#it is a bill that both parties want and will nitpick in the senate until they find a way to pass it amicably

[eelpatrickharris]

The America COMPETES Act is putting fish and reptiles at risk

Hello, friends! I'm returning from my hiatus to let people know about something very important. As of today, 2/4/2022, HR 4521 along with the COMPETES Act has been passed (mostly along party lines) through the House of Representatives and is making its way to the senate.

This matters to the fish, herp, bird, and invert communities for one big reason: there's an amendment in Division H from the Committee of Natural Resources that modifies the Lacey Act. According to this amendment, all non-native species would be classified as injurious by default until later review. There would be an import ban on non-native fish, reptiles, amphibians, and the like unless they are reviewed by the Secretary of the Interior and found to not be an “imminent threat to human beings, to the interests of agriculture, horticulture, forestry, or to wildlife or the wildlife resources of the United States.” They must also be verifiably imported or transported between state lines in “more than minimal quantities” in a 1-year period before the COMPETES Act is passed. Those quantities have not been decided yet.

We’re talking a devastating blanket ban on any species that isn’t well-known and studied enough to be proven non-threatening.

Let’s take Parasphromenus, for instance! The licorice gourami. This is a genus of fish from the peat bogs of Indonesia and Malaysia. They will likely be extinct in the wild within our lifetime, because their habitats are being rapidly deforested and converted into palm oil plantations. The key to the licorice gourami’s survival is captive breeding by dedicated aquarists. (Learn more about the Parasphromenus Project here.) Because there are very few of them left in the wild, a very tiny amount of them are being imported or distributed within the US, and you might only see 1 or 2 of a given species being moved around. These would not meet minimal quantities and would be banned. Goodbye, licorice gouramis.

And here we have spiny eels, what got me into fishkeeping. These two, Charlie and Dennis Reyneelds, are my Macrognathus aral, or the striped peacock eel. There are a good 13 different eels classified as peacock eels, and they all get lumped into 4 (usually incorrect) species in the US pet trade. Even with those inflated numbers, not many are being brought into the USA. If you’re extremely lucky, you might find a couple skinny ones hiding in the gravel at Petsmart. Say goodbye to any spiny eel that isn’t the well-known fire eel. (Fire eels do terribly in captivity and need about a 1500+ gallon tank as fully grown adults, but anyways.)

This will affect many, many species that are infrequently imported. At best, they’ll just become in the USA and continuing to sustain populations in the wild. At worst, they will be driven to extinction in the wild and lose their base of conservationists within the USA. Not only is this a hideous overstep of the Lacey Act--we should not have a “whitelist” of non-native organisms that can legally exist in the USA--but it is absolutely disastrous to threatened species being held afloat by passionate individuals. Unless you want the only fish available to be what you could find in an old Walmart fish section, please reach out to your senators. This bill has already passed the House and is moving to a vote in the Senate.

Find out who your senator is (a quick google will do this), go to their Contact page, and send them an email, a message, dial their phone, send them a fax. Whatever you do, get into contact and ask them to please oppose HR 4521′s Presumptive Prohibition on Importation amendment to the Lacey Act. If you want to write a long plea on how it will affect conservation efforts, go for it! But if you aren’t sure what to write, here’s what I sent to mine:

Dear Senator _______,

In regards to the America COMPETES Act, HR 4521, Section 71102 (d): I'm a fishkeeping hobbyist dedicated to preserving species threatened by habitat loss. To do this, I rely on imported specimens of rare endangered fish to create stable populations within captivity. Because these fish have dwindling ranges in the wild, they are sparsely imported, and already near-impossible to find.

According to the amendments proposed to the Lacey Act by the Committee on Natural Resources, these species would be classified by default as injurious and illegal to import or transport across state lines. The exception would be those imported in a to-be-announced "minimum quantity" within 1-year before the passing of the bill. Covid-borne logistics slowdowns meant that importations of fish from 2020 onward have been at an all-time low, as you cannot risk livestock getting stuck in transport and dying. Especially with endangered fish, it defeats the purpose of importation with the intent of preservation.

A "whitelist" is dangerous lip service meant to soothe those worried about invasive species, at the cost of species extinction and ruined conservation efforts. One single entity should not be able to completely prohibit harmless species unless they are known to be a hazard to the US. There are thousands of fish species with no chance of survival outside of aquaria once their wild populations are wiped out by spreading agricultural and development threats. Please, for the sake of wildlife diversity and those of us who strive to preserve it, eliminate the Section 71102 (d) amendment on Presumptive Prohibition to the Lacey Act in HR 4521. The fate of thousands of threatened species depend on it.

