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Robert Hubbell: Paradise Is Burning

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2023 //
33

Robert Hubbell writes one of the best blogs around. He is consistently on target with his observations. In this post, he grieves for the people of Hawaii and sees the inevitable link to climate change. I find it hard to believe that there are people who refuse to accept the reality of climate change, as unbelievable as the fact that some people are vaccine deniers. They are all too often the same people.

Paradise is burning. My wife and I are heartsick over the loss of life and destruction of communities and habitat in Hawaii. To the many readers of this newsletter in Hawaii, we hope you and your families, homes, and communities are safe. When you are able, please send a note letting us know that you are okay.

The destruction in Hawaii from wildfires is unprecedented. The fires are the product of long-term changes in weather patterns and land management practices. They are part climate change, part natural disaster, and part man-made accelerant. The effects are devastating and should be shocking to all Americans. The loss of life is tragic. As I sat in a roadside café and watched video of the fires in Hawaii, the news feed running across the bottom of the newscast said, “Florida under first state-wide heat advisory.”

While paradise burns and a state known for heat and humidity experiences an unprecedented heat advisory, you would think that all Americans would treat the emergency as a five-alarm fire. Instead, the opposite is happening—at least among Trump’s MAGA base.

Florida has approved the use of course materials from the conservative organization PragerU to teach (read: indoctrinate) Florida students about the “climate change hoax.” As described in the report I heard today, PragerU wants to combat the notion allegedly being “peddled by climate activists” that the climate crisis threatens our existence. Instead, PragerU claims that climate change is natural, and the evidence is inconclusive about the role of humans in accelerating global warming and extreme weather.

As usual, MAGA disinformation begins with a grain of truth and quickly veers into lies and deceit. Yes, earth’s climate has been changing for as long as the earth has existed. But our current climate crisis relates to the release of carbon into the atmosphere at unprecedented levels over the course of a single century by burning fossil fuels that took hundreds of millions of years of geologic processes to create. That is not “natural” and the role of humans in releasing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is not open to debate, nor is the effect of that gas on global climate.

Like many MAGA positions that can be simultaneously maddening, disheartening, and dangerous, MAGA climate denialism contains the seeds of its own defeat. Most Americans recognize the threat of human-caused climate change, but younger voters are especially motivated by the issue. As we move toward a critical election for our nation (and the world) in 2024, Democrats should make fighting the climate crisis a prominent part of their messaging. That messaging has the twin virtues of being an area where Joe Biden has exceled and one in which MAGA disinformation is being disproved before our very eyes as we watch our earth—our paradise–burn.

To all in Hawaii, you are in our hearts.

Categories Environment, Hawaii

Harold Meyerson: Bidenenomics Is Working Faster Than Expected

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2023 //
13

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect writes that many people think that government works slowly and is outpaced by business efficiency. But, he writes, Biden’s infrastructure plans are starting at a fast clip.

America’s industrial renaissance is happening faster than almost anyone anticipated.

Meyerson writes:

It is a lie universally acknowledged as truth that the government is slow, that if you want something done quickly, you turn to the private sector.

Of course, there are a plethora of instances in which government is slow. Consider, for instance, the efforts of the National Labor Relations Board to compel companies to pay workers whom they’ve illegally fired for trying to unionize. Lawbreaking companies can drag this out for years. Of course, that’s because, beginning with the Taft-Hartley Act 75 years ago, companies and their handmaidens in Congress and the courts have stripped the NLRB of the power to enforce this law expeditiously. When the government is slow, that’s often because powerful private-sector actors have slowed it down to their own advantage.

But sometimes, government can be more swift and effective than its critics can even imagine, as the implementation of the three signature pieces of Biden administration/Democratic Congress legislation is now demonstrating. The Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act have spurred the economy, which grew by 2.4 percent in the last quarter, well beyond anything the private sector could have accomplished by itself, and in less time than establishment economists thought possible. America is building factories again: The spending on factory construction is up by 76 percentfrom last year. Business spending on all forms of infrastructure—not just factories but also transportation equipment, software, and the like—is up by 56 percent. Through the magic of Keynes’s multiplier effect, government subsidies and outlays of roughly $300 billion on such projects have led to an increase in business investment of an additional $500 billion. And bolstering all this investment is the consumer purchasing power that has resulted from Biden’s initial stimulus legislation, which ended the COVID recession much more quickly than any recession in American history and yielded near record-low unemployment and levels of labor force participation not seen in many years.

