It’s yet another wild ride on today’s BradCast! Climb aboard and buckle up! [Audio link to show is posted below.]
First up, the saga of Kansas’ wildly close primary election for the GOP gubernatorial nomination between current Gov. Jeff Colyer and the oft-disgraced Sec. of State Kris Kobach grows more acrimonious by the hour. The fight over Kobach’s refusal then agreement to recuse himself from the counting and canvassing process now includes Colyer charging Kobach is giving counties advice on counting provisional and mail-in ballots that is “inconsistent with Kansas law” and that Colyer’s new “voter integrity” hotline has received hundreds of calls, including claims that voters were “turned away” from the polls on Tuesday and had trouble finding Colyer’s name on the ballot. (The latter complaint, as I explain, could be a result of new ES&S ExpressVote touchscreen voting machines now used in several KS counties. Those machines, in crowded races, fail to show all candidates on a single screen, requiring the voter to hit a “More” button.) A recount and/or litigation between the two Republicans may lie ahead, in what couldn’t be a better result for Democrats if they’d designed it themselves.
Then, a followup on the Trump EPA’s recent announcement that they intend to bring asbestos back and about the Russian company which mines and sells most of the world’s supply of the deadly mineral. The firm, according to their own Facebook page recently, is now actually stamping Donald Trump’s face on their packaging!
Next, we’re joined by the L.A. Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist MICHAEL HILTZIK to discuss the real story behind Trump’s recent tweets on California’s ongoing record wildfires and the President’s bizarre suggestion that the out-of-control blazes are due to “bad environmental laws” and mismanagement of the state’s water system. He claims the firses are happening because California allows water to be “foolishly diverted into the Pacific Ocean”. While none of those things are actually anywhere close to the truth or the reason for the global warming-fueled fires, Hiltzik explains how Trump’s misinformed claims actually appear part of an effort by the Interior and Commerce Departments to exploit the ongoing catastrophes as a way to strip away the state’s control of its own water system and, believe it or not, as a pretext for Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s hopes of hollowing out the Endangered Species Act.
Hiltzik describes Trump as the “Drought Denier in Chief” while explaining that the state of California has said they have plenty of water to fight the fires. “The diversion of water” in the state is not to the ocean, as Trump charges, but “for growers in the Central Valley of California who live in one of the very few Republican zones in the state and are basically supported by the very few Republican office-holders we have in Congress.”
“Under federal law,” he explains, “water has to be kept flowing through a lot of our rivers so that fish, and fishermen, and fisheries are supported, and we don’t let those species go extinct. And when I say ‘going extinct’, it’s not only fish at risk of going extinct but, as I’ve reported, there are salmon fishermen on the coast whose livelihoods are at risk of going extinct because the salmon are being stressed by federal policies that don’t allow enough water to flow down the rivers they use.”
“So growers have been on the warpath, saying ‘Oh, we’re not getting water, we’re drying up because of these biological opinions that say the fish need the water’. These are biological opinions that were issued in accordance with the federal Endangered Species Act. So, Trump has been out for the ESA since the get-go.”
But why do Trump and the Republicans favor the farming industry over the state’s billion dollar fishing industry? Hiltzik explains that and much more, as the Administration ups their efforts to avoid letting a good catastrophe go to waste.
Finally, some good news for voters in North Carolina, where a federal court has blocked the state from purging voters without notice or in the 90 days before an election; A jury verdict out of San Francisco awards $290 million to a school groundskeeper after finding Monsanto liable for his terminal cancer tied to the use of their toxic weed killer RoundUp; And we close out with Jimmy Kimmel’s clever idea for trying to convince Trump to give a damn about our ever-worsening climate crisis…
California had 50 inches of rain two years ago, the fourth highest on record, some of that water should have been saved for future uses. A ballot measure to preserve water had been passed a year prior to the huge amount of rain but the money primarily went to divert water from the North to the South. California should have more water reservoir systems in place for droughts and for the fire seasons. The record fire we are experiencing comes from areas that had not had a fire in 40 years and it appears there was no clear cutting done at all. I am not a Trump Supporter but I cannot stand the idea that Progressives will ridicule anything that comes out of his mouth, that is how he will get re-elected. He will say somewhat reasonable things and the Progressives will ridicule him and the 20% Swing voters who determine the next president will vote for Trump because of the vitrol aimed at everything he says.
Alessandro –
With all due respect, your argument is silly and, is in fact, MUCH more why voters were confused enough to reportedly election Donald Trump.
I don’t know if you listened to today’s full show or not, in which we go into far more details than I was able to in a quick blog summary of the show. But, the fact is, Trump’s absurd tweets had NOTHING to do with the reality of California’s wildfires or the fights against them.
As to the ballot measure you mention, money has, in fact, gone into new and improved reservoir systems. But that has NOTHING to do with the ongoing fires which, as CalFire has noted, the state has PLENTY of water to use to fight. (As we discuss on the show, most work on wildfires doesn’t include water, but rather clearing firebreaks manually and using retardant to keep it from spreading. THERE IS NO LACK OF WATER FOR PURPOSES OF FIGHTING THESE FIRES.
That said, brush clearing is a different matter, with nuances that are discussed on the program and that Donald Trump clearly has no concept of.
There is nothing “somewhat reasonable” in Trump’s comments discussed on the show. Nothing. But your attempted apologies for the incoherent, if corrupt and ill-informed purposes behind his tweet, may go a long way towards convincing other ill-informed voters that there are legitimate points behind his illegitimate argument here.
If you’re looking for a reason why so many folks who should know better voted for this corrupt clown anyway, you’ve just illustrated one.