as the Federal Housing Finance Agency … in Fannie and Freddie (which was also put into conservatorship that same day), …

[PDF]us treasury department office of public affairs – Judicial Watch

http://www.judicialwatch.org/…/F_D_2009_520_FHFA_fanfred_8_26_2009.p…

Sep 7, 2008 – Treasury Senior Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement. 2. …. Fannie Mae andFreddie Mac debt and mortgage backed securities outstanding today … indefinite in duration and have a capacity of $100 billion each, … If the Federal Housing Finance Agency determines that a GSE’s liabilities have exceeded its.

Obviously, there are repercussions from the GOP run years that have even yet to be realized despite all the efforts of the Obama administration to make things right. But, since Donald Trump has been given these shoes to fill as President of the United States and has nominated a host of extreme right wing loyalists in positions of power, it is time to look at the playing fields that will be impacted by their policies and actions.

This quote I found that tops this post, led me to find a few things of help and value as well, which many Americans need to access before everything potentially damaging can be enacted by the GOP backed new administration, GOP run Congress and Senate as well as the predominantly GOP run state legislatures across the country.

As promised by GOP after the 2008 decimation of housing values, as millions of Americans suffered from mortgage values far in excess of market values for their homes, many programs were put in place – nearly all of which performed poorly or not at all to relieve homeowners from these blighted economic difficulties.

However, today I found this program that relieves the principle owed on upside down mortgages and it is a current program. Before it is decimated by the Republicans coming into policy making extremes of the new administration run by Trump, it is worth taking advantage of this program as quickly as possible.

There are areas of the country that are to be mainly served by this program’s opportunities but not necessarily exclusive to those areas of the country and that would be worth finding out if you are a homeowner who is in need of this program’s help and promises.

I found it at the Federal Housing Finance Agency website – and there may be three people in the entire world that actually know it exists and they are probably bankers. Many programs to help homeowners have been issued through other agencies and to get a realistic list of them and their requirements would likely be a Herculean effort. But, start here and find the requirements briefly that I’ve added from their website. The link to the page is below the quoted material.

– cricketdiane, 12-29-2016

PRINCIPAL REDUCTION MODIFICATION

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) undertook an extensive evaluation to determine whether to implement a Principal Reduction Modification program for seriously delinquent, underwater borrowers whose loans are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (the Enterprises). FHFA’s objective was to develop a program that helped targeted borrowers avoid foreclosure while also adhering to FHFA’s mandate to preserve and conserve the assets of the Enterprises.

Am I Eligible?

Your loan must be owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and meet basic criteria.

At least 90 days delinquent as of March 1, 2016

Unpaid principal balance of $250,000 or less as of March 1, 2016

Owner-occupied

From The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) website – https://www.fhfa.gov/PolicyProgramsResearch/Policy/Pages/Principal-Reduction-Modification.aspx

Why are billions being spent to pay armies of people and not get a home or economic sustainability for any homeless people in the US?

26 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

America, churches, cricketdiane, Economic depression, economic destitution, Economics, faith based organizations, government agencies, homeless, homeless services, homeless shelters, homelessness, impoverished, ngos, nonprofits, poverty, tithes, US economics, USA

Why is there never any real help for anyone who is homeless, when there are millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of employees being paid by agencies, organizations, churches, faith based organizations, NGOs, nonprofits and government resources to provide an end to homelessness, to help the homeless, to prevent homelessness, to provide housing to families and individuals that are homeless and to help people who are homeless to end their own homelessness?

HUD provides bonuses to communities that decrease their count, creating a disincentive for those conducting counts to locate every unsheltered person in their neighborhoods. – from The National Coalition for the Homeless http://nationalhomeless.org/hud-continues-undercount-homeless/

A search of the Guidestar Directory of Charities and Nonprofit Organizations

shows

14,778 results found when the word “homelessness” is used. These organizations and non-profits range from shelters to organizations to end homelessness.

When the search term, “poverty” is used it shows

7,342 results found.

For the category, “General Human Services” – Guidestar shows 131,329 entries of organizations offering social services.

The category, “Housing” shows 35,920 nonprofits engaged in housing efforts to end homelessness, provide homeless and family shelters, to assist with finding housing and / or to fight for affordable housing to be available.

These listings are for US charities and nonprofits. The areas above are beyond the youth services which also has another category and there are more charities and nonprofits, faith based organizations and other NGOs involved that would not necessarily be listed with Guidestar or other databases – but would include foundations and branches of international organizations who are in the US as well.

