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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Biden bans Russian fossil fuel imports, Americans approve, even if it raises gas prices; Europe rapidly overhauls its energy security strategy; Dems eye tax on Big Oil profiteering; PLUS: Global CO2 emissions hit new all-time high last year... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Myth-busting: America can't solve its gas price problem (or its Russia problem) with drilling; GOP's Biggest Whoppers About Biden And Fossil Fuels; Trump oversaw massive increase in Russian oil imports on his watch; Shell is betting big on offshore wind following UK ban on Russian oil; Right-wing media is pinning the blame on Greta Thunberg and climate activists for Russian invasion of Ukraine; EPA restores CA authority to set its own auto pollution rules; Biden pushes Congress to help burn pit veterans... PLUS: Half of American adults exposed to harmful levels of lead as children... and much, MUCH more! ...

In the hours just before former Republican and current billionaire Michael Bloomberg makes his bought-and-paid-for debut on the Democratic debate stage in Las Vegas, our guest on today's BradCast has a bit of a disturbing scoop about Bloomberg's past comparisons between the AARP and the NRA! [Audio link to full show follows below.]

But, first up first up today, some good news from the courts on voting rights in two different key Presidential battleground states! In Florida, a federal appeals on Wednesday sided with ex-felons suing the state to block a law that prevented many of them from having their voting rights restored after the landslide passage of state constitutional Amendment 4 in 2018. After the landmark measure passed with big bi-partisan support to restore voting rights to some 1.5 million former felons (including 1 of 4 African-American men in the state) upon completion of their sentences, the state's new Republican Governor and GOP legislature muscled through legislation to block those former felons from voting until all court fees and fines have been paid off.

Today's federal appeals court ruling blocks that voter suppression measure, finding that "denying access to the franchise to those genuinely unable to pay solely on a account of wealth" is a violation of the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection clause.

There is similarly good news today from the state Court of Appeals in North Carolina, which ruled the Photo ID voting restrictions enacted by Republicans (a measure vetoed by the state's Democratic Governor last year, but overridden by the gerrymandered GOP majorities in both statehouse chambers) disproportionately disenfranchises poor and minority voters.

Despite little or no evidence of polling place impersonation --- the only type of voter fraud such laws could possibly prevent --- the NC GOP has been trying since at least 2013 to impose such discriminatory voting restrictions in the Tar Heel state. Their most notorious attempt, in 2013, was eventually nixed by a federal court which found the law was specifically designed to "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision" and to "impose cures for problems that did not exist." Another similar ruling recently against the state's new measure by a federal court, blocked the law from taking effect before NC's March 3rd Primaries. The new state appeals court decision is likely to also bar the measure until after the 2020 general election in one of the nation's most closely divided battleground states.

Then, it's on to electoral politics, with still more new national polling today showing Bernie Sanders vaulting into double-digit leads over all of his Democratic Presidential rivals. And while Sanders is frequently dismissed by corporate media, even as the front-runner (as we demonstrate again today), an even more curious case of the erasure of Elizabeth Warren by corporate media has made itself maddeningly clear in a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out this week.

We explain how Warren was disappeared, in part, from a key question in that poll, despite placing third in the national delegate race to date and largely tying for second or third place in most of the recent national surveys. That, while candidates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg continue to receive a great deal of media attention while still polling only in single digits nationally.

Meanwhile, having no trouble at all receiving national coverage of late, is former Republican, recently-declared Democrat, and longtime billionaire Michael Bloomberg. While Sanders has skyrocketed in polling, Joe Biden has taken a dive, and Bloomberg appears to be surging at his expense. That is thanks, in no small part, to the former NYC Mayor's unprecedented blanketing of the national airwaves with his political propaganda ads. With his late polling surges, Bloomberg will appear, for the first time, on the Democratic debate stage tonight in Las Vegas before this Saturday's Nevada Caucuses (where he isn't even on the ballot.)

We are joined today by investigative financial journalist, author and Executive Editor of The American Prospect, DAVID DAYEN, who has been covering Bloomberg's long and disturbing record quite closely. Earlier this week, Dayen detailed how Bloomberg's life and career mirrors Donald Trump's in a number of disturbing ways, while cautioning about the dangers to both democracy and the Democratic Party itself of the "plutocrat-on-plutocrat election" that would be in store if Bloomberg wins the nomination.

