USDA Radio Newsline
Monday, June 24th Stories:
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With the Fourth of July just days away, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2019's Best & Worst Places for 4th of July Celebrations as well as accompanying videos to go along with interesting stats about the holiday in its 4th of July Facts & Figures infographic.
To determine the best places to celebrate the most star-spangled occasion, WalletHub compared the 100 largest U.S. cities based on how well they balance holiday cost and fun. The data set of 20 key metrics ranges from average beer and wine prices to duration of fireworks shows to Fourth of July weather forecast.
Best Cities to Celebrate Fourth of July
1
New York, NY
11
New Orleans, LA
2
Los Angeles, CA
12
Scottsdale, AZ
3
San Diego, CA
13
Milwaukee, WI
4
Washington, DC
14
Baltimore, MD
5
Las Vegas, NV
15
Philadelphia, PA
6
Dallas, TX
16
Seattle, WA
7
Atlanta, GA
17
Denver, CO
8
Chicago, IL
18
Miami, FL
9
San Francisco, CA
19
Orlando, FL
10
St. Louis, MO
20
Pittsburgh, PA
To view the full report and your city’s rank, please visit: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-4th-of-july-celebrations/4651/
4th of July Facts & Figures
To view the full infographic, please visit: https://wallethub.com/blog/4th-of-july-facts/22075/
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Trump’s Ministry of No Information
by John LaForge
664 words
The Trump administration has halted, without explanation, the routine practice of reporting the current number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal, the AP and United Press International report. The new secrecy will make it nearly impossible to estimate the true cost of nuclear weapons, to show adherence to arms control treaties, or to pressure others nuclear weapons states to disclose the size of their arsenals.
The secrecy decision was revealed in an April 5 letter from the Department of Energy’s Office of Classification to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). Hans M. Kristensen, director of the group’s Nuclear Information Project, said the FAS regularly asks for the information and that it’s been made public for decades.
“The decision walks back nearly a decade of US nuclear weapons transparency policy—in fact, longer if including stockpile transparency initiatives in the late 1990s,” Kristensen wrote in an April 17 memo, according to the AP.
There is no national security rationale for keeping the number secret, Kristensen told the AP, adding that it is “unnecessary and counterproductive.”
“This is curious,” he reportedly said, “since the Trump administration had repeatedly complained about secrecy in the Russian and Chinese arsenals. Instead, it now appears to endorse their secrecy.”
Military classifies news of war in Afghanistan
In April, the Pentagon halted its public disclosure of how much of Afghanistan is controlled by the Taliban, adding to a long list of progress reports from the war that are now being kept secret.
John Sopko, US Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, told the New York Times, “We’re troubled by it.” Keeping Sopko’s reports secret means, “The only people who don’t know what’s going on and how good or bad a job we’re doing are the people paying for it,” he said. Sopko and some in Congress have access to some of the information.
The new restrictions on public information about the 18-year-long occupation of Afghanistan are in addition to the October 2017 halt to disclosing Afghan military casualties, its performance assessments, and anti-corruption efforts by the Afghan Ministry of Interior, David Zucchino reported May 1 for the Times. Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the paper, “There is no reliable way to know who is ‘winning’ or the level of stalemate.”
Pentagon secrecy hides missile defense program
Today’s increased military secrecy follows the March 2018 announcement by the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) that it would no longer post the public calendar of upcoming missile tests and will keep the testing schedule classified. The schedule will only be made available to Congress the Seattle Times reported April 11, 2018. Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, director of the MDA which spans 14 time zones and employs over 9,000 military and civilian workers, reportedly said his test results will be made available after launches.
Expanding military control of information continues a pattern. Since June 8, 2002, the Pentagon has been allowed to keep secret all key missile defense test results. The military’s blanket classification of performance data was imposed following the disclosure of scientific evidence of a string of failed or faked tests and fabricated results, and after the FBI began an investigation into fraud and cover-ups inside the program. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also waived all procurement oversight rules for the agency, laws designed to keep federal programs on budget.
Bruce Gagnon of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space wrote in June 2017 that, “Many of the tests are scripted, what [physicist] Michio Kaku calls ‘strap down rabbit tests.’ They can’t afford to release [details]. They would sink their boat.”
With secret test data, secret schedules, and an unaccounted, bottomless budget, the MDA’s mission impossible — “hitting a bullet with a bullet” — has wasted over $200 billion since 1983. Other military impossibilities — like victory in Afghanistan, or winning at nuclear deterrence — have cost trillions. They appear guaranteed to gobble up billions more as long as Pentagon censorship is allowed to hide the facts.
-end –
John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.
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Hip hip hooray for hometown newspapers
“For the times they are a-changin'” sang Bob Dylan. And the digital age has changed the way information is eaten, swallowed, and digested. We can’t stop progress, but we must maintain the salience of our hometown newspapers (in print or digital). Why? Local newspapers serve significant roles in local societies.
“When local newspapers shut their doors, communities lose out. People and their stories can’t find coverage. Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable. What the public doesn’t know winds up hurting them. The city feels poorer, politically and culturally,” penned Kriston Capps in a 2018 article at www.citylab.com.
I recently attended the annual conference for members of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a 501(c)6 nonprofit organization. The NSNC promotes professionalism and camaraderie among columnists and other writers of the serial essay, including bloggers. And advocates for columnists and free-press issues. www.columnists.com.
The alarm is sounding and signaling action to save and support hometown newspapers.
The School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has collected, researched and analyzed data from 2004 to 2016 on more than 9,500 local newspapers. The comprehensive study of newspaper coverage in the United States found that 516 rural newspapers closed or merged from 2004 to 2018. In metropolitan areas, 1,294 newspapers were shuttered. A national total of 1,810 papers that ceased publication. Read the 88-page report “The Rise of a New Media Baron and the Emerging Threat of News Deserts” at www.usnewsdeserts.com.
A “news desert” refers to a community that is no longer covered by a newspaper or has limited access to local news.
“News deserts present problems for small communities that rely on local newspapers for a majority of their news. Plus, owners of small, local newspapers tend to balance business interests with civic responsibility, and therefore play a role in the vitality of the community that they serve.” www.newsmediaalliance.org.
The referenced study asks and answers, “What can be done to save the journalism that has been provided by community newspapers for more than 200 years? There are no simple answers and no guarantees. It will take a concerted and committed effort by many to avert a growing number of news deserts.” www.usnewsdeserts.com.
Don’t close the casket and bury local newspapers yet! Ye naysayers of doom and gloom—readers want, need, and love their local newspapers.
I urge readers of every local newspaper to write a letter of support to the newspaper staff. Dust off your duff and vocalize your opinion by writing a Letter to the Editor. Take some time out of your hurry-scurry day and communicate with your newspaper people. They need to know you care.
What else can you do? Pay for a subscription to your local newspaper. The staff and their families need to eat at least once a day.
Use newspaper content as a teaching tool in elementary, middle, and high school. Communities need strong newspaper-in-education programs.
Local businesses need to continue spending their advertising dollars with hometown newspapers, whether in print or digital.
“Without a local paper, there is a strong risk of news deserts emerging across vast regions in the country with communities that can least afford it — with political, economic and social consequences for society as a whole.” www.usnewsdeserts.com.
Who owns your hometown newspaper? For more information visit www.newspaperownership.com. “In addition to newspaper owners, individuals and institutions will need to make a committed and concerted effort to save community journalism.”
Melissa Martin, Ph.D., is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She lives in Ohio.