But why are years upon years of funding, financing and efforts across so many agencies from federal and state to local as well as nonprofits and homelessness prevention organizations, faith-based organizations and NGOs not getting anything much accomplished for individuals and families in America that are homeless except to keep them basically and continually homeless?

In fact, many of these programs have lost funding as a direct result of HUD’s emphasis on chronic homelessness. This loss is compounded by the fact that many private foundations and local and state governments have followed the federally-established priority on chronic homelessness.

HUD’s Point-in-Time counts, which exclude large segments of the homeless population, prop up these misguided federal policies, and encourage redirection of private and local funding.

[ . . . ]

Certainly, some communities have seen significant reductions in the counts of chronically homeless people, although HUD’s creative definitions may well have contributed to the reported successes. In addition to the narrowing of the definition of chronic homelesssness mentioned previously, HUD also invented the term “functional zero.”3 This Orwellian term does not mean that there are no more chronically homeless people in the communities that have reached “functional zero.” Instead, it means that the availability of resources in the community exceeds the size of the population needing the resources. Whether homeless people use those resources or are successful with them is not relevant. Under “functional zero,” people remain chronically homeless on the streets even after their communities have “ended” chronic homelessness.

Family homelessness has reached record levels in many major cities, leading some officials to declare ( a state of emergency. – from The Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness http://www.icphusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Duffield_Creating-Chronic-Homelessness.pdf

Having experienced far too much poverty in my life as an adult in the US – it is obvious that homelessness, housing, social services and ending homelessness has become a business that employs people who were never in danger of being impoverished nor homeless while taking the funds for the poor, disabled, impoverished, disadvantaged, vulnerable and homeless to use for salaries, overhead, posters, media campaigns, nice seminars, nice offices, nice bonuses and employees’ perks, incentives and pensions. It stands to reason, that for less money, homelessness would have been solved had that been the real goal and agenda of these nonprofits and government backed entities including homeless shelters and services to the homeless and the poor.

But, ending homelessness nor finding homes and economic resources to support one’s own home is not their goal apparently. The real goal is obviously and pathetically, to continue making their own living at the expense of the homeless population, the poor and the disadvantaged – not to serve them at all, nor to provide any real access to affordable housing nor the means to pay for it not to be economically self-sustaining so that homelessness is no longer an issue.

cricketdiane. 12-26-16

Real Life is a Crazy Place to Live

03 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by CricketDiane in Activism, Activism, Human Rights, Civil Rights, Learning, How To, Online Resourcing, New Technology, Adaptive Living Tools and Compensating Strategies, Civil Rights, cricket diane, Cricket Diane C Sparky Phillips, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, Democracy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

after the fire destroyed, Art, Artist, Cricket House Studios, cricketdiane, design, designer, disabilities, disability rights, homeless, homelessness, Inventing, new art, new design, new york city, NYC, poverty, Real-life, sculpture, Staten Island, studio

This was the first post made on the new blog for CricketDiane and Cricket House Studios but I’m moving it over to this blog instead because the new blog is going to have other kinds of information on it and this is more personal.

What I wrote a few days ago –

Real life is crazy – that is what is crazy. I’m sleeping on a neighbor’s living room floor. Nobody will take a Section 8 voucher which I have and is still good for about four more weeks and they probably wouldn’t rent to me anyway because I found out yesterday, my credit score is now 74 (since the fire.) Utilities continued charging me after the fire until the final fire incident report could be given to them that only came about a week and a half ago.

My daughters had a GoFundMe campaign which included only them after they lived in my house for nearly three years with my paying all the bills from my limited money and supported them and their children along with doing most of the housework and watching their children far too much of the time. The Senators office in Staten Island that was supposed to reimburse us for staying extra days in the hotel room after the fire while they were supposedly trying to get reasonable accommodation for me – didn’t reimburse us and didn’t get any reasonable accommodation for me from HPD either.

All the resources from HPD (Housing Preservation and Development) that should be available to me aren’t – because they won’t make any reasonable accommodation to me so that I can be where I know and am familiar with the physical space and people and environment. One neighbor put me out of her house after three weeks to keep from me having any rights as a “tenant” in housing court just in case that ever might be something I would do which meant I slept outside in the yard of the abandoned house next door to hers one night and half of the things donated to us are ruined still sitting there at that yard next door to her house.