[polarwandersea]

Enemies of the Clintons. P1

This is an informative text post on the enemies of the Clintons who have spread and been responsible for many of the right wing rumors since Arkansas. This way if you find a new rumor and you can link it to one of these people, then you instantly know it’s false. Some of this is repeated from of my previous text posts but I also wanted to add how all these people knew each other. I’m splitting this into two parts because there are a lot. 

1. Larry Nichols.

Background: Nichols had a grudge against Bill Clinton. This is due to the fact that in 1988, Nichols (who was from Conway Arkansas) had landed a new job as a marketing consultant for the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), the state’s centralized public bonding agency.  Nichols was preoccupied with issues more global than the marketing of Arkansas bonds. He started telling other ADFA employees that he was a CIA operative working on behalf of Nicaraguan contras. The CIA part was false but the claim wasn’t altogether false because he had gotten involved with the Collation of Peace Through Strength, an organization headed by the retired general John Singlaub-one of marine lieutenant’s colonel Oliver North’s secret money conduits in the Iran-Contra affair. What ended up happening was that “for five months, Nichols devoted himself to the contra cause while drawing a state salary, until the Associated Press discovered he had taken his politics to work. In September 1988 the AP reported that since coming to ADFA, Nichols had placed 642 long-distance telephone calls, at state expense, to Contra leaders and politicians who supported them. “ Due to all this, Bill had to fire Nichols, and the man has a held a grudge against him ever since. 

Rumors he’s been involved in spreading: Gennifer Flowers and The Clinton Chronicles. 

Here’s a photo of Larry Nichols with Bill: 

2. Pat Matrisciana. 

Background: He was the producer of the film: The Clinton Chronicles. He was also the founder of the conservative group Citizens for Honest Government. The Citizens for Honest Government was registered with the IRS under section 501 © (3) of the tax code as a nonprofit educational organization, theoretically non-partisan, tax-exempt and free to solicit tax-deductible charitable contributions. In practice, the organization had two main purposes: to propagate the political and religious beliefs of the extreme religious right, with which its founder and sole proprietor Pat Matrisciana was closely allied.

Rumors he’s been involved in spreading: The Clinton Chronicles

3. Reverend Jerry Falwell. 

Background: He was an American Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist. He also owned Falwell’s liberty alliance which helped produce shows and videos. Falwell was basically the caricature of what a bigoted right wing extremist christian would be like. Here are some of his quotes: “The idea that religion and politics don’t mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”     “ AIDS is not just God’s punishment for homosexuals; it is God’s punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.”

Rumors he’s been involved in spreading: The Clinton Chronicles

How do all these men know each other?: 

. Matrisciana and Nichols were introduced in late 1993 by a former NBC News cameraman named John Hillyer who had been hired by Matrisciana to scout Arkansas for anti-Clinton material.

Before The Clinton Chronicles, Matrisciana and Nichols’s first joint venture was a thirty-minute video called Circle of Power. Distributed nationwide by Falwell’s Liberty Alliance (this is how Reverend Jerry Falwell became  involved,) in early 1994, the video opens with Nichols earnestly telling of “countless people who mysteriously died” after running afoul of Clinton’s political ambition. Taking Vince  Foster’s death as a starting point, Circle of Power, tied President Clinton to a series of suicides, accidental deaths, and unsolved homicides.

They also all worked on The Clinton Chronicles together and helped produce the film. 

4. Lee Atwater

background: He was chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1989. Known as a ruthless campaigner and political animal. He was the mastermind of the Willie Horton Ad in 1988 in 1989 he became very interested in the upcoming race for governor. In Arkansas he was trying to deal with a problem that dwarfed any nitpicking about neutrality. Atwater was very blunt in his interest in the governor race: “You boys have to remember, I don’t give a fuck who the governor of Arkansas is. My only job as chairman of the Republican National Committee is to get George Bush reelected. The media’s full of talk about Mario Cuomo or Bill Bradley. We know how to paint them up as northeastern liberals like Dukakis. That’s easy! What scares me is a southern moderate or conservative democrat, and the scariest of them all because he’s the most talented of the bunch is Bill Clinton.” 

Rumors he’s been involved in spreading: All the rumors of drugs and women involving Bill started with Atwater. He even admitted it: “We’re going to take Tommy Robinson (the republican governor candidate he was supporting in 1989) and use him to throw everything we can think of at Clinton-drugs, women, whatever works. We may or may not win, but we’ll bust him up so bad he won’t be able to run again for years.”

5. Sheffield Nelson.

Background:  Nelson used to be an ally of Bill Clinton’s. In 1984, the governor had appointed him to head the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. But by 1990, Nelson had grown impatient waiting in the shadows for Clinton to move on. He believed Clinton had reneged on a deal they had made in 1986, when Nelson first considered running for governor but didn’t in return for Clinton’s promise to step aside four years later. He had expected the governor either to make a presidential move in 1988 or to run for the U.S. senate in 1990. Clinton’s decision to run for reelection instead apparently triggered his abrupt switch to the Republican party. 