Biden has sometimes been compared to Franklin Roosevelt for his efforts to renew and expand the kind of social insurance and worker empowerment initiatives that FDR undertook. I’d argue that it’s the scope, speed, and success of his public investments that most resemble Roosevelt’s. Facing the actual prospect of mass starvation in the winter of 1933-1934, FDR’s public-works program managed to employ three million Americans—in a nation of 130 million—in just 60 days. The defense spending that began in 1940 in response to the very real threat of the fascist control of all Eurasia built an army that then ranked 39th in the world in size into one that was the world’s largest by 1944, at which time the nation’s production of planes, ships, and tanks exceeded the combined total of all other nations’.

Learning not just from Roosevelt’s successes but also from the failure of the Obama administration to highlight the projects that its stimulus spending had created, Biden and Democrats are now volubly touting the projects that their own stimulus programs have engendered, many of which are already springing up. Given the public’s skepticism about the effects and durability of this economic revival, and the Republicans’ insistence that no such revival exists, Biden & Company know they will have to keep making this case straight through November of next year.

That said, can we acknowledge that Bidenomics is not only successful but speedy? Yes, we can.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Accountability, Biden, Creativity, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Environment, Funding

Another Reason Not to Live in Florida: Toxic Water

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2023 //
37

The Orlando Sentinel published a series of investigative reports about a shocking scandal: for years the ground water in Seminole County was poisoned by toxic chemicals, and the public did not know. The Sentinel published a four-part series, which I highly recommend. It’s a shocking story of political neglect.

Toxic Secret: Our series about 1,4-dioxane in Seminole water

Here is the series:

This is an excerpt from part four.

The Fulmer family dogs died two by two.

Tasha slipped away in 2004 and Rocky passed with cancer three years after. They were Rhodesian ridgebacks. Alan and Patricia Fulmer and their children took in another pair as puppies, Zipporah and Ariel. They would succumb to cancer.

In 2018, the city of Sanford tested their well water and soon came back with results.

“They said don’t drink it, don’t cook with it, don’t brush your teeth with it, don’t bathe in it, don’t touch it,” Patricia Fulmer said, recalling that moment. “It was really scary.”

The Fulmers were blindsided repeatedly.

First, when they learned a chemical called 1,4-dioxane, deemed likely to cause cancer, was in their drinking water coming from their private, household well at a high concentration.

Then they found out officials had known for years that the chemical, linked to hazardous pollution at a former Siemens factory in Lake Mary, was contaminating the underground water supply – the Floridan Aquifer – in all directions around their home just south of Sanford.

The third shock was when Patricia Fulmer was diagnosed with a malignant tumor, adding to the stress of their two daughters coping with chronic illnesses and the passing of a fifth pet, Dunder, a miniature pinscher.

In 2021, they sold their home to a developer and moved away.

The former house of Alan and Patricia Fulmer on a bulldozed lot at the corner of H.E. Thomas Parkway and Cherry Laurel Drive in Sanford, photographed Tuesday, April 11, 2023. The house is located northeast of the former Siemens-Stromberg factory at 400 Rinehart Road in Lake Mary. The Fulmers moved away several years after learning that 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen detected at the former factory site, had contaminated their water well. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel)

The former house of Alan and Patricia Fulmer on a bulldozed lot at the corner of H.E. Thomas Parkway and Cherry Laurel Drive in Sanford, photographed Tuesday, April 11, 2023, days before the home was demolished. The house is located northeast of the former Siemens-Stromberg factory at 400 Rinehart Road in Lake Mary. The Fulmers moved away several years after learning that 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen detected at the former factory site, had contaminated their water well. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel

*****

“It all began making sense,” said Patricia Fulmer, whose family has been firm in requesting a measure of privacy as they confront medical struggles and worries about their exposure to 1,4-dioxane. “It’s just so wrong.”

Her reaction has precedent in Florida. Some of the state’s most harrowing pollution episodes played out in stages: anxiety over exposure followed by distrust of officials for silence about a known threat.

1,4-dioxane was in use across the U.S. by the 1970s. The Siemens factory, making telephone network components, had been cited by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection the time it closed in 2003 for shoddy handling of hazardous chemicals.

There may be no way to learn when and at what strength 1,4-dioxane first invaded drinking water in Seminole County, but its presence was confirmed in the tap water of Sanford and the county’s Northwest Service Area in 2013 and in Lake Mary’s water in 2014.