"This is a hostile take-over of the Democratic Party. Much like Trump was a hostile take-over of the Republican Party," Dayen argues today. "I'm worried about the shell-shocked nature of the Democratic electorate that has given up on democracy and thinks the only way to beat their plutocrat is with our plutocrat. That concerns me for more reasons than just the Bloomberg nomination. It concerns me that people are so despondent that they think democracy doesn't work anymore. That leads us down a very dark road."

Dayen also has a scoop today, as published with Alexander Sammon at The Prospect, on Bloomberg's recent history of comparing the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) to the National Rifle Association (NRA), as part of his "decade-long history of promoting cuts to the social safety net" in his advocacy to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as deficit reduction measures.

All of which raises serious questions about what the Democratic electorate must be thinking in their current, apparently growing support for Bloomberg to become the Party's standard-bearer in 2020. Dayen has many thoughts on that, as do I on today's program...

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On today's BradCast, I’m in for Brad and Desi today – Angie Coiro, of In Deep with Angie Coiro.

My guests are AMBER McKINNEY, from Law360, discussing the DACA ruling from the 9th circuit and Trump’s latest royal edicts on immigration; and D.D. GUTTENPLAN, editor-at-large at The Nation, and author of the new book The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority.

Of course, we have to start off with a lovely story: the Wall Street Journal reports that Donald Trump's been caught red-handed, connected directly to the hush money sent to former mistresses.

Then it's onto the two ongoing big stories: horrific fires in Northern and Southern California, and the elections grinding on in Florida, Arizona, and Georgia. Both the NAACP and a passel of retired generals have weighed in against GOP interference.

A review of the numerous headlines on Trump's efforts to alter immigration policy by presidential proclamation, and his loss in the 9th Circuit court on his efforts to undercut DACA.

A sprinkling of good news (Ruth Bader Ginsberg already back and work! Thousands in the street protecting Mueller!), then D.D. Guttenplan with his new book on revolutionaries rejuvenating our republic.

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On today's BradCast, Brad and Desi are off breathing deeply. I’m sitting in – Angie Coiro, host of the syndicated In Deep with Angie Coiro.

First up, I spend time with ZIVA BRANSTETTER, Senior Editor with Reveal. She and the Reveal investigative team broke a number of key stories involving the child detainees this week: the drugging of the kids, violence, sexual misconduct, and petty theft at the camps and facilities; who’s making money off the detentions; and what agencies are charged with cleaning up the mess. And yes, she confirms: this has been going on for a good many years. The blatant wholesale grabbing of toddlers from parents is an ugly Trump twist, but Barack Obama has a lot to answer for, too.

Then onto the latest SCOTUS decision. The 5-4 verdict supports privacy protections from government trying to follow personal movements through cell site data. CYRUS FARIVAR of Ars Technica and author of the new book Habeas Data breaks the decision down – including its historic footing, and its peculiarly arbitrary “six day” rule.

Advertising brings up its own privacy issues. Long-time media critic KEN AULETTA has a new book, Frenemies. He probes here into exactly how tense the battle has become between advertisers, their agencies, and individual consumers trying to keep bits of their lives to themselves.

Finally: exactly how crazy the battle for Silicon Valley primacy and the consumer dollar can get: JOHN CARREYROU talks about the Theranos scandal. If you think you’re already cynical enough about what companies will risk to get your dollar – well, maybe you’re wrong. His deservedly bestselling book is Bad Blood: Secrets and Lives in a Silicon Valley Startup.

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Two new hurricanes breaking records in the Atlantic and Pacific; U.S. House Science Committee chair now investigating the SEC for investigating Exxon; India signs on to the Paris Agreement; PLUS: City of Angels gets on path to 100 per cent renewable electricity... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): The Paris climate agreement is entering into force. Now comes the hard part; Trudeau Unveils Carbon Price as Canada Acts on Paris Pledge; Only 1 in 5 people hear people talk about climate change at least once a month; Exxon faces a first-of-its-kind lawsuit over climate deception; Peak salt: is the desalination dream over for the Gulf states?; The planet hasn't been this hot for thousands of years; A Curious Plan to Fight Climate Change: Buy Mines, Sell Coal; Timber Company Tells California Town, Go Find Your Own Water... PLUS: Yes - Donald Trump Is a Threat to the Planet... and much, MUCH more! ...