Another neighbor up the hill is charging me $150 a month plus $20 for electric to sleep on her living room floor with some of my things lining one wall in tubs and crates (things people have donated or I’ve bought since the fire because nothing was recoverable from the fire. ArtLab gave me a scholarship to take a clay class plus sponsored a bag of clay for me to use and each Monday, I’ve been going there to create in clay and have made four pieces – three pretty good ones and one ugly one that probably needs to be thrown away.

My daughters have scattered and are not here “helping” me although I’m not sure how much help they would be anyway since things are so confusing and extremely expensive from bus fare to having to run all over the place and get things done including replacing IDs and trying to find a place to live and getting something to eat. And, getting the final fire incident report to all the utilities and cable service so they’ll stop charging us for a house that is burned down.

The problem is, that because of head injury and PTSD from domestic violence years ago, if I don’t stay where I already know, especially after this extreme traumatic event, I could very likely lose most or even, all of my ability to function. Being able to walk, talk, know my name, understand where I am, write, find my own ass with both hands, know to wipe it myself, understand what I’m hearing and seeing, know where I’m waking up and why I’m there – are freedoms I don’t want to lose on top of losing my home and everything I’ve worked on for the last 32 years that were destroyed by the fire.

It isn’t very likely that I will ever make lots of money because I never remember what all I know and what all I can do. That is a definite drawback of head injury. People around me will say how long they’ve been in business or been doing something – I know somewhere in my mind that it has been a very long time that I’ve been doing whatever it is – but unless I really sit down and take a couple hours to figure it out – I don’t know. I was doing it yesterday – so it has been a while. And, I had always thought that if I’m good at it, then it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing it – whether it is forty-five years or two. But, there isn’t a practical way for me to tell anyone as I’m standing there with them, that there are good reasons that I know what I’m doing in art or sculpture or the business of product design or inventing things or writing or computer stuff or anything.

CricketDiane 2016 Autumn Bowl sculpture art in clay

Clay pottery sculpture art called Autumn Bowl by CricketDiane Artist / Designer 2016

When one of my clay pieces that I sculpted was being brought from ArtLab to where I’m staying, I stopped off at a little book cafe where a lot of people know me. One of the men saw the piece and tapped it with his keys – an extraordinary clay pottery piece with beautiful glazes and sculpted with leaves on one side of it, a large bowl-like vase for a table centerpiece to hold fall and Christmas flowers. But no, it couldn’t be real art because he knows I’m homeless and has never seen my art. This is ridiculous to an extreme.

I travel up and down the hill of Benziger Ave. where my house burned down with a thirty-lb. plus backpack on my back pulling a small rolling suitcase with my computer in it and my purse slung across its top by the handle every day going to these places. For the past month and a half, every time I’m going out – that is how I look because I can’t leave the computer here and if I was going to use the internet, up until a few days ago, I had to go somewhere else to use it – the ferry terminal or the cafe book store.

The libraries would not let me in because of the rolling cart I had to begin with and then because of the rolling bag that has my computer in it because they decided not to let those things in the library to keep homeless people from coming into the library. Anyway, it has meant that I couldn’t use the internet at the library or the resources at the library during this entire time. About two weeks ago, I hid my computer in this living room space and walked the half-mile to the library without it so I could check out some videos. There was no way to stay the forty-five minutes that the library lets me use their laptops and get online because my computer couldn’t be safe that long where I stay so I had to go back with a few videos in hand to watch.

At the ferry terminal where there is free wifi, it requires spreading my computer and extra keyboard and file folders on the floor over by the windows to do it, because it has been too cold and windy to do it outside where there are seating areas to spread it out. I don’t think the ferry terminal was intended to be any real place to use the wifi they offer, it isn’t practical in any sense of using it except for a quick phone thing which is probably what they meant for it. But I did it anyway a few times, with my things spread across the floor by the windows out of the way of where people were waiting for or getting on the ferry. That was interesting.

I’ve also made a couple trips down to the HackManhattan makers space over the past couple months because the Makers Space in Staten Island charges $250 a month and refused to allow me to trade any time with my skills helping them for time in the makers space. They also weren’t interested in the list of classes that I said I could teach which could have been a bit of money to me for this time that has been so impossible financially and in every other way. The same was true for the nearby Temple of the Arts, where they let me stuff envelopes for a few dollars but have no interest in the classes that I could teach from sewing to piano to art to computer skills. As much as it would help people in these areas and in Staten Island to have what I know how to do available to them, it downright doesn’t matter because the resources that could make it possible are very closed to me by the people who have them.