Factory owners, including Siemens Corp. and General Dynamics, have denied liability for toxic pollution at the Lake Mary manufacturing site, but stated in 2017 that contaminants “may have been the result of historical activities at the Former Facility.”

‘You have the right to know’

The Fulmers were not alone in the dark.

Of the tens of thousands of residents and workers of Lake Mary, Sanford and Seminole County also exposed, it’s difficult to know how many have been made aware of the 1,4-dioxane they were consuming in drinking water.

It’s likely to be a very low percentage, judging from people well positioned to have learned of such a contamination of the Floridan Aquifer.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Environment, Florida

Heather Cox Richardson: Good News for Biden, Bad News for Trump

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2023 //
37

Heather Cox Richardson applies her excellent skills as a historian to analyze the news. Open the link to finish reading and to read footnotes.

More good news today for Bidenomics, as the gross domestic product report for the second quarter showed annualized growth of 2.4%, higher than projected, and inflation rose at a slower pace of 2.6%, down from last quarter and well below projections. Economic analyst Steven Rattner noted that as of the second quarter, “the US economy is over 6% larger than it was before COVID (after adjusting for inflation). At this point in the recovery from the Great Recession, 2011, the economy was just 0.7% larger than it had been in 2007.”

Both consumer spending and business investment, which is up 7.7% in real annualized terms, drove this growth. Business spending makes up a much smaller share of gross domestic product, but it drives future jobs and growth, and much of this growth is in manufacturing facilities. In keeping with that trend, the nation’s largest solar panel manufacturer, First Solar, announced today that it will build a fifth factory in the U.S. as alternative energy technology takes off. This commitment brings to more than $2.8 billion the amount First Solar has invested in the U.S. to ramp up production…

While many of us were watching the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C., to see if an indictment was forthcoming against former president Trump for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a different set of charges appeared tonight. Special counsel Jack Smith brought additional charges against Trump in connection with his retention of classified documents.

The new indictment alleges that Trump plotted to delete video from security cameras near the storage room where he had stored boxes containing classified documents, and did so after the Department of Justice subpoenaed that footage. That effort to delete the video involved a third co-conspirator, Carlos De Oliveira, who has been added to the case.

De Oliveira is a former valet at the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago property who became property manager there in January 2022. Allegedly, he told another Trump employee that “the boss” wanted the server deleted and that the conversation should stay between the two of them.

In the Washington Post, legal columnist Ruth Marcus wrote, “The alleged conduct—yes, even after all these years of watching Trump flagrantly flout norms—is nothing short of jaw-dropping: Trump allegedly conspired with others to destroy evidence.” If the allegations hold up, “the former president is a common criminal—and an uncommonly stupid one.”

This superseding indictment reiterates the material from the original indictment, and as I reread it, it still blows my mind that Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence).

It sounds like he was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.

The Justice Department has asked again for a protective order to protect the classified information at the heart of this case. In their request, they explained that, among other things, Trump wanted to be able to discuss that classified information with his lawyers outside a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, a room protected against electronic surveillance and data leakage.

Former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division Peter Strzok noted that there is “[n]o better demonstration of Trump’s abject lack of understanding of—and disregard for—classified info and national security. He is *asking the Court* to waive the requirements for classified info that EVERY OTHER SINGLE CLEARANCE HOLDER IN THE UNITED STATES must follow.”

The Senate today passed the $886 billion annual defense bill by a strong bipartisan margin of 86 to 11 after refusing to load it up with all the partisan measures Republican extremists added to the House bill. Now negotiators from the House and the Senate will try to hash out a compromise measure, but the bills are so far apart it is not clear they will be able to create a bipartisan compromise. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) has passed on a bipartisan basis for more than 60 years.

The extremists in the House Republican conference continue to revolt against House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) deal with the administration to raise the debt ceiling. They insist the future cuts to which McCarthy agreed are not steep enough, and demand more. This has sparked fighting among House Republicans; Emine Yücel of Talking Points Memo suggests that McCarthy’s new willingness to consider impeaching President Biden might be an attempt to cut a deal with the extremists.

As the Senate is controlled by Democrats, the fight among the House Republicans threatens a much larger fight between the chambers because Democratic senators will not accept the demands of the extremist Republican representatives.