We were live at the KPFK/Pacifica Radio studios in Los Angeles for today's BradCast and had the opportunity to open up the phones for a lot of great listener calls.

But, first, we covered today's disturbing, near-simultaneous collapse of computer systems at the New York Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal and United Airlines, and what we might (but won't) learn from it.

Then, it's onto the nation's dumbest Governor (perhaps in U.S. history) and the unbelievably dumb thing he's finally done now...

Come and listen to a story 'bout a Governor named LePage,
A total dumbass (and sometimes filled with rage).
They said the state of Maine is the state he oughta run,
But wait until you hear what their Guv has gone and done...

But while LePage may be indescribably stupid, at least he's not running for President (yet) --- unlike Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker who is not only running, but currently has a very good chance of winning the Republican nomination. And he's as insidiously sneaky and dangerous as Governors get.

All of that and more on today's lively BradCast!

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We touched on this a bit in yesterday's Green News Report, but this new "I'm not a scientist" tactic now emerging from Republicans, as played most recently by Speaker John Boehner, is noteworthy enough --- and cowardly enough...and purposely deceptive enough --- to look at just a bit closer.

It's a fairly clever new ruse to avoid what folks like Boehner know to be absolutely true, but which, for a number of reasons, they're not allowed to say outloud anymore.

New York's Jonathon Chait helps kick this off...

The question I hear time and time again from audiences who see my documentary film, Broadcast Blues is, "Why did you leave your lucrative career in broadcasting to become a media reform activist?"

The truth is that, once upon a time, I worked in a newsroom where a corporate owner ordered me, a reporter, to skew my reporting to purposely make a man on trial for murder --- look guilty.

In an instant, my entire life changed. The trust I'd had in my news organization vanished. And the deeper I looked into the way corporate owners manage the message they want the public to hear, the more disillusioned I became.

There is more to that story --- so much more --- but you'll have to wait for me to finish my book to get all the chilling details on it.

But this is the kind of story that many reporters could tell, if only they dared. But when they dare, as Jane Akre and Steve Wilson did, they can get fired for telling the truth. (Who can forget the story of these Fox affiliate investigative reporters who tried to report on Monsanto Bovine Growth Hormone being injected into cattle, only for it to then be found in the milk supply, which experts said could cause cancer? WTVT fired them after Monsanto complained to Fox "News" chief Roger Ailes.) The reporters filed a whistleblower suit, and Akre won. But Fox won in the end, by getting a court order that, legally, news does not have to be true. Akre and Wilson lost not only their jobs, but ended up having to pay Fox' attorney fees. (See my story from Broadcast Blues on this case, including courtroom footage here.)

This is the kind of information I suspect the FCC was hoping to tease out in their planned "Multi-market Study of Critical Information Needs" [PDF] which, as I wrote last week at The BRAD BLOG, sparked a right wing firestorm in recent weeks when Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai went public with a Wall Street Journal op-ed accusing his colleagues of "meddling with the news" by simply asking voluntary questions of newsrooms. The study was part of the FCC's statutory requirement to report to Congress every three years, as they have for decades, on identifying "barriers to entry into the communications marketplace faced by entrepreneurs and other small businesses."

The question for reporters from the CIN study that was most disturbing to Pai: "Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?"...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Monsanto's very bad week; Mass demonstrations in Turkey were sparked by environmental protest; Friday's Oklahoma tornado officially widest ever on the planet; Historic flooding in Central Europe; First-ever US offshore wind farm; PLUS: Major setback for Canada's tar sands...by Canadians... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Nevada breaks up with coal; Blame the news media for the public’s ignorance about the climate; Sobering sediments from Lake E; Climate change causing US wildfire season to last longer; Republicans decide socialism is awesome; Jellyfish surge in Mediterranean threatens environment ... PLUS: Alaska’s Bristol Bay mine project: Ground zero for the next big environmental fight?... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Sequester budget cuts hit federal firefighting response during an early wildfire season; More good news for Tesla Motors, bad news for loser Mitt Romney; Scientists accidentally discover new way to make cleaner steel; Another city votes for solar on all new construction; PLUS: Sec. of State John Kerry bluntly criticizes the US for climate change inaction ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Idiocracy: WSJ's 'CO2 Is What Plants Crave'; Chile offers to export fresh water to Qatar; US shale oil supply shock shifts global power balance; Oil companies turn to shipping by rail; Supreme Court rules for Monsanto; Plans to export U.S. natural gas stir debate; Turning CO2 emissions into algae, fuel & animal feed; Panasonic to give away 100k solar lanterns to developing countries; Cutting down rain forests mean less hydropower for developing nations: study ... PLUS: America's first climate refugees: Newtok, Alaska is losing ground to the sea at a dangerous rate and for its residents, exile is inevitable ... and much, MUCH more! ...

