Transcripts For CSPAN2 The Communicators 20140610 : vimarsan

Well, i have been going around to different states, and i have been looking at whats going on state by state. I have been to seven states already. I want to mention two tonight. Just got back from New Hampshire, the most recent trip. What is going on in New Hampshire . New hampshire, as many people know, has a big ski industry. It is a Winter Holiday destination, a winter vacation and tourism destination. And skiing is a big part of that. I met with the guy who runs the cranmore ski mountain. They have, i want to say, crippled, thereabouts, the number of snowmaking guns that they have on their slopes, and they have gotten better at it, they make it more efficient, they make more snow. As there is less snow pack in the mountains, they are able to get around it by making more snow, but the reality of this is proven by the fact that they have to go out there and make more snow. As the New Hampshire official said, thats fine for the slopes. You can get out there and you can roar those guns all night long and make snow on those mountain slopes, but if youre a nordic skier, you have got to go out on trails and there is no economic way to blow snow onto trails. If youre a snowmobile enthusiast, you go out on snow trails and there is no economic way to blow snow onto snowmobile trails, and they are seeing a dramatic falling off in nordic and snowmobile tourism as a result, the availability of that important market for them. Two animals they talked about. Lets start with the moose. A pretty icon i can species for New Hampshire, i was told. There are moose tours, who knew . People go up to New Hampshire to look at moose, its a multimilliondollar industry, moose touring. I learned something new on the trip. Well, that industry is suffering from a couple of things. First of all, sometimes they do the moose tours on snowmobiles. No snow, no snowmobile moose tour. But worse, indeed early, horrifyingly, creepily, the moose are dying off because they are being overwhelmed by ticks. Now, picking a tick off my dog is enough to give me a little bit the heeby jeebies, and if i find one on myself, its a little creepy. Were not talking about one tick on these moose. Were not talking about 100 ticks on these moose. Were not even talking about a thousand ticks on these moose. Were talking about 50,000 to 100,000 ticks per moose. So much that they cant keep themselves healthy. The blood is being sucked out of them by tens of thousands of ticks. And so the expert in that area who spoke to me said that the reaction from the mothers is to just have one calf instead of two. That keeps the population from growing. And the calves basically starve. They die of anemia. They cant feed themselves. They cant keep a blood system running that feeds themselves and the thousands of ticks, tens of thousands of ticks. And these things grow to be the size of a blueberry or a grape. I mean, its really appalling. This is an emblematic mammal of New Hampshire, and this is whats befalling it. And what do the New Hampshire folks say is causing it . The retreat of the snow. The ticks when theyre falling and breeding and laying their eggs or whatever the heck they do to reproduce, i am no tick expert, but they do it on earth now, whereas when they fell onto snow, boom, that was it. And so the explosion in the tick population and the disgusting infestation of these poor animals is directly related to the retreat of the snow. The last thing on New Hampshire, the state bird is evidently the purple finch. The purple finch has a very particular kind of habitat because of the way the climate is changing. That habitat is which is shrinking and one of the bird experts i spoke to said they are looking at the prospect of purple finch being one of the birds people have to go to canada to find. Their state bird, have to go to canada to find it. The other state i will close with is florida. Florida is ground zero for Climate Change. In florida, great cities are flooding at high tide. The systems that used to drain water out of the cities in a rainstorm are now flooding saltwater into the cities because of Sea Level Rise at high tides. I have met with former mayors and county commissioners who have shown me pictures of people riding their bicycle hub deep through water on a bright sunny day. Its not raining. Its come up. One picture was a yard where the homeowner had hammered a sign into their yard no wake zone so the cars driving by on the flooded road wouldnt create a wake and wash more saltwater up into their yard. Some werent so lucky, and the water was right through the front door and into the house. The republican mayor of Monroe County has made Climate Change a priority. She has instructed her county government to do a Climate Change report, looking particularly at Sea Level Rise. Republican mayor of Monroe County. And yet, what do we hear from the republican side here . Not a peep. Not a peep. She said Something Else thats interesting, and i will close with this. I asked her how the coral reefs were doing. A lot of people go down to florida to snorkel and to