The House left for its August recess today without passing 11 of the 12 appropriations bills necessary to fund the government after September, setting up the conditions for a government shutdown this fall if they cannot pass the bills and negotiate with the Senate in the short time frame they’ve left. Far-right Republicans don’t much care, apparently. Representative Bob Good (R-VA) told reporters this week, “We should not fear a government shutdown… Most of what we do up here is bad anyway.”

Representative Katherine Clark (D-MA), the second ranking Democrat in the House, disagreed. “The Republican conference is saying they are sending us home for six weeks without funding the government? That we have one bill…out of 12 completed because extremists are holding your conference hostage, and that’s not the full story: the extremists are holding the American people hostage. We will have twelve days…when we return to fund the government, to live up to the job the American people sent us here to do. This is a reckless march to a MAGA shutdown, and for what? In pursuit of a national abortion ban? Is that what we are doing here?

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democrats, Economy, Environment, Extremism, Funding, Republicans, Trump

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner: The Thrilling Promise of Science

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2023 //
136

Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner divert us from our daily concerns with a thrilling image transmitted from outer space by the James Webb Space Telescope. You have to open the link to see the image. If science can produce such wonders, how might it be deployed to slow and reverse the severe damage to the earth now caused by climate change? It’s hard to believe after a year of extreme events—storms, fires, flooding, drought, extreme temperatures—that there is a significant number of people who deny that climate change is a reality.

They write at their blog Steady:

With so much riveting us here on Earth, it is easy to forget that up there, out there in the High Frontier — outer space, the far cosmos, whatever you choose to call it — exciting, promising accomplishments are happening that will profoundly affect our future.

There is a reminder today as NASA marks the first birthday of the James Webb Space Telescope. Like any proud parent, NASA is sharing pictures. And these are literally out of this world (our apologies for the silly dad/grandad jokes, but we couldn’t resist).

When we look at the photo above, we see awe-inspiring beauty and mystery. But we also see the wonder and ingenuity of science. We’ll leave it to NASA Administrator Bill Nelson to put what we’re seeing into better context:

In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has transformed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into dust clouds and seeing light from faraway corners of the universe for the very first time. Every new image is a new discovery, empowering scientists around the globe to ask and answer questions they once could never dream of.

Empowering new questions. Isn’t that the very essence and promise of science? And that’s part of what makes this so exciting. It’s not just what we now have the ability to see — it’s all the unpredictable insights that will follow.

Putting a powerful extension of our human senses into space requires harnessing tremendous amounts of intellect. It requires planning, commitment, and funding. It requires a belief that our innate inquisitiveness as a species should be cultivated. And it requires cooperation. Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, called the Webb Telescope “an engineering marvel built by the world’s leading scientists and engineers.” Indeed.

So what are we looking at exactly? Once again, we will let the rocket scientists at NASA explain. Basically, it’s “star birth like it’s never been seen before.” And if you want a bit more detail:

The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.

The vast majority of the millions of people around the world who will encounter this beautiful picture will not understand its astronomical implications. Even so, we can be comforted that there is a community of researchers — all across the globe — who see with the trained eye of science.

We can also be proud that we live in a country that supports this work. And we can celebrate a quest for knowledge, the yearning to cross horizons, and the intricate dance of data and discovery.

Yes, this image is breathtaking. And that is a reason to smile. But we can also find joy in all that it took to make this celestial camera possible and the future generations who will benefit from the knowledge it unleashes.

Categories Creativity, Environment, Science

Will DeSantis Act to Preserve Florida’s Waterways from Pollution?

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2023 //
7

In the last session of the Florida legislature, a crafty legislator slipped in a provision, suspending for one year the state’s ban on the use of residential fertilizer during the rainy season. Scientists says this ban is necessary to reduce algae bloom. Who benefits from a one year suspension of fertilizer on home lawns? The fertilizer industry. Who suffers? The lakes, rivers, gulfs, and oceans. Environmentalists are hoping DeSantis will veto the bill.

The Miami Herald reports:

Environmental groups and local governments are battling state legislators over the fate of the fertilizer in Floridians’ lawns. The outcome could sway the health of Florida’s beaches and waterways, which have been plagued by fish kills and algae blooms.

Now, it’s up to Gov. Ron DeSantis to decide the winner. More than 100 local governments in Florida ban homeowners and businesses from fertilizing their lawns during the rainy season, when summer storms tend to wash that fertilizer into canals and out to sea.