From William Happer and Harrison Schmitt at the once-but-no-longer respectable newspaper known as the Wall Street Journal...

If you have no idea why the nonsense above --- beloved by the fossil-fuel industry, assuredly, but embarrassingly shameful when offered in an op-ed by the WSJ --- is "dangerously wrong," as Phil Plait at Slate describes it, see his response to it, which begins like this...

Plait's response is worth reading in full if you are unclear on any aspect of the issues here about which the WSJ --- now owned by Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp --- is hoping to hoax you in support of doing nothing to fight climate change. But this particular passage of his is particularly on point: "They claim that CO₂ is just a natural and 'harmless byproduct of nature', which is bonkers; try living on Venus to see why."

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Senate GOP walks out, obstructs Obama's EPA nominee; OMB says EPA regulations pay off 10 to 1; Honeybee losses accelerate in US while feds stall on action; Another coal export terminal bites the dust in OR; PLUS: Shocker: Consumer Reports has a new all-time favorite car... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): "God won't save us": Sen. Whitehouse blasts GOP "magical thinking"; China cracks down on US trash exports; Debunking out-of-date clean energy conventional "wisdom"; Disease ravaging Africa's staple food crop; Crater reveals troubling future of global warming; US envoy's floats new climate treaty plan; BPA may lower testosterone; Leak shuts down MI nuke plant; Good news - Greenland melt rate to slow ... PLUS: Warning: Even in the best-case scenario, climate change will kick our asses ... and much, MUCH more! ...

Yesterday, a committee in the UK Parliament investigating the NewsCorp phone hacking and bribery scandal concluded that Rupert Murdoch was "not a fit person" to run a major international corporation.

On today's BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, Eric Boehlert of Media Matters joined me to discuss that remarkable news, his sobering column yesterday on "Murdoch's Nixonian Demise", what it all means for NewsCorp properties here in the U.S. (like Fox "News", the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal) and how the story is being covered by the media in this country both on the Right and non-Right.

As usual, we're also joined by Desi Doyen for some Green News Report and a few listener phone calls round out the hour.

Download MP3 or listen online below [appx 58 mins]...

Reminder: I don't post ALL of my KPFK shows here, but you can subscribe to the RSS feed to get 'em all, or stop by the KPFK BradCast archives anytime.

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: 6 more weeks of winter? The Winter That Wasn't across the US; Extreme weather disasters leading to higher insurance rates; Wall St. Journal climate denier smackdown; Even Saudi Arabia believes in global warming(!); PLUS: House arrest for fracking filmmaker - House of Representatives, that is ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): House GOP throws kids under the bus; What liberal bias?: Heavy pro-Keystone XL pipeline coverage in corporate media; Glut of nat gas roils energy markets; Great Lakes Asian carp invasion: new canal for Chicago?; U.S. not prepared for oil spill off Cuba; TX: Fracking disclosure rule takes effect; Green Building sector to deliver trillions in savings by 2030 ... PLUS: Barrage of death threats intended to 'intimidate', says Texas climatologist ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Breaking: More aid to Africa for drought/famine relief; Good year-end news for anyone who breathes: new rules to clean up toxic mercury and arsenic from coal plants; 30k Chinese 'occupy' to protest coal plants; Meet today's World's Newest Oil Spill, now in Nigeria; PLUS: Um... "explosive" trends in a melting Arctic ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): House GOP earns ‘Worst Environmental Record Of Any Congress’; Record TX drought kills 500m trees; Genetic mutations in farm-raised salmon; New material breakthrough could double solar efficiency - with cheap plastic; Seattle bans plastic bags; Keystone XL would ship oil to China; USDA deregulates Monsanto GMO seed; Top clean energy stories of 2011 ... PLUS: Don't paint it black: US researchers invent paint-on solar cells ... and much, MUCH more! ...