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Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia held apress conference and delivered aspeech on the Senate floor Tuesday making the case for federal permitting reforms and defending his proposed changes from progressive criticism, an indication that hes feeling the heat as opposition to what critics have dubbed the senators dirty deal continues tobuild.

Manchin is getting desperate, its the only reason hed host apress conference like this, argued Jamie Henn, the director of Fossil Free Media. But the more he defends his dirty deal, the clearer it is this is just agrab bag of handouts to his fossil fuel industry donors. Todays performance only strengthens ouropposition.

During his press conference, the West Virginia senator announced that the full text of permitting legislation that hes hoping to attach to amust-pass government funding package will be released Wednesday ahead of apotential vote next week. The Senate Democratic leadership and President Joe Biden agreed to give Manchin avote on the permitting changes in exchange for the oil and gas allys support for the recently passed Inflation ReductionAct.

Manchin complained to reporters Tuesday that his permitting proposalwhich aims to accelerate environmental reviews of fossil fuel projects such as the Mountain Valley fracked gas pipelineis coming under fire from both progressive climate champions such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Republicans eager to deny Manchin and the Democratic Party any legislative wins, even if they back the specificpolicies.

Its like arevenge politics, said Manchin, the top recipient of oil and gas money in Congress. Basically revenge towards one person:Me.

On Twitter, Sanders pushed back against Manchins comment and said that defeating the Big Oil side deal is not aboutrevenge.

Its about whether we will stand with 650 environmental and civil rights organizations who understand that the future of the planet is with renewable energy and energy efficiency not approving the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Sanders wrote. The Mountain Valley Pipeline would generate emissions equivalent to 37 coal plants or putting 27 million more cars on theroad.

Its hard for me to understand why anyone concerned about climate change would consider voting to approve such adirty and dangerous fracked gas pipeline, headded.

Manchin insists that permitting changes would carry benefits for both fossil fuel projects and renewable energy development, but climate campaigners and agrowing number of Democratic lawmakers warn the plan laid out in draft legislative language would weaken bedrock environmental laws and endanger communities in the paths of pipelines and other polluting fossil fuelinfrastructure.

Sanders tweeted Tuesday that the Big Oil side deal requires the president to prioritize 25 energy projects for expedited environmentalreviews.

Of those, 19 could be dirty fossil fuel or mining projects and ZERO are required to be renewable energy projects that would reduce emissions, the Vermont senator wrote. That isunacceptable.

In aMonday letter to Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Tom Carper (D-Del.)the founding members of the Senate Environmental Justice Caucusa coalition of nearly 80 frontline organizations and climate advocacy groups called on the trio to reject Manchins pernicious permitting legislation and any amendedversions.

We firmly believe that nothing can improve abill that would deregulate landmark environmental laws like [the National Environmental Policy Act] and [the Clean Water Act], the letterreads.

A floor fight over the permitting reforms could come as soon as next week, when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to attach the Manchin-backed proposal to acontinuing resolution that must pass by September 30 to avert agovernment shutdown.

Survey data released Monday by Data for Progress shows that 59% of likely U.S. voters believe that lawmakers should consider permitting legislation as astandalone bill, and separate it from amust-pass government spendingpackage.

Thus far, just one member of the Senate Democratic caucusSandershas vowed to vote against any continuing resolution that includes fossil fuel-friendly permittingreforms.

On the House side, 77 Democrats have warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) not to allow the inclusion of permitting reforms in the continuing resolutionbut only Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has pledged to vote no if the dirty deal ultimately ends up in thepackage.

If we were to pass this side deal, it would mean more plants like that harming Black and Brown communities, putting pollution in the air where kids cant be in their backyards, Khanna told The Young Turks earlier this month. Were not just talking about some abstract policy here. Were talking about allowing refineries, fossil fuel projects, and heavy industry to destroyneighborhoods.

This story was first posted at Common Dreams.

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Opposition from Progressives and Republicans Could Sink Manchin's Fossil Fuel Permitting Deal - In These Times

Ill let you in on a dirty secret about journalism: Most of what we write good, bad, or otherwise is as evanescent as yesterdays rain. Readers may get most of their news in digital form rather than paper these days, but the old adage still holds true: Todays news is tomorrows fish wrap.