Scientists and environmental advocates say the extra nutrients in fertilizer runoff can smother sea grass, fuel algae blooms and wreak havoc on the environment.

Miami-Dade County passed a rainy season fertilizer ban three years ago, after an August 2020 fish kill that left the corpses of more than 27,000 fish and other sea creatures bobbing in Biscayne Bay.

Several South Florida city governments, including Miami Beach, Key Biscayne and Fort Lauderdale, have also imposed fertilizer bans. But at the end of this year’s state legislative session, lawmakers slipped a provision into a budget bill that would block local governments from creating new fertilizer bans or modifying existing bans for one year, starting July 1. Existing bans would remain in place.

Local governments say fertilizer bans are one of the most cost-effective tools they have to limit nutrient runoff pollution and prevent fish kills and algae blooms, which scientists expect to become more common as climate change raises ocean temperatures and makes heavy rain storms more frequent.

“It’s a death by a thousand cuts,” said Lisa Spadafina, who heads Miami-Dade County’s Division of Environmental Resources Management. “You have runoff creating a problem. You have an increase in temperature. You have an increase in storm events. … We’re trying to address all of these things in the pieces that we can.”

A fish kill on Biscayne Bay in August 2020 helped propel new fertilizer restrictions that Miami-Dade County commissioners passed on April 20, 2021. The rules ban most applications of fertilizer during the rainy season in Miami-Dade, between mid-May and October. Farms, nurseries and golf courses are exempt from the rules.

A coalition of 55 environmental groups, businesses and local governments wrote a letter urging DeSantis to use his veto authority to strike that provision from the budget bill, along with $250,000 in funding for a study by the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences on the effectiveness of fertilizer bans. “Governor, rainy season urban fertilizer management has been a non-partisan, common sense, science-based approach to protecting Florida’s environment and economy since 2007,” they wrote in a May 11 letter signed by the Friends of the Everglades, Sierra Club Florida and the chair of the Alachua County commission, among others.

“This was passed without public engagement at the 11th hour in a sort of sneak attack,” said Rachel Silverstein, who heads the environmental watchdog Miami Waterkeeper. “Really the only beneficiary of it is [the fertilizer] industry and not the community and not our waterways.” DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article275364501.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Environment, Florida

Florida Bans Restrictions on Fertilizer Despite Risk to Water Quality

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2023 //
31

Florida’s lakes, ponds, and rivers have been plagued by red tide and green algae, which grows faster because of fertilizer runoff from the grounds near the water. Many localities have banned the use of fertilizer near vulnerable water during the rainy season to protect water quality. The fertilizer encourages the growth of the slime in the water.

However, the legislature has passed a bill to stop these restrictions on fertilizer. The bill was based on research funded by the fertilizer industry. The legislative majority is destroying the environment, because the fertilizer industry can pay out more than environmental activists.

The Miami Herald reported:

Florida legislators are poised to block one of the most effective tools local governments say they have to protect water quality in their communities in the face of red tide and blue-green algae outbreaks by banning rainy season restrictions on fertilizer use.

A measure quietly tucked into a budget proposal over the weekend, would prohibit at least 117 local governments from “adopting or amending a fertilizer management ordinance” during the 2023-24 budget year, requiring them to rely on less restrictive regulations developed by the University of Florida, which are supported by the state’s phosphate industry, the producers of fertilizer.

Legislative leaders tentatively agreed to a $116 billion budget on Monday and, with no public debate or discussion, included the fertilizer language that emerged late Sunday.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Education Reform, Environment, Florida, For-Profit

Florida: DeSantis Signs Law to Stop Public Investment in Funds with ESG Standards

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2023 //
20

Ron DeSantis is using government to stamp out ideas he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like investing public money into corporations that take into account climate change and diversity. Such standards are called ESG, or “environmental, social, and governance” standards.

So today he signed a law to block investment in funds with ESG standards. Anyone who cares about such things as climate change, he believes, is “WOKE.”

Florida is one of the most environmentally threatened states in the nation, but DeFascist opposes corporations that care about climate change.

Just last fall, the west coast of Florida was devastated by Hurricane Ian, a category 5 that caused more than $100 billion in damages, in addition to more than 150 deaths.

But DeSantis doesn’t want the state to invest its funds in corporations that want to act against climate change. Maybe he should take a public pledge not to ask for federal relief money when the next big hurricane hits Florida. Put the state’s money where his mouth is instead of sending us the bill for his bull.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Tuesday a bill banning state agencies and local governments from taking climate change and diversity factors into account when investing money.

