Bits ‘n pieces from east, west and beyond
East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:
Pay day: Sauntore Thomas, 44, of Detroit, planned to deposit $99,000 into his bank account — money he’d been awarded in a racial discrimination suit. But the teller balked. Police were summoned. Now he’s suing for racial discrimination, again. The Washington Post said Thomas encountered no problems when he later took his funds to a different bank.
Some 12.8 percent of the U.S. population lives with a disability, according to an American Communities Survey. Their rate of employment is half that of people without a disability, High Country News reported.
Starting in summer of 2020, grants will go out for use of the $10 billion that Jeff Bezos, the planet’s richest person, plans to commit to fighting climate change.
Roundup of agricultural news: producers of chlorpyrifos, linked to brain damage in children, say they will stop due to declining sales; new research from UC-Riverside links consumption of soybean oil to neurological conditions like autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimers and depression (the USDA said it’s the most consumed edible oil in the U.S.); and, according to the St. Louis Business Journal, Bayer, producers of glyphosate-laced Roundup, may stop sales of glyphosate products to home gardeners (they face 85,000 legal claims of harm and are exploring a $10 billion payout for Roundup claims).
Drift from dicamba-based herbicides onto a 1,000-acre peach farm in Missouri resulted in $265 million recently being awarded to the farmer for the damages, according to Reuters. The drift originated in nearby soy and cotton fields and killed peach trees, for which corporations BASF and Bayer are being held accountable.
Dicamba herbicides are linked to various cancers, liver and heart challenges, convulsions and other issues. It contaminates groundwater in 17 states, Pesticide Action Network reported.
Yes, there are animal blood banks. Check it out online at the Association of Veterinary Hematology and Transfusion Medicine’s website.
After campaign promises of no cuts to Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare, the Trump Administration’s proposed 2021 budget cuts include $1.5 trillion from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid over the next decade.
Other proposed cuts include: Trimming the EPA by 27 percent (including elimination of 50 EPA programs); the Interior Department by 13 percent; State Department by 21 percent (in particular, deep cuts to foreign assistance programs that work on reducing climate change); the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 75 percent; elimination of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (which worked to promote high-impact energy projects for reducing emissions) at the Energy Department; Superfund site funding by 10 percent, and the Land and Water Conservation Fund cut by 97 percent. As well, significant cuts are planned for the National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service.
Climate scientists said today’s semi-arid burned-over forests will not be “coming back as we know them.” Some of those forests may instead become bush or grasslands, Inside Climate News reported.
In the U.S., 55 percent of Americans don’t use all their paid time off, TIME magazine reported. But quality time off has a bonus: It can increase workplace productivity. Many new books focus on time use. One of those authors, James Wallman, defines “junk” time as too much time alone with TV or Facebook. Quality time is better spent outdoors, he said.
More than 2,000 former prosecutors — Democrats and Republicans alike — have signed a letter asking Attorney General William Barr to resign, USA Today reported. The signers condemned Barr’s overruling of the seven- to nine-year sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, a close associate of President Donald J. Trump, after Trump tweeted that the original sentencing recommendation was unfair.
Stone, the sixth Trump associate convicted of crimes, was convicted of seven charges, including lying to Congress and witness tampering in regards to hacking Democrats’ emails.
Barr has raised Constitutional alarms given his appearance of working in tandem with Trump rather than taking an attorney general’s neutral stance on justice issues. (It likely did not help Stone that, after his indictment, he posted on Instagram an image of his trial judge and gun crosshairs.)
An emergency meeting by the Federal Judges Association was organized to discuss President Trump’s influence on the Department of Justice, The New York Times and USA Today reported. President George W. Bush appointed the group’s president to a federal judgeship.
The U.S. Senate isn’t always partisan: Last week, senators from both parties passed the Iran War Powers Resolution, a deterrent to unauthorized war with Iran. It faces a House vote this week.
Blast from the past: “History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again,” wrote Maya Angelou, poet, writer, performer, activist, 1928-2014.