scuba dive and to see the wonders of the world under the sea. And i said well, mayor, how are your reefs doing . I have heard a lot about what acidification and warming temperatures are doing to reefs. She said they are still beautiful. And then she paused. And then she said unless you were here 10 or 20 years ago. 10 or 20 years, and you see that change. Whats happening in the reefs is really catastrophic. My friends on the other side never want to talk about this. They want to talk about climate modeling. You dont need a model to go to the end of the dock at fort pulaski and see how much the sea level has risen. You measure it. Its simple. Same thing at the naval war college. You measure it. Its simple. You dont need complex computer models doing to narragansett bay and see this nearly four degrees warmer with the water temperature and all the changes that happen as a result. You use a thermometer. Its not complicated. And the acidification of the oceans that is affecting the coral reefs and so many other creatures, it wiped out in the northwest oyster spat. People grow oysters in the Pacific Northwest and the seawater that came in was so acidic, it dissolved the shells of the baby oysters and wiped out a huge percentage of their crop. That you measure with the same kind of litmus tests that kids do their aquariums with. Its not complicated. But they always want to talk about where it can be confusing. They never want to confront the problem. Well, were going to find ways to continue to insist on confronting this problem. They may not be here tonight, but as the old saying goes, you can run but you cant hide, and there are too many of my colleagues who have been helpful and good on this issue before. As i said before Citizens United, if you look at the Republican Senate activity on Climate Change before Citizens United and after, its like looking at a heart attack. You see steady activity until Citizens United and then it is flatline. Citizens united, dark money, polluter money have done as much damage polluting our democracy as they have done polluting our planet, but we are going to continue to do something about it, and the American Public not only is with us, they are going to insist on it. I yield the floor. I note the absence of a quorum. The presiding officer the clerk will call the roll. Quorum call mr. Whitehouse madam president . The presiding officer the senator from rhode island. Mr. Whitehouse may i ask unanimous consent that the pending quorum call be lifted. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Whitehouse madam president , i am so glad to have you here because a recurring tradition of the senate floor is about to take place, and its always particularly good for a senator from rhode island to have a senator from massachusetts presiding while i talk about this. Today, im here to recognize and celebrate one of the earliest acts of defiance against the British Crown in our Great American struggle for independence. Most americans remember the Boston Tea Party as one of the major events building up to the American Revolution. We learned the story of spirited bostonians, and when i say spirited, i mean that in several senses. I gather that spirits had been served to those bostonians before they embarked on this adventure. Clam boring out of the docks of the Eastern Company ships and dumping tea into the harbor as a protest of the british taxation without representation, which was a fine and worthy stunt, and im certainly not here to defend taxation without representation. However, however, there is a milestone on the path to revolution that is frequently overlooked, and it is the story of 60 brave Rhode Islanders who challenge british rule more than a year before that tea party in boston, and they did a little bit more than throw tea bags overboard. So every year, i honor those littleknown rhode island heroes who have risked their lives in defiance of oppression one dark night more than 240 years ago. In the years before the revolutionary war, as tensions with the american colonies grew, king george iii stationed revenue cutters, armed customs patrol vessels, along the american coast. They were there to prevent smuggling, to enforce the payment of taxes and to impose the authority of the crown. One of the most notorious of these ships was the h. M. S. Gaspee. Its captain, lieutenant william dudingston, was known for destroying fishing vessels, seizing cargo and flagging down ships only to harass, humiliate and interrogate the colonials. Outraged by this egregious abuse of power, the merchants and shipmasters of rhode island flooded civil and military officials with complaints about the gaspee, exhausting every diplomatic and legal means to stir the British Crown to regulate duddingstons conduct. Not only did british officials ignore the Rhode Islanders concerns, they responded with open hostility. The commander of the local british fleet, admiral john month argue, montague, warned that anyone who dared attempt acts of resistance or retaliation against the gaspee would be taken into custody and hanged as a pirate. Which brings us to june 9, 1772, 