The Government and Corporate Activism Act targets ESG, or environmental, social and governance standards, derided as “woke” by DeSantis and the GOP-led Legislature in their culture war battles.

Democrats and some business owners say the law could cost the state money and impact municipal bonds.

At an event in Jacksonville, DeSantis called ESG “an attempt by elites to impose ideology through business institutions, financial institutions, and our economy writ large. … They want to use economic power to impose this agenda on our society. And we think in Florida, that is not going to fly here.”

The bill, which passed both the House and Senate along mostly party lines, also bans banks from applying a “social credit score” and denying services to people based on political opinions or speech, which is defined to include religion, ownership of a firearm, being involved in “fuel-based energy, timber, mining, or agriculture,” or supporting the “combating illegal immigration.”

“You’ll actually hear from some folks today who’ve kind of been caught up in this morass where they’ve been discriminated against by financial institutions, just basically because they’re not toeing the ideological line,” DeSantis said.

DeSantis introduced Laura DiBenedetto, the owner of firearms store Sovereign Ammo in Flagler County, who quoted from George Orwell’s 1984 and claimed her industry was “already under totalitarian rule” because they were denied funding by lenders “because our profession didn’t pass muster for an acceptable business.”

The state pension fund has already started pulling out of investments in companies with ESG practices, including $2 billion from BlackRock, the largest asset-management firm in the world. The money was dispersed to other asset managers that also support ESG, however.

Categories DeSantis, Economy, Environment, Hypocrisy

Dana Milbank: What the GOP Vote on the Federal Debt Really Means

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2023 //
12

The federal government has to raise the ceiling on the debt or face a default on its bonds, which would set off a national and international crisis. Congress has raised the debt ceiling many times in the past, including three times during Trump’s term.

An extraordinary part of the national debt was generated during Trump’s four years in office, according to ProPublica, especially his 2017 tax cut for the 1% and corporations:

One of President Donald Trump’s lesser known but profoundly damaging legacies will be the explosive rise in the national debt that occurred on his watch. The financial burden that he’s inflicted on our government will wreak havoc for decades, saddling our kids and grandkids with debt….The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration, according to a calculation by a leading Washington budget maven, Eugene Steuerle, co-founder of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. And unlike George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln, who oversaw the larger relative increases in deficits, Trump did not launch two foreign conflicts or have to pay for a civil war.

Republicans do not want to raise the debt ceiling. President Biden challenged them to come up with their own plan. They did. It involves cuts of 22% to everything but Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending.

Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post:

Jen Kiggans had the haunted look of a woman about to walk the plank.

The first-term Republican from Virginia barely took her eyes off her text Wednesday as she read it aloud on the House floor. She tripped over words and used her fingers to keep her place on the page.
The anxiety was understandable. Like about 30 other House Republicans from vulnerable districts, she was about to vote in favor of the GOP’s plan to force spending cuts of about $4.8 trillion as the ransom to be paid for avoiding a default on the federal debt.

“I do have serious concerns with the provision of this legislation that repeals clean-energy investment tax credits, particularly for wind energy,” she read. “These credits have been very beneficial to my constituents, attracting significant investment and new manufacturing jobs for businesses in southeast Virginia.”

Directing a question to the Republicans’ chief deputy whip, Guy Reschenthaler (Pa.), she asked for “the gentleman’s assurance that I will be able to address these concerns as we move forward in these negotiations and advocate for the interests of my district.”

The gentleman offered no such assurance. “I support repealing these tax credits,” he replied, offering only the noncommittal promise to “continue to work with the gentlewoman from Virginia, just like we will with all members.”

Kiggans then cast her vote to abolish the clean-energy credits her constituents find so “beneficial.”
House GOP leaders are celebrating their ability to pass their debt plan, even though it has no chance of surviving the Senate nor President Biden’s veto pen. But the bill’s passage has achieved one thing that cannot be undone: It has put 217 House Republicans on record in favor of demolishing popular government services enjoyed by their constituents.

In Kiggans’s Virginia, the legislation she just backed would strip tax incentives that go to the likes of Dominion Energy, which is building a $9.8 billion offshore wind project in her district. She also voted to ax solar and electric-vehicle incentives for hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tax breaks projected to bring $11.6 billion in clean-power investment to the commonwealth.