Every once in a while, though, writers on deadline produce something of lasting value, an insight that illuminates not just today, but the past and the future both, something that helps explain why we are where we are.

Sam Bowman, John Myers, and Ben Southwoods article The housing theory of everything, published a year ago in Works in Progress, is just such a key. Try listing every problem the Western world has at the moment, they wrote. From Covid to slow economic growth to climate change to falling fertility, they all had one root cause in common: A shortage of housing: too few homes being built where people want to live.

Their argument was as simple as it was true: So long as housing supply remains constrained in the most economically productive cities in the US, so would the countrys potential. Whatever else the US wanted to do solve climate change, reduce economic inequality, make it easier for people to have as many children as they wanted fixing the long-running housing problem had to come first. Everything else was just hot air.

Once you begin to understand the housing theory of everything, you start to see it everywhere. Including on a small, well-heeled island off the coast of Massachusetts called Marthas Vineyard where last week scores of migrants were shipped via jet by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a stunt as inhumane as it was, sadly, likely politically effective for them with many Republican voters.

Make no mistake, what DeSantis and other Republican governors like Greg Abbott of Texas are doing as they send thousands of migrants to Democratic-led cities far from the border like some Twitter trolling done in real life, with real people is almost entirely for their own political glory. DeSantis received a standing ovation from GOP voters at a political event in Kansas on Sunday.

If DeSantis thought that the mostly Democratic citizens of Marthas Vineyard would respond to his stunt by treating the migrants who arrived on their island the way he would, the governor was mistaken. The migrants, who were fleeing Venezuela, received a warm welcome from locals before they were voluntarily sent onward to a military base for humanitarian support.

As the headline of a Jonathan Chait piece in New York magazine put it, DeSantis tries to prove liberals hate immigrants as much as he does, fails.

But if its clear that the people of Marthas Vineyard or New York City or Washington, DC, dont hate immigrants and will mobilize to welcome human beings who are innocent pawns in a political game, that doesnt mean that they will put their weight behind the policies that are really needed to support the masses of migrants who want to come to the US for a better life.

Thats because perhaps the No. 1 thing that migrants need and for that matter, lots of American citizens as well is more housing in the cities that have jobs. And whatever the leaders of those mostly deep blue cities may say when DeSantis or Abbott drops a busload or planeload of migrants on their doorstep, they seem unwilling to deliver it and too many of their constituents apparently feel the same.

In Marthas Vineyard, the affordable housing problem is so acute that the islands only emergency-room-equipped hospital has been operating with a quarter of its staff jobs unfilled, according to the Washington Post. When the hospitals CEO offered 19 jobs to health care workers in January, every one of them was turned down, in large part because even doctors couldnt afford to find a year-round place to live.

Or take New York City, which I call home and where you can often see Refugees Are Welcome signs in the windows of nice brownstones, side by side with fliers decrying a new development. Between 2000 and 2020, New York expanded by more than 800,000 residents, yet fewer than 450,000 new apartment units and single-family homes were built during that time. Not surprisingly, in May the median rent in Manhattan reached a record $4,000 though if youre willing to make do in Brooklyn, you could get by with $3,250.

And San Francisco? Well, San Franciscos leaders seem to treat housing construction like golf, where the idea is to get the lowest score possible; community opposition and restrictive regulations mean that the city is on track to build just 3,000 housing units this year, with an average building cost that is the highest in the world per square foot. (Though somehow, San Francisco still approved more new housing units per 1,000 residents between 2010 and 2019 than New York.)

Even worse than the cities are many of the suburbs that surround them. In suburban counties from Nassau and Westchester outside New York to the commuter towns surrounding Boston, even fewer housing units were added per 1,000 residents in the previous decade than in New York City itself. That in turn pushes low-income residents farther and farther away from jobs, putting further weight on economic growth.

As The housing theory of everything put it, even as everything from TVs to cars to refrigerators have become cheaper to buy on an hours-worked basis over the past 50 years, housing in major cities has become much, much more expensive. As a result, people who werent lucky or privileged enough to buy at the right moment are forced to spend more and more of their household budget if they want to live in a New York or a Boston or a San Francisco.

Its true that the US does face a border crisis. An average of 8,500 migrants and asylum-seekers are intersecting with officials each day, what Axios termed a strikingly high number, and cities along the border are struggling to deal with the flow.