242 years ago. Rhode island ship captain Benjamin Lindsey was en route to providence from newport in his ship the hannah when he was accosted and ordered to yield for inspection by the gaspee. Captain lindsey ignored the gaspees command and raced away up mare bega narragansett bay, e warning shots fired by the gaspee. As the gaspee gave chase, captain lindsey knew a Little Something about narragansett bay and he knew a Little Something about the hannah. He knew that she was lighter and drew less water than the gaspee. And he sped north towards patuxent cove, toward the shallow waters off manquid point. His hannah shot over the shallows there but the heavier gaspee grounded and stuck firm. The british ship and her crew were caught, stranded in a falling tide, and it would be many hours before a rising tide could free the hulking gaspee. Presented with that irresistible opportunity, captain lindsey continued on his course to providence and there enlisted the help of john prow brown, a respected merchant from one of the most prominent providence families. The two men rallied a group of rhode island patriots at saberns tavern in what is now the east side of providence. So perhaps something that the bostonnians, the tea party and the Rhode Islanders of the gaspee had in common was spirits. Together the group resolved to put an tone an end to the gaspes threat to rhode island waters. That night the men, led by captain lindsey and abraham whipple, later to become a commander in the revolutionary navy, embarked in eight longboats quietly down narragansett bay. They encircled the gaspee and they called on lieutenant dudingston to surrender his ship. Dugdudingston refused and orderd his men to fire upon anyone who tried to board. Undeterred, the Rhode Islanders forced their way on to the gaspees deck in a hail of os and sword clashes and musket fire. And lieutenant dudingston fell with a musket ball in the midst of the struggle. Right there, in the waters of warrick, rhode island, the very first blood in the conflict that was to become the American Revolution was drawn. As the patriots commandeered the ship, brown ordered one of his Rhode Islanders, a physician named john moyney, to head to the ships captains cabin and tend to dudingstons wound. A humane gesture in their moment of victory, to help a man who had threatened to open fire on them only moments before. Brown and whipple took the captive english crew back to shore and then returned to the gaspee to rid narragansett bay of her despised presence once and for all. They set her afire. The blaze spread through the ship and ultimately to the ships powder magazine, which went off with an explosion like fire works, the blast echoing through the night across the b bay, the flash lighting the sea up like daylight, and fragments of the ship splashing down into the water all around. The sight of this audacious act is now named gaspee point, in honor of these bravery rhode rh brave Rhode Islanders. So i come here once again to share this story and commemorate this night so many years ago, june 9, 1772, and the names of Benjamin Lindsey, john brown, and abraham whipple, and those men not known to history who fought beside them that night. The gaspee affair, as it was called, generated furor in the British Government, which appointed a Royal Commission of inquiry based in newport to gather evidence for indictment. The indicted men were then to be sent to england for trial. Well, not so fast. Rhode islands colonial charter guaranteed its citizens the right to a trial in the vicinity in which the crime was alleged to have occurred. And beyond that, these Rhode Islanders presumed that they were entitled to the same rights as englishmen in their mother country. Some went so far to say that this proposal to try them overseas violated ancient rights outlined in the magna charta. This breach of the rights that colonists believed were enthriend ienshrined in the brih constitution create continentwide disorder. Thomas jefferson and patrick henry, yearning to protest, pushed the body to create a committee of correspondents to gather information from around the colonies concerning the british parliaments actions. While also urging other colonies to do the same. By december of 1773, 11 colonies had set up committees of correspondents. These committees played a vital role in enflaming discontent. They were the First Permanent modes of communication among the 13 colonies and allowed abuses by parliament to be quickly known throughout the colonies. John allen, a littleknown visiting minister in the Second Baptist Church in boston, gave a sermon on the gaspee affair. It went the revolutionary equivalent of viral. Widely published. In this sermon, allen rejected the proposition that parliament had a right to tax and enforce laws like the ones implicated in the gaspee affair on americans without the consent of their colonial representatives. A position that would come to define colonial discontent and reverberates to this day through the slogan no taxation without representation. Allen concluded his sermon with the provoking and revolutionary