Here’s a link to Bill and Sheffield Nelson debating where Nelson brings up Bill’s supposed promise to not run for election: https://www.c-span.org/video/?14569-1/arkansas-gubernatorial-debate

6. Larry Case

Background: He was a private detective. He excavated tons of dirt on public figures in Arkansas, but his information varied on quality.He had gotten an audience with the Clinton campaign aides to offer dirt on Sheffield Nelson but nothing came of it. He came into a partnership with Larry Nichols.

How do all these Men know each other?

Larry Nichols also supported Tommy Robinson, the candidate which Lee Atwater preferred in 1989.

Though Sheffield Nelson also joined the race in 1989 and had to oppose Tommy Robinson in the Republican primaries they had in common that they were both previous democrats who had switched to being Republican and both would rather the other win and have Bill lose.

Sheffield Nelson found Larry Nichols useful in promoting the sex angle against Bill since Larry was responsible for the Gennifer Flowers rumor and other dirt, Nelson often met with Nichols to strategically plan against Bill.

Larry Nichols and Larry Case came into business together as well (often letting Nelson join in). Case and Nichols established ongoing relationships with several magazines and press including the Star, and the National enquirer.

Through Nichols’s extensive connections with Sheffield Nelson and the Arkansas Republican party (thanks to Atwater), Nichols and Case enjoyed jolly mutually beneficial ties with reporters and producers from the Los Angles Times and the Washington Post.

So as you can see all these enemies of the Clintons knew each other and came to work together with the common goal of stopping Bill Clinton’s political career. The Clinton Chronicles is still on Youtube today and a lot of their propaganda has unfortunately survived being as many comments on the video are modern and people praise it and take it as fact. 

Coming in Part 2: How Juanita Broddarick and Jim and Susan Mcdougal ( the couple involved in white-water) have ties to Nelson+more.

[freespeechradionews]

New Post has been published on FSRN

New Post has been published on https://fsrn.org/2017/01/senate-republicans-put-affordable-care-act-under-the-knife/

Senate Republicans put Affordable Care Act under the knife

The U.S. Senate defeated a bid by Democrats to ensure that the bare bones of the Affordable Care Act would be preserved in moves to roll back the law. The GOP priority is already gaining steam, weeks before the new administration even takes control. FSRN’s Nell Abram has more.

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Senators from both sides of the aisle argued for changes to the Affordable Care Act Thursday. The debate is part of the budget reconciliation process, to which the GOP has tied its hopes of unpacking the law also known as Obamacare.

Republicans decry what they call a law that resulted in higher costs and lower levels of coverage. They want to ‘repeal and replace’ the health care law that blocks insurers from refusing to cover individuals with preexisting medical issues, allows parents to cover their children until they are 26 and requires most tax-payers to purchase an insurance policy.

“While Republicans will start by repealing Obamacare immediately, we will ensure a stable transition in which those with insurance will not lose access to healthcare coverage,” said Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi. “This will allow us to move step-by-step to a new set of reforms, listening carefully to the advice to the millions of Americans affected and making sure we move wisely while doing no harm.”

But no replacement proposal is ready.

Republicans say there will be a delay before a repeal takes effect, an interim period during which a new health care law can be crafted. Democrats say while not perfect, the ACA needs to be updated – but not tossed out.

According to a report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, repealing Obamacare could cost almost 25 million people their access to health coverage – more than half of them Medicaid recipients.

To protect them, Senate Democrats introduced an amendment that sought to set a baseline for all budget reconciliation proposals.

“We are repealing the ACA with no plan for what comes next,” remarked Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, who was among the sponsors. “We are driving forward with a repeal vote with no plan for how we keep the health care system together, prevent it from falling into chaos, how we continue to insure the millions of Americans who rely on it. There is a cruelty to this enthusiasm that is a little hard to understand, it’s really hard to understand.”

The amendment would have prohibited bills as part of budget reconciliation that lower the number of people covered under the law, boost premiums or cut benefits. It failed along party lines: 48 to 52.

Changing the law is not a simple matter. The convoluted process that Senator Enzi kicked off this week would nitpick the law through budget reconciliation, which allows for individual elements of the healthcare law to be overturned if they are budget-positive.  Reconciliation can drag on for months, include an unlimited number of amendments not subject to debate, is not subject to filibuster and only requires a simple majority to pass – making it inherently partisan and difficult to follow.

More Senate action on health care is expected to continue next week, when lawmakers will also consider high-level cabinet nominations by President-elect Donald Trump. His pick for Attorney General, ACA opponent and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions; and longtime ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State.