In addition, the bill she supported sets spending targets that require an immediate 22 percent cut to all “non-defense discretionary spending” — that’s border security, the FBI, airport security, air traffic control, highways, agriculture programs, veterans’ health programs, food stamps, Medicaid, medical research, national parks and much more. If they want to cut less than 22 percent in some of those areas, they’ll have to cut more than 22 percent in others.

According to an administration analysis of what the 22 percent cuts translate to, Kiggans is now on record supporting:


Shutting down at least two air traffic control towers in Virginia.


Jeopardizing outpatient medical care for 162,300 Virginia veterans.


Throwing up to 175,000 Virginians off food stamps and ending food assistance for another 25,000 through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program Women, Infants and Children.


Cutting or ending Pell Grants for 162,900 Virginia college students.


Eliminating Head Start for 3,600 Virginia children and child care for another 1,300 children.


Adding at least two months to wait times for Virginia seniors seeking assistance with Social Security and Medicare.


Denying opioid treatment for more than 600 Virginians.


Ending 180 days of rail inspections per year and 1,350 fewer miles of track inspected.


Kicking 13,400 Virginia families off rental assistance.


Similar calculations can be made for the other 30 House Republicans targeted by Democrats in the 2024 elections who joined Kiggans in walking the plank. Since enactment of the clean-energy credits Republicans have now voted to repeal, for example, clean-energy projects worth some $198 billion and 77,261 jobs have moved forward in districts represented by Republicans, according to the advocacy group Climate Power…

Trump’s huge deficits funded tax cuts for the rich. Biden’s deficits are investments in the future and lifelines for struggling people.

The Republicans’ draconian plan with its deep cuts passed by one vote.

But this week, they jammed their giant, secretly negotiated debt-limit bill through the Rules Committee on a party-line vote — at 2:19 a.m. And they did it with a “deem-and-pass” rule.


Even then, after all the reversals and surrenders, the bill came within one vote of failing. The lawmaker who cast the final, deciding vote? Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.).


How apt that this legislation, built on one broken promise after another, should be carried over the finish line by the world’s most famous liar.

Categories Biden, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Environment, Fake, Funding

DeSantis Attacks Disney Property Rights Again

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2023 //
42

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going after Disney again, trying to prove he’s a tough guy. He is angry at Disney because the corporation—Florida’s largest employer—issued a statement opposing the Governor’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

First, DeSantis retaliated by dissolving the Reedy Creek District, a special self-governing district controlled by Disney, which supplies all services to Disney’s theme park. DeSantis created a new board called the Central Florida Oversight District Board of Supervisors to oversee the district, packed with his cronies.

But before the legislation passed, Disney quietly held public meetings and granted its district decades of future control.

Outraged, DeSantis threatened to increase hotel taxes and put tolls on the roads to Disney. He also told the State Attorney General to investigate Disney. Not a nice way to treat the state’s biggest employer.

Now he is wreaking vengeance again:

The Disney versus DeSantis fight headed into round three on Monday as Florida’s governor announced that the Florida Legislature will revoke the last-minute development agreements that undercut the authority of the governor-controlled board and unleashed a litany of retributive efforts aimed at to the powerful corporation.

“We want to make sure that that Disney lives under the same laws as everybody else,’’ said Gov. Ron DeSantis at the headquarters of the Reedy Creek Improvement District near Orlando.

DeSantis said he has authorized state agencies to increase regulatory oversight over Disney operations, such as the monorail and amusement rides. He suggested the DeSantis-controlled oversight board could use undeveloped land not owned by Disney for other purposes.

“Maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks,’’ he said. “Someone even said like, maybe you need another state prison. Who knows? I mean, I just think that the possibilities are endless.”

The announcement comes two days before the newly-named Central Florida Tourism Oversight District’s Board of Supervisors is scheduled to review a new proposal to strengthen its authority over planning, zoning and land development regulations for the special taxing district that operates the 39-square-mile property on which Walt Disney World exists.

DeSantis must be terrifying every big corporation in the nation. This is a guy who puts his nose into corporate governance; he is also hostile to corporations that embrace equity, diversity and inclusion programs and environmental policies.

His desire to exercise political control over private corporations will not win new friends for him except his yahoo base.

Categories Bigotry, DeSantis, Economy, Environment, Equity, Extremism, Fascism, Florida
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