Its also true that people will keep coming. Between economic factors, the pressure of climate change, and the drive for safety, the flow of migrants from the south is only likely to increase in the years and decades ahead.

Republican officials have their own solution to that challenge: attempt to stop the flow at the border by the harshest methods possible, and make political hay while doing so. If progressives want to live up to their rhetoric, they need to support the policies that will build the housing supply needed to absorb the flow of newcomers and in doing so, help reduce the extreme costs of living that hamper longtime residents as well.

Otherwise, refugees and migrants may be welcomed but they wont be welcome to stay.

A version of this story was initially published in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to subscribe!

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Progressive voters in University-Rosedale are being treated to an embarrassment of riches this municipal election, says Rory Gus Sinclair.

The community activist and past chair of the Harbord Village Resident Association should know. Hes been organizing candidate debates in the downtown neighbourhood for years, and says this years contest in Ward 11 will be one to watch.

University-Rosedale is one of seven wards in which incumbents arent running for re-election this year. While there is a clear favourite in some of the other open races, the vacancy left in Ward 11 by outgoing progressive council heavyweight Mike Layton has attracted three high-profile left-leaning candidates hoping to take his place. The resulting electoral battle is shaping up to be one of the most competitive contests in the Oct. 24 vote.

There are some seriously good candidates in there, said Sinclair. Its exciting in the sense that were going to get a new face, no matter what.

In one corner is Dianne Saxe, the former provincial environmental commissioner whos taking leave from her role as deputy leader of the Green Party of Ontario to run for council. Shes pitted against Norm Di Pasquale, Toronto Catholic District School Board Trustree for Ward 9 (Toronto), and Robin Buxton Potts, current interim councillor for neighbouring Ward 13 (Toronto Centre).

All three cite similar issues when asked about residents biggest concerns housing unaffordability, development pressures and climate change and each claim theyre uniquely qualified to take on those problems.

I think the biggest thing that separates me is my direct experience at city hall, said Buxton Potts, 34, who was former Ward 13 city councillor Kristyn Wong-Tams chief of staff, and before that worked in the council offices of Adam Vaughan, Ceta Ramkhalawansingh and Joe Cressy

Saxe, 69, who ran for the Greens in University-Rosedale in Junes provincial election and placed fourth, says her 46-year career working for the public interest in government, business and law will enable her to deliver for residents.

She also touts her long personal relationship with Mayor John Tory, whose daughter is married to the son of family friends. Under the strong-mayor system that will go into effect in the coming council term its going to be increasingly important to work well with the mayor, and I can do it better than they can, she said of her opponents.

Di Pasquale argues that as a school trustee hes the only candidate whos already served as an elected representative for University-Rosedale. I know what its like to be the face of moving policy and then having to have it stand up in the public, he said.

The 44-year-old, who previously helped lead a grassroots campaign to keep jets out of the island airport, also has the support of Torontos progressive establishment, including local NDP MPP Jessica Bell, political advocacy group Progress Toronto, and Layton himself.

Norm leads with his progressive values and has the energy and knowledge needed to advance stronger progressive policies across a range of issues, said Layton in a statement Thursday.

There are indications Di Pasquale could use the help. An early Forum Research poll conducted Sept. 14, before Layton announced his endorsement, suggests Di Pasquale is trailing in fourth place, behind Saxe, Buxton Potts and lesser-known candidate Axel Arivu.

Neither Di Pasquale, Saxe nor Buxton Potts lives in Ward 11, but all say they have roots in the community and have a home near by.

Buxton Potts has faced criticism from the moment she entered the race. Thats because in June when council appointed her to temporarily take over Wong-Tams seat after the latter stepped down, she promised she had no intention of running in the municipal election.

She said she changed her mind when Layton announced his intention to step down because, with the departures of Wong-Tam as well as Cressy, the former SpadinaFort York councillor, it meant Torontos three downtown wards would be left without an experienced representative.

Buxton Potts was recently photographed at a fundraiser for Tory, but said she has not asked for the mayors endorsement and would only accept it if she secured concessions to benefit the wards residents.

It initially looked as though the trio of prominent left-wing candidates risked splitting the progressive vote in Ward 11, allowing a more centrist challenger to take the seat. But although broadcaster Ann Rohmer entered the race and was considered to have a strong chance of securing Torys endorsement, she ended her campaign just nine days after registering.