Since the internet service finally got sorted out and they let me have it here, I’ve been able to create a few products over on Zazzle which are now the only remaining archive of my work since all the digital files, photographs of them, hard drives with the files of them and computers were destroyed by the fire. I’ve also worked on this new blog a little but it has been really hard to gather any thoughts about what to put on it and finally I have given up and put this for lack of a better idea. I really want to add the structural materials libraries that I love and things more in line with creating and inventing – but no, the confusing things around me are too much to get focused and there is no chance I’ll have a home out of all this or an office or a studio or in fact, have any money to do anything at all with from my efforts.

Steel Grey Designer Trendy Contemporary Geometric Throw Pillow

by CricketDiane

There are also six new video clips that I loaded onto my YouTube channels a couple days ago. They aren’t wonderful, but they are appropriate to the current situation. And, hopefully, I can add some content soon that isn’t about my personal difficulties butt is instead something about painting, creating, making, inventing, doing business online, materials, resourcing, or any number of other nifty things I know a lot about – including some great valuable content among all of it.

That’s it – I’m tired of talking about it now except for this – among the fifty million things that are wrong right now, I am thankful and have great admiration for the many, many people who have helped me, are helping me, have extended the hand of friendship to me, have let me lay my head in their homes, have given me a computer and shoes for my feet, sent me a bit of money to buy food, taken a moment to say hello and give me hugs. Despite everything that has happened, I can say I’ve survived it thus far because of these things and they have kept me going and kept me demanding of myself that I not quit even when things seem so terrible and they are. It is amazing to see that I can write after all this and as that is not something small in my world – for that I’m also very grateful.

cricketdiane, 11-27-16

Writing to US Dept of Justice Today

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

ADA, Americans with Disabilities Act, Civil Rights, cricketdiane, Department of Justice, diane c phillips, disabilities, disability, disability rights, equality, Human Rights, inequality, injustice, new york city, NYC, rights, SI fire, Staten Island fire

Today HPD (Housing Preservation & Development) in NYC demanded proof that I have disabilities. My house burned down to an unrecoverable state last Thursday. Red Cross gave me & my family a letter to give HPD about it. They were supposed to help us get permanent housing and our Senators here are helping to bring that about, Sen. Savino and Sen. Watson.

There were four families sent to HPD with us. We were all supposed to be expedited into permanent housing. I have SSI and NYCHA Section 8 from the house that burned down. HPD had been supposed to waive req. for id forms of usual because we had them in the house.

HPD (NYC) demanded the same forms of id as for any other situation – which we had gotten from the computer at the hotel for the SSI award letter and all the docs we could find online. HPD kept all of us waiting for over three hours with all our children in tow in a very small noisy waiting room, then told my family that we were to go to the family shelter, as they told the other four families whose homes burned next to ours.

I said that wouldn’t work for me because of my disabilities, brain injury and PTSD from domestic violence. I said that it was already too much overwhelming information, they had us come from Staten Island to the HPD office in person, wait with my daughters and grandchildren over 3 hrs, added more stress and difficulty already and I couldn’t afford to be in another place that I don’t know, don’t understand with so many people and things I would not be able to understand and that I didn’t want to end up like a retarded person drooling on myself because my brain would shut down with that much more stress.

He asked me if I had proof of my disability (insisted several times, not just once) and denied that he had proof despite the fact he had written down that I have SSI for my disability and a Section 8 Voucher to have a place to live because of these disabilities not allowing me to do better for myself yet.

I don’t understand, am I supposed to have a disability tattoo, a disability set of papers like a thoroughbred dog gets to prove l have rights to services and accommodation as a disabled person, even though SSI is obvious proof that I have a disability. HPD works with domestic violence survivors (often with children and young children) and people displaced by fire or flood for expedited fair housing appropriate to their unique and particularly specific needs. Is this how they are treating everyone in our most vulnerable populations when they are most stressed out, most emotionally distraught and while they are undergoing some of the most massive and unexpected difficulties in their lives – and in mine. I’ve lost everything.

