FEATURING CARROLL MUFFETT – There has been tremendous concern around the pollution of our oceans, our soil and food systems, and even our bodies from plastic waste. Now, a new study has examined a little-discussed impact – how plastic waste exacerbates climate change.

The Center for International Environmental Law produced the study, called Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet found among other things that, “the production and incineration of plastic will produce more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases—equal to the emissions from 189 five-hundred- megawatt coal power plants.”

The report calls for an end to the production and use of single-use, disposable plastic and the curtailing of new oil, gas, and petrochemical infrastructure.

Read Carroll Muffett’s article for the Guardian called ‘The Earth’s climate is paying for our addiction to plastic,’ HERE.

Carroll Muffett, President & CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law.

**This segment was originally broadcast on May 15, 2019. 

FEATURING ARUN GUPTA – As we approach the end of the year, we’ll focus today on the biggest stories of 2019, at least within the United States. It is unarguable that the impeachment of Donald Trump by the House of Representatives, was the most explosive story of the year. It is only the third time in US history that a president was impeached by the House, after Bill Clinton and Andrew Johnson (Nixon resigned before the House took a vote). 

Aside from impeachment, so many other stories, most linked directly to Trump deserve attention: immigrant family separations and the deaths of immigrant children in US custody, myriad mass shootings including a racially motivated attack in El Paso, Texas, the rise of the Squad of freshmen women of color in Congress, and the toppling of Puerto Rico’s governor by a mass movement. 

Arun Gupta is a regular news correspondent for Rising Up With Sonali. He’s an investigative journalist who has written for dozens of publications including the Washington Post, the Guardian, The Nation, Salon, and Raw Story. He is also author of the forthcoming book, “Bacon as a Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

FEATURING JOHN FEFFER – As we end the year 2019, we’ll reflect on the biggest international stories of the year. One of the most dispiriting aspect of this past year was how right-wing dictators took hold of their constituencies, consolidated power, and boosted one another across borders. But equally inspiring were the people-powered movements that shut down cities, demanded change, and in some cases, altered the course of their nations – movements like those in Hong Kong, Sudan, Lebanon, and more. 

Read the report HERE.

John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and a TomDispatch regular. He is also the author of a new IPS report called The Battle for Another World: The Progressive Response to the New Right.

The White House turned over 146 pages of documents related to the Ukraine scandal to the Center for Public Integrity late on Friday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents reveal that just 90 minutes after President Donald Trump’s July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a budget official named Michael Duffey contacted the Pentagon requesting that US military aid to Ukraine be placed on hold. Mr. Duffey also asked the Pentagon to keep it quiet because of the, “sensitive nature of the request,” implying that he realized Mr. Trump was pushing the boundaries of law. The White House documents also show that Duffey indicated Trump first considered withholding US aid from Ukraine after reading a July 19th article in the Washington Examiner about the impending military assistance. The documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity reveals why House Democrats sought to subpoena Mr. Duffey and adds impetus to their request for additional witnesses in a Senate impeachment trial. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen on Monday sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office seeking an opinion on the legality of withholding the aid. 

As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi withholds the articles of impeachment from the Senate that the House passed last week in a historic vote, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell accused Democrats of trying to tell him how to run the trial in his chamber. Pelosi explained that she needed to know, “what sort of trial the Senate will conduct,” while McConnell called the delay “absurd.” Republicans have accused Democrats of withholding the articles to create leverage for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to demand documentary evidence and more witnesses. Still, in an interview on Fox and Friends on Monday McConnell said, “We haven’t ruled out witnesses.” It is likely there will be no progress on the issue until the new year. David Super, a professor of law at Georgetown University, wrote in the Washington Post on Monday that, “McConnell has less power to shape the impeachment trial than Democrats think.” Super explained that: “McConnell is unlikely to be making the key decisions about the shape of a Senate trial. The contours of the trial will be set by rules dating to the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868. Those rules leave answers to such questions as whether witnesses will appear, and when the trial may be adjourned, to the chief justice of the United States, John G. Roberts Jr., who — as set forward in the Constitution — presides over the proceedings. By comparison, Schumer and McConnell are bit players.”

In other news, Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO of Boeing, has just been fired as part of the on-going controversy over its flawed 737 aircraft – two of which crashed causing the deaths of 346 people. The 737 had been grounded as Boeing decided when to re...

FEATURING PROF. JIM DEMPSEY – The New York Times as part of its Privacy Project has published an explosive investigative account of how cellphone location data farmed by private companies through innocuous apps can be used to track our every move. Companies are gathering and storing this data, asking the public to trust that it is all anonymous, that they will keep it safe and not sell it or disclose it to hackers. But the tracking data is easy to obtain and analyze and poses serious opportunities for abuses by both governments and corporations. 

Read the article at www.nytimes.com/tracked.

Prof. Jim Dempsey, Executive Director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology at the UC Berkeley School of Law.

FEATURING MATT GARDNER – Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man is laughing all the way to the bank. Bezos’ company Amazon is one of 91 corporations that did not pay federal income taxes on their 2018 U.S. income. And that is a direct result of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that the Republican Party and their president passed at the end of 2017. 