Although the remaining leading candidates are broadly in sync with the downtown progressives who make up much of University-Rosedale, Layton says the winning council candidate will need more than left-wing bona fides to do the job.

The ward is a hot spot for pressures related to Torontos housing crunch, including rising rent and home prices, visible homelessness, and large-scale development. It also has a lot of residents with strong opinions about those issues.

Whoever is elected will need the skills to personally engage with the community and come up with collaborative solutions residents can live with, Layton says.

Sinclair agrees, and says the workload for the local councillor has only grown since the province doubled the size of Torontos wards in 2018.

I think its a really hard, hard frigging job, he said.

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Three progressives are fighting for this downtown council seat. Why is one touting her ties to John Tory? - Toronto Star

Throughout most of Chris Hedges new book, The Greatest Evil is War, theres not much to ponder. Hedges has not written a philosophical treatise or a heady analysis of battlefield strategy. Nor does he propose a novel way of assessing war, such as Samuel Moyn did in last years Humane, which argued that making war more humane only prolongs it. Hedges refuses to reside in the abstract, creating instead a book about war that is meant to be experienced viscerally.

Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author who has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Bosnia, and Central America, wants us to feel what he has felt and see what he has seen in those combat zonesand he has seen more than enough throughout his career. His book is nothing short of a gut punch.

According to advance publicity, Hedges was reluctant to write another book about war, but relented after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Appropriately then, he kicks off his powerful jeremiad by drawing a parallel between Russian President Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine and the United States invasion of Iraq. He does this for two reasons. Most obviously, hes emphasizing the hypocrisy of the American political-media establishment that was so quick to condemn Putinthe new Hitlerfor invading a sovereign nation after that same media establishment enthusiastically supported the U.S. war against Sadaam Hussein. Both were and are wars of aggression, after all.

Preemptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime, Hedges declares in the books very first sentence. Drag Putin off to the International Criminal Court and put him on trial. But make sure George Bush is in the cell next to him.

Comparisons like this wont sit well with many. But Hedges draws parallels between these wars and others that have historically been framed as good versus evil because he wants to erase such distinctions. There are no good wars, he insists. While acknowledging that we must occasionally fight, such as in World War II, he reminds us that the suffering of those involvedphysical, spiritual, moralis almost never justified.

The examples Hedges offers of such suffering can be hard to stomach. But they are key to his argument that U.S. media must attempt to portray the reality of war instead of offering up the romantic myth of wartime heroism that were typically shown. This myth, Hedges says, must be obliterated so Americans can make informed decisions about whether to support these wars.

In a chapter titled Shadows of Warexcerpted in its entirety in The Progressives October/November issueHedges presents the books central thesis. He writes: Wars effects are what the state and the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep hidden. If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war.

Simply put, Hedges argues that destroying this myth would mean fewer wars. And to do this, his book aims to present the reality of war in chapters that examine PTSD and moral injury; what its like to kill another human being; war profiteering; military brainwashing; killing children; grieving families; the story of a paraplegic veteran; and an interview with a Holocaust survivor. Saving Private Ryan this is not. The book is an utter repudiation of war as a noble or glorious endeavor.

Hedges refuses to reside in the abstract, creating instead a book about war that is meant to be experienced viscerally.

The most disturbing chapter is simply titled Corpses, and it tells the story of Jessica Goodell, a Marine sent to Iraq to process dead soldiersmany of whom died by suicide, and many with bodies so mangled by IEDs that little remained except vaporized flesh that she had to scoop into body bags. Her story will haunt you for days.

I wrote earlier that The Greatest Evil is War is meant to be experienced viscerally and not intellectually. Thats true until the end. In Permanent War, the books final and most important chapter, Hedges puts American war-making into a broader context and explains why our wars have become interminable. His analysis here is the same one expounded by many of the great war critics of our time, such as Noam Chomsky, Andrew Bacevich, Glenn Greenwald, and the late Michael Hastings.

Following World War II, America saw the birth of a massive national security statethe military-industrial complex, as Eisenhower called itostensibly justified by the threat of the Soviet Union. To fund this new state, crucial resources were diverted from infrastructure, education, healthcare, and clean energy research and development. Meanwhile, Hedges writes, America transitioned from being a country that primarily produced things to a country that primarily consumed things.