My family has lost everything. The other families who came in about an hour after we did, but are our neighbors, lost everything, or very nearly everything. Why would this man who was supposed to be helping me, ask me for proof of a verified, way more than well certified disability and then deny me and my family any option of permanent housing of any kind PLUS demand I show proof of my disability as if it is required of me?

And I said he could look it up, that I was willing to give my permission for him to see my entire case file at SSI, if that would help him to decide whether I have disabilities or not and he said he couldn’t do that. Oh yes he can. I could’ve signed a form and he could’ve looked it up through SEction 8 which HPD is directly connected to or called SSI to confirm it, after I signed such a paper although getting SSI is a pretty good proof all by itself. I was shocked and hurt and offended and disgusted that he probably does this to all the disabled people, elderly & survivors of domestic violence he and the HPD ofc is supposed to be helping.

Please fix this. They can’t do this to people. I didn’t deserve it and they don’t either. We did not go to the shelter. I don’t want to be in a mental hospital because even one more drop of difficulty is added to this already impossible, emotionally devastating situation

08-23-2016 US Dept of Justice ADA Complaint Form – CricketDiane, Diane C. Phillips 2016.

Citizens Must Hold Government Accountable on Climate

1960’s satellite imagery of polar ice discovers “enormous holes” in the sea ice

How the Science of “Blue Lies” May Explain Trump’s Support

And one more from Scientific American –

Arctic Sea Ice Sets Record-Low Peak for Third Year

Share this:

Like this:

Senate Puts ISP Profits Over Your Privacy

Trump Data Gurus Leave Long Trail of Subterfuge, Dubious Dealing

The Hidden Risks of Trump’s EPA Cuts: Birth Defects, Bad Air

Since the 90’s, we’ve lost 90% of bumble #bees. Defunding the #EPA will only exacerbate this problem. #ScienceMarch

EPA seeks public comment on draft permits and aquifer exemption for uranium mining Black Hills,SD http://goo.gl/QtOdQp #INDIGENOUS

Signed Legislation

Pending Legislation (to be signed)

Share this:

Like this:

SCIENCE, NOT SILENCE

ON APRIL 22, 2017, WE WALK OUT OF THE LAB AND INTO THE STREETS.

Federal Agencies Told to Halt External Communications

US science agencies face deep cuts in Trump budget

Senate votes to block Obama coal rule

President Trump Signs First Congressional Review Act Disapproval Resolution in 16 Years

Senate approves CRA resolution to nullify SEC’s foreign payments rule

OZONE LIMITS IMPLEMENTATION REFORM BILL REINTRODUCED IN US SENATE

Environment, energy and health

DISMANTLING OF EPA BEGINS

Trump taps well of protest with calls for more drilling in national parks

(from same site — )

Congress just made it easier to sell off federal land, including national parks

Republicans in Congress Set Value of All Public Lands and Buildings to $0 for Easy Sell Off at Taxpayers’ Expense

GOP begins public land overhaul

Trump said to pick drilling advocate Cathy McMorris Rodgers for Interior

4 Major Environmental Rules That the GOP Congress Is Overturning in Massive Gift to Polluters

Rogue Scientists Race to Save Climate Data from Trump

Scientists are frantically copying U.S. climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump

THE RECLUSIVE HEDGE-FUND TYCOON BEHIND THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY

How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency.

By Jane Mayer

These heroic guerrilla scientists and librarians are racing to save environmental data from Trump

WRITTEN BY

Share this:

Like this:

Due to Security Considerations – D.C. Area Law Enforcement has enacted the Following Policy for the Women’s March on Washington

The Ultimate Guide to Preparing for the Women’s March

7. Breastfeeding mothers

8. Children

9. Volunteering

Women’s March on Washington FAQ: What you need to know

Everything You Need to Know for the Women’s March on Washington

Start Time for the Women’s March – 10 am.

The page showing the buses and number of buses coming from various states is here –

**

Women’s March on Washington Facebook Page –

What to do if you encounter counter-protesters at the Women’s March on Washington

Be prepared for trolls of the highest order at the Women’s March this weekend

1. Counter-protesters are not a possibility, but a definite entity

What about cell phone service interruption from so much use in one area?

WATCH: Democracy Now! Broadcasts Live from the D.C. Women’s March

How to Watch

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

[PDF]An Overview of the Fannie and Freddie Conservatorship Litigation

[PDF]us treasury department office of public affairs – Judicial Watch

PRINCIPAL REDUCTION MODIFICATION

Am I Eligible?

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: