Sydney Embers, the Times reporter assigned to cover the Bernie Sanders campaign, is a former analyst for BlackRock, the largest investor in coal plant developers in the world. Originally hired as an expert in advertising and marketing, she was reassigned in May of 2018 to cover politics and soon was assigned to cover the 2020 campaign of Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (sometimes sharing authorship of articles with other NYT reporters). Ms. Embers routinely failed to offer information about quoted sources -- even when their previous affiliations and statements strongly suggested anti-Sanders bias. More information can be found by searching "FAIR Sydney Embers."

Guns are the second-leading cause of death among children in the United States. Guns kill about 34,000 people per year in the United States, two-thirds of those being suicides. Countries with reasonable gun laws don't have this level of gun violence.

“George Rogers Clark, Conqueror of the Northwest” is a massive sculpture (approximately 24 feet in height, 20 feet in length, and 8 feet in width) that was put up in 1921 by the University of Virginia, at the edge of its campus in Albemarle County, just across the line from the City of Charlottesville. The location is prominent, although not as prominent as it was in the 1920s, due to the growth of trees around three sides of the monument, which nonetheless proudly and openly faces University Avenue with some 10 yards of grass between the memorial and the sidewalk along the street. This monument was paid for by Paul Goodloe McIntire, the same wealthy individual who paid for three other statues in Charlottesville in the 1920s, all of which still dominate central spaces in the city: those of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which have been in the news in recent years, and that of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacajawea. Like these other statues, that of George Rogers Clark was created without any vote by the general public. Like the statues of Lee and Jackson in downtown Charlottesville, the statue of George Rogers Clark at UVA depicts a white man on a horse dressed for war. But, unlike Lee and Jackson, Clark is not alone. He has other men behind him with a gun and a barrel of gun powder, and he appears to be reaching back for a gun with his right hand. There are four Native Americans in front of him, including one infant. One of them appears defiant. One appears to be a woman carrying the infant. An article from the 1921 dedication of the statue in the University of Virginia Alumni News approvingly describes the woman in the memorial as being forced to beg for mercy for her baby. A successful 1997 application to add the statue to the National Register of Historic Places reads, in part: “She kneels in front of Clark holding a covered cradle board aloft as if to plead for a papoose within.” At the dedication, then-UVA President Edwin Alderman credited George Rogers Clark with stealing large amounts of territory for an empire — the empire of Virginia, of which the land he claimed had been deemed a part. The Alumni News newspaper celebrated the statue when it was first created as “explaining the futility of resistance.” The base of the sculpture calls Clark the “Conqueror of the Northwest.” The Northwest means the general area of today’s state of Illinois. At least that was the focus of Clark’s victories which either importantly seized or easily and temporarily occupied, depending on the account. But the entire Old Northwest Territory, which the United States took from Britain at the end of the Revolutionary War, included all or large parts of six eventual U.S. States (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the northeastern part of Minnesota). Conquering means . . . well, let’s allow George Rogers Clark to tell us in his own words. George Rogers Clark said that he would have liked to “see the whole race of Indians extirpated” and that he would “never spare Man woman or child of them on whom he could lay his hands.” Clark wrote a statement to the various Indian nations in which he threatened “Your Women & Children given to the Dogs to eat.” Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the University of Virginia, depicted in a smaller statue nearby in front of the Rotunda building, when he was Governor of Virginia, sent George Rogers Clark west to attack Native Americans, writing that the goal “should be their extermination, or their removal beyond the lakes or Illinois river.” Clark killed the captured and destroyed the crops of those he was sent by Jefferson to exterminate or remove. Clark later unsuccessfully proposed further military expeditions to Virginia Governor Benjamin Harrison in order to demonstrate “that we are always able to crush them at pleasure.” The quotations above are found in Surviving Genocide by Jeffrey Ostler, who shows that U.S. officials developed the policy that “wars of extermination” were “not only necessary, but ethical and legal.” Causes of decline among Native peoples included direct killing, other traumatizing violence prominently including rape, the burning of towns and crops, forcible deportation, and the intentional and non-intentional spreading of diseases and of alcoholism to weakened populations. Ostler writes that the most recent scholarship finds the devastation caused by European diseases resulted less from Native Americans’ lack of immunity, and more from the weakness and starvation created by the violent destruction of their homes. In George Rogers Clark’s day, John Heckewelder (a missionary and author of books on the customs of Native Americans) noted that frontiersmen had adopted “the doctrine . . . that the Indians were the Canaanites, who by God’s commandment were to be destroyed.” That is not the view of the general public of Charlottesville or Albemarle County or Virginia today. It is not the view of the University of Virginia today. But it is the view blatantly and explicitly celebrated by the George Rogers Clark memorial that greets those arriving from downtown to the campus of the University of Virginia. The University is constructing a memorial nearby to those enslaved people who built the university. This will arguably be the first and only major memorial in Charlottesville and the immediate surrounding area that is not clearly or arguably a celebration of war or genocide. (One could include in that statement the monument to the war on Vietnam, while some would claim it does not apply to the monument to Lewis-Clark-Sacajawea. Minor statues at UVA include war poet Homer and a World War I memorial, as well as Jefferson who of course engaged in many activities including but far from limited to war and genocide). But the new memorial at UVA will be dedicated just down the street from the monument celebrating the horrors inflicted by George Rogers Clark. READ MORE: http://davidswanson.org/grc