Hedges observes how these two factorsa gargantuan military and a new American ethos that promised endless consumption without responsibilityhave landed us in the predicament were in. As Andrew Bacevich told me in a 2010 interview, this is the heart of the dilemma. America must now constantly build weapons and fight wars to secure the resources necessary to maintain its limitless consumption.

But permanent war and endless consumption are unsustainable, of course. Not only are they destroying our planet (the Department of Defense is the single largest institutional consumer of petroleum in the world), but, as Hedges points out, they are destroying our liberal traditions and democratic institutions. Permanent war, he argues, cheapens culture into nationalist cant. It degrades and corrupts education and the media and wrecks the economy. There is little question we are seeing this borne out.

In a brief but chilling coda, Hedges says witnessing so much war has nearly broken him, and admits that no one can truly convey what its like to be in combat. Its impossible to portray war, he concludes.

Maybe so. But The Greatest Evil is War is the rawest, angriest, most graphic, and most revolting account of war Ive ever read. And it comes about as close to shattering the myth of war as any portrayalor attempted portrayalthat Im aware of.

Editors Note: You can read an excerpt from The Greatest Evil is War in the October/November 2022 issue of The Progressive.

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Book Review: Shattering the 'Myth of War' - Progressive.org

Posted on: September 23, 2022, 01:11h.

Last updated on: September 23, 2022, 02:07h.

Arkansas casinos have been cleared to link progressive slot machines to networks that expand into other gaming states.

Progressive slot machines are the terminals that are typically responsible for jackpot headlines. With a progressive, a small portion of each bet played is set aside for a grand jackpot prize, delivering life-changing wins regularly.

The Arkansas Racing Commission this week approved a request from the Saracen Casino in Pine Bluff to link its IGT-manufactured slot machines with the companys slots operations in Nevada, New Jersey, Louisiana, and South Dakota.

Our machines quite literally will be linked to the Las Vegas Strip, Carlton Saffa, chief market officer for Saracen, told the gaming commission this week.

The progressive games biggest jackpot can usually only be won by playing near-max bets on the terminal. The gaming manufacturer or distributor handles the progressive jackpot funds and distributes the winnings when the jackpot hits.

Arkansans authorized four commercial casinos through a ballot referendum during the November 2018 election. The question amended the Arkansas Constitution to allow a casino in Jefferson, Crittenden, Garland, and Pope counties.

To date, the largest slot jackpot in Arkansas history was a $131,000 win hit at Saracen. While thats a considerable amount of cash, it pales compared to the amounts progressives award.

IGT currently has 11 progressive jackpots of $1 million or more operating in the US. The largest is a more than $12.9 million Megabucks prize.

Saracen plans to bring IGT Wheel of Fortune progressives to its casino first. Wheel slots remain one of the most popular titles in the US gaming industry. Saffa says three different Wheel progressives will feature minimum jackpots of $200,000, $500,000, and $1 million. The minimum bet to qualify for the $1 million progressive jackpot will be $5 a spin.

The casino rules that the Arkansas Racing Commission finalized after the constitutional amendment allowed the casinos to link progressives with other commercial gaming states. But the casinos must first apply and receive authorization from the state before placing the pooled electronic terminals on their gaming floors.

Three of Arkansas four casinos are up and running Saracen, Oaklawn Racing Casino Resort in Hot Springs, and Southland Casino in West Memphis. The fourth and only remaining casino opportunity is earmarked for Pope County.

After years of legal contention, the Cherokee Nation Businesses, the economic arm of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, has been determined the rightful recipient of the Pope gaming license. The Cherokees have partnered with Legends Hospitality, a sports-focused concessions and hospitality firm partially controlled by Dallas Cowboys billionaire owner Jerry Jones. Their goal is to build a $225 million property called Legends Resort & Casino in Russellville.

Expected to break ground before the end of the year, Legends Resort & Casino is to have a gaming space measuring about 50,000 square feet, with roughly 1,200 slot machines and 32 table games. A sportsbook, 200-room hotel, meeting and conference center, and a spa are also in the works.

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Arkansas Casinos to Link Progressive Slot Machines With Other States - Casino.Org News