question whether the british king had a right to rule over america in the first place. Reverend allen asserted that there was no parliamentary right to reign, as in britain, nor a right by conquest, as the american colonists had only signed compacts with the crown for protection of their religious and civil rights. Allen espoused enlightenment ideals of social compacts and local rights, stating if the British Government enacted laws that were oppressive to the rights of american colonists, as it had with the creation of a commission of inquiry intending to send the gaspee raiders to england for trial, then it lost its right to rule over them. The sermon was published eight separate times in three different Colonial Cities and spread widely through the colonies. Through that, the gaspee affair sparked in the minds of americans ideas about parliamentary abuses and the kings right to rule that would cede a spirit of discontent and eventually boil over into revolution. The sermon, along with fiery editorials published in the wake of the affair, inspired colonial leaders to speak openly about the British Governments abuses, incity gating conflict that would instigating conflict that would culminate in the battles of lexington and concord. The gaspee affair galvanized colonial discontent and led to Greater Unity among the 13 colonies. Afc Rhode Islanders defiantly after Rhode Islanders defiantly set fire to the gaspee, the american colonies came together in a common cause for the nirs finafirsttime in their history,a formative step in the birth of our new nation. Madam president , i know that these events and the patriots whose efforts allowed for their success are not forgotten in my home state. Over the years, i have enjoyed marching in the annual gaspee days parade through warrick, rhode island, as every year we recall the courage and zeal of these men who fired the first shots, that drew the first blood in that great contest for the freedoms we enjoy today. They set a precedent for future patriots to follow, including those in boston who more than a year later would have their tea party. But dont forget, madam president , as my home state prepares once again to celebrate the anniversary of the gaspee incident, that massachusetts colonists threw tea bags off the deck of their british ship. We blew ours up and shot its captain more than a year earli earlier. Were little in rhode island, madam president , but as lieutenant dudingston discovered, we pack a punch. Mr. White house whitemr. Whiteh, i ask unanimous consent we proceed to a period of morning business with senators permitted to speak for up 10 minutes each. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Whitehouse i ask unanimous consent at a time to be determined by the majority leader, with the concurrence of the republican leader, the senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations, calendar number 523, that there be 30 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on the nomination, that upon the use or yielding back of time, the senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nomination, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate, that no further motions be in order, that any related statements be printed in the record, that the president be immediately notified of the senates action, and the senate then resume legislative session. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Whitehouse madam president , i understand that s. 2450, introduced earlier today by senator sanders, mccain and others, is at the desk and i ask for its first reading. The presiding officer the clerk will read the title of the bill for the first time. The clerk s. 2450, a bill to improve the access of veterans to medical services from the department of Veterans Affairs and for other purposes. Mr. Whitehouse i now ask for its second reading and object to my own request. The presiding officer objection is heard. The bill will be read for a second time on the next legislative day. Mr. Whitehouse madam president , i ask unanimous consent that when the senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 10 00 a. M. Tuesday, june 10, 2014. That following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the journal of proceedings be approved to date, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day. That following any leader remarks, the senate proceed to vote on confirmation of executive calendar number 734, as provided under the previous order. The presiding officer without objection. Mr. Whitehouse under the previous order, there will be one vote at 10 00 a. M. , two votes at 12 00 noon, followed by a recess until 2 15 p. M. For the weekly caucus meetings, and then three additional votes at 2 30 p. M. If theres no further business to come before the senate, i ask that it adjourn under the previous order. The presiding officer the Senate Stands adjourned until 10 00 a. M. Tomorrow. In september, i might forget about it. I think that is part of the problem. The financial incentives and making them so far out. I guess the question i have for you dr. Draper is did you notice any