We the undersigned are concerned that Nordic Aquafarms’ proposed facility threatens to harm Belfast and all communities around Penobscot Bay. Our concerns include depleting our fresh water supply, polluting our ecosystems, endangering our fisheries and increasing our dependence on fossil fuels. At this time of ecological crisis, local control of our fresh water and the health of Penobscot Bay are crucial. We must protect our valuable resources for today and for our children’s tomorrow. This is why we support halting the project. Halting the project would prevent probable pollution, potential accidents and activation of existing mercury deposits in the bay. Halting the project would protect jobs in fisheries, tourism and coastal recreation. We the undersigned are committed to generating healthy, local alternatives for a robust regional economy. This petition provides an opportunity to demonstrate our communities’ level of concern about this project in our region.

The well being of the Northern Mendocino Coast is entirely dependent upon a healthy ocean and natural landscape, which requires protection of our coastal resources. The former G-P Mill Site, now owned by Koch Industries, encompasses almost one third of the City of Fort Bragg. Its reuse offers an opportunity to showcase the importance of thoroughly cleaning up our coastal resources that have been polluted by highly toxic materials extremely harmful to the health and well being of humans and wildlife both on land and in the ocean. This is particularly urgent because the Mill Pond has been identified as the most polluted area of the site and its failing dam leaves it highly vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunami and sea level rise. Please sign the petition and demand that the Fort Bragg Headlands be Cleaned up First.

• There is an increasing need for municipal governments and state agencies to transition to sustainable alternatives requires accessible and affordable financing • There is an increasing need for small farmers to have access to affordable credit in the state, that is inaccessible through current day financial market conditions • There is a need to decrease overall costs for financially burdened municipalities and state agencies to better allocate resources to important aspects of each entity • There is a need to decrease financial risk municipalities and state agencies are exposed to by risky corporate lending behaviors

• There is an increasing need for municipal governments and state agencies to transition to sustainable alternatives requires accessible and affordable financing • There is an increasing need for small farmers to have access to affordable credit in the state, that is inaccessible through current day financial market conditions • There is a need to decrease overall costs for financially burdened municipalities and state agencies to better allocate resources to important aspects of each entity • There is a need to decrease financial risk municipalities and state agencies are exposed to by risky corporate lending behaviors

Spend money on helping Americans not involved in a war economy

The Cal State Fullerton Arboretum is a classroom for children and young adults to learn about their food, medicinal plants and the environment.

The process of impeachment is indicated by the Constitution in cases where the Executive has broken the law. It is illegal to employ another person to break the law on your behalf. We have seen the checks signed by the President to Michael Cohen for the commission of felonies for which he has been convicted. There is no question that the President has broken the law, and no question that the Oath of Office you took requires you to impeach him. By stating on March 11 that despite the evidence of his crimes, this President is 'not worth' impeaching, you have broken your Oath of Office. Your personal feelings, political agenda, and predictions for the upcoming months, years, and elections are irrelevant. You must do your job as delineated by the US Constitution, and you must do it now. Therefore, we, your constituents demand you uphold your Oath of Office and draft Articles of Impeachment immediately, or resign.

The W76-2 nuclear warhead is a new “low-yield” warhead called for by the Trump administration's 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. It will be mounted on the Trident II D5 ballistic missile, which is deployed on OHIO Class “Trident” ballistic missile submarines. Trident's only mission is strategic nuclear deterrence; the W76-2 turns this stated mission on its head. There is no “deterrence gap” that the Trump administration claims as justification for the W76-2. The United States spends approximately four times the amount as Russia each year on its nuclear arsenal—amounting to $61.3 billion for the U.S. in 2011 compared to $14.8 billion for Russia. While this immense program is excessive, adds to a new arms race with Russia, and should be scaled back, Russia cannot doubt that the United States is serious about maintaining an unambiguously strong nuclear deterrent. The United States already deploys a variety of low-yield nuclear weapons. These include 150 B61 gravity bombs that can be set from 0.3 to 60 kilotons, and air-launched cruise missiles with yields of 5 to 150 kilotons. These weapons are being upgraded to extend their lifetimes, and are receiving improvements, including greater accuracy. For comparison, the W76-2 will be 6.5 kilotons. Nuclear war cannot be controlled. Perhaps the biggest fallacy in the whole argument for the W76-2 is the mistaken and dangerous belief that a “small” nuclear war would remain small. There is no basis for the dubious theory that, if Russia used a “low-yield” nuclear weapon and the United States responded in kind, the conflict could stay at that level. General James Mattis, former Secretary of Defense, has said, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon. Any nuclear weapon used at any time is a strategic game changer.” Congress must prohibit the further production and deployment of this dangerously destabilizing nuclear weapon before it can be deployed. Otherwise, the already delicate diplomatic balance with Russia will be further eroded, and nuclear war will become more likely.

Every year's newly registered voters enter into political life with greater zeal for dealing with the planet's burgeoning environmental crisis than the prior year's. With the Green New Deal (aka, the Green Dream) we finally have a comprehensive statement of a way forward that leaves no one behind, and puts the right to live in a clean world and the right to make a decent living on equal footing. H.Res. 109 - https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109