A new report by the Institute on Taxation Economic Policy examined corporate tax avoidance in the first year that the tax law took effect. The results are the opposite of what Republicans promised and in line with what critics of the law feared: that wealthy corporations, many of which already receive massive public subsidies and take advantage of existing tax code loopholes would win a windfall from the new law.

Matt Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation Economic Policy.

A day after the US House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump on 2 articles, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she is considering withholding them from the Senate while she decides whether or not the trial in that chamber will be fair. Republicans dominate the Senate and Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell has pledged his unwavering allegiance to Trump. The New York Times explained that, “By withholding the articles, Ms. Pelosi is hoping that Mr. Trump — who is eager for a trial to present his defense and clear his name — will put pressure on …McConnell… to commit to Democratic demands, including the ability to call witnesses during the trial.” Pelosi has said, “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.” According to AP, “There is no constitutional requirement for the Democrats to transmit the articles swiftly, or at all.” Trump slammed the delay claiming that the Democrats are trying to avoid Republican’s wish list of witnesses from testifying including Joe Biden and House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff. But Democrats maintain that they would like White House staff with knowledge of Trump’s Ukraine policy to testify. 

In other news, Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine, has published an editorial asserting that Trump should be removed from office in light of the scandal that triggered his impeachment. The magazine was founded by the late Rev. Billy Graham and the current editor in chief Mark Galli called Trump’s actions, “a violation of the Constitution,” and “profoundly immoral.” Galli added that Trump’s “Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.” The article was widely read and even caused the magazine’s website to briefly crash after it was shared so often. Trump lashed out at Christianity Today calling it, “a far left magazine.”

Seven Democrats debated one another on Thursday night on the campus of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, the smallest subsection of the large field of candidates for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination. Among the clashes during the debate were Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren accusing South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg of taking billionaire’s donations. The candidates were also asked to respond to former President Obama’s assertion that old men dominate politics and should get out of the way. Biden clashed with Senator Bernie Sanders on the issue of Medicare-for-All. Sanders also went out of his way to raise the issue of climate change during the debate.

FEATURING AARON GLANTZ – Award-winning investigative reporter and author of Homewreckers Aaron Glantz has published a new report in Reveal examining a disturbing trend in housing: how, “America’s cities are being bought up, bit by bit, by anonymous shell companies using piles of cash,” and that, “All-cash transactions have come to account for a quarter of all residential real estate purchases.” 

The phenomenon is all the more disturbing because of a housing crisis playing out in cities across the country, leading to epidemic levels of homelessness. 

Read his article ‘Unmasking the secret landlords buying up America,’ HERE.

Aaron Glantz, Senior Reporter at Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, two-time Peabody Award winner, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, PBS NewsHour and more. His new book is called Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream.

FEATURING EDITH MIRANTE – A major case is playing out at the International Court of Justice in The Hague this week over allegations by the African nation of Gambia that Myanmar’s government persecuted its Rohingya Muslim minority. The case has gotten international attention in part because the face of the Myanmar government at the ICJ’s proceedings is Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, now defending the very same regime that for years held her under house arrest.

Edith Mirante, Director of Project Maje, an independent information project on Burma/Myanmar human rights and environmental issues. Author of 2 books on Burma and most recent book “The Wind in the Bamboo:  Journeys in Search of Asia’s ‘Negrito’ Indigenous Peoples.” She covered the 1990s Rohingya refugee exodus to Bangladesh.

The House of Representatives on Wednesday December 18th 2019, voted by large majorities to impeach the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, only the third time in US history that such a step has been taken. Voting along almost strict partisan lines lawmakers passed two articles of impeachment after more than 8 hours of debate: the abuse of power, and obstruction of Congress. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the results, as President Trump’s loyal Republican backers booed in protest. The vote came at the end of a very long day of debate during which Republicans stuck to a narrow set of arguments repeated over and over: that the President did nothing wrong, that Democrats had no evidence to impeach, and that their rival party was impeaching a Republican President because they resented his election. Democratic lawmaker and iconic civil rights activist John Lewis reminded his fellow members of Congress that the vote was about right and wrong rather than partisanship. One Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, who claims to be progressive refused to cast her vote, declaring only that she was present. 

A day after the historic vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has announced he plans to remain loyal to Trump rather than fairly preside over a Senate trial, blasted the impeachment vote as partisan. So far 56 Senators have not yet announced their intention on how they plan to vote when the Senate trial begins. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implied that she may not send the articles of impeachment to the Senate right away and there are suggestions that she may hold out until she is assured that the Senate rules on the impeachment trial will be fair. At a press conference on Wednesday night after the impeachment vote she spoke with reporters.

Meanwhile President Trump, who alternated between raging on Twitter against the impeachment vote and claiming it did not bother him, ended the night at a raucous rally in Battle Creek, Michigan. He said moments after the vote that it was an action to, “nullify the ballots of tens of millions of patriotic Americans.” He continued his pattern of attacking news media and denounced a female protester who showed up as a “slob” and “disgusting person.” Perhaps the most shocking moment of his rally was when he denigrated a recently deceased Congressman whose wife voted to impeach Trump. Representative Debbie Dingell responded saying,