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From Veterans Against the GOP. June 14, 2018
Is the Republican party now the Trump party? “RIP GOP,” S.E. Cupp mourns. “We used to stand for something. Now, just one thing.”
Is the Republican party now the Trump party? "RIP GOP," S.E. Cupp mourns. "We used to stand for something. Now, just one thing."
Posted by HLN on Thursday, June 14, 2018
June 14, 2018
The United States already spends more on the military than the next 10 countries combined. Our latest video explains why it's time to rein in Pentagon spending and the endless war machine, and demand investment in America. Please watch and help spread the word.
Posted by Robert Reich on Thursday, June 14, 2018
Bill Maher on trump and kim jong un
June 15, 2018
Two people who lie about everything signed a deal that’s specific about nothing. I would say it was a feckless stunt.
Two people who lie about everything signed a deal that’s specific about nothing. I would say it was a feckless stunt.
Posted by Bill Maher on Friday, June 15, 2018
June 2, 2018
The model minority myth is responsible for huge misconceptions about being Asian in America.
The model minority myth is responsible for huge misconceptions about being Asian in America.
Posted by Well-Rounded Life on Saturday, June 2, 2018
A Depression-era program could help farmers in the trade war with China, according to Dan Glickman, who served as agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration.
Glickman said other options also could be used within the agriculture agency but still won’t make farmers “whole.”
On Friday, China announced tariffs on $34 billion worth of American products, including soybeans, corn, wheat, beef, dairy products and sorghum.
Jeff Daniels June 15, 2018
Getty Images. Soybean farmers in Mississippi County, Arkansas.
Although President Donald Trump has offered to make it up to farmers in a trade war, there’s no way to fully cushion all the potential losses that producers could suffer if there’s a significant reduction in soybeans and other exports, according to a former agriculture secretary.
On Friday, China announced a 25 percent tariff on $34 billion worth of American products, including soybeans, corn, wheat, beef, dairy products and sorghum. It followed the White House earlier in the day announcing plans to impose tariffs on more than 800 Chinese imports worth approximately $34 billion.
Earlier this year, Trump spoke about escalating trade tensions with China and said his administration essentially had the backs of farmers and would “make it up to them” and that in the end they “will be better off than they ever were.”
Many of the farm products targeted by the Chinese are grown in states where Trump received strong support during the 2016 presidential election. The latest tariffs announced by Beijing are set to take effect July 6.
Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. Bill Clark | Roll Call | Getty Images
“This is very worrisome for American agriculture generally,” said Dan Glickman, who served during the Clinton administration as agriculture secretary. “The business model of agriculture is an export business model, particularly for the program crops such as wheat, corn, cotton, rice and especially soybeans.”
Glickman also said there could be fallout for GOP lawmakers from the Trump administration’s actions on trade. He said farmers and rural communities are likely to feel the pain if there is a significant decline in agricultural exports.
Even with trade tensions threatening American agricultural exports, some farmers remain steadfast in their support for Trump.
“President Trump and the administration have the best interests of America in mind,” said Joe Steinkamp, a soybean, corn and wheat grower near Evansville, Indiana. “They’re trying to do their best and say they’re going to take care of farmers — and we appreciate that.”
According to Glickman, there are several statutes available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture that could be used to help farmers, including programs through the Commodity Credit Corp. The CCC, a federal agency set up during the Great Depression, could potentially buy surplus farm products and support growers.
“This [CCC] is the part of the USDA that has almost unlimited amount of funds to sometimes make up the difference in farm prices,” said Glickman. “Sometimes they can buy commodities for school meal programs or for other hunger programs.”
Glickman, who now is executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program, said other options available include purchasing programs tied to food humanitarian relief for famines and natural disasters that also are part of USDA.
Regardless, the former U.S. congressman and Clinton administration official said it’s “doubtful that farmers can be made ‘whole’ for all economic losses resulting from a trade war impacting American ag exports. It leaves farmers in an unstable, vulnerable position.”
Glickman said the trade war with China and other countries “involves great risk because, from a macro perspective, about 40 percent of American agricultural products are for export.”
Overall, U.S. agricultural exports to China represent almost $20 billion annually for American farmers.
The U.S. exports about $14 billion worth of soybeans to China, according to the USDA. China buys roughly half of the U.S. soybean exports, and roughly one in three rows of soybeans grown on the nation’s farms goes to the world’s second-largest economy, according to the American Soybean Association.
China also is the world’s largest cotton consumer and ranks as the second-largest buyer of American cotton, with one out of every five bales headed there.
The latest round of tariffs by Beijing follows retaliatory action taken in April by the Chinese against other agricultural products. Effective April 2, China imposed new tariffs of up to 25 percent on U.S. pork, nuts, wine and fresh fruit. The move was in response to the White House earlier announcing a 25 percent duty on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports.
At the same time, Mexico this month announced retaliatory tariffs of 20 percent on U.S. pork exports in response to the Trump administration’s duties on imported steel and aluminum products. They also targeted apples and potatoes with 20 percent duties as well as tariffs of 20 to 25 percent on some dairy products and bourbon.
Earlier this year, Trump instructed U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue “to use his broad authority to implement a plan to protect our farmers and agricultural interests,” according to a statement issued in April. But little in the way of details have been offered of any specific plans.
“It’s not probably very smart in these kind of things to lay all your cards on the table about what you’re going to do,” Perdue told reporters in April.
Still, Glickman said he has “a lot of confidence in the current agriculture secretary, Perdue, that he’s going to use all of his authorities available to him. But there’s only so much he can do.”
Glickman said there’s also uncertainty out there for farmers when considering other tariffs U.S. trading partners can impose on U.S. agricultural products. “We’re most vulnerable in retaliation on agriculture, because that’s the one area where exports are more critically important than almost any segment of the American economy,” he said.
E.A. Crunden June 15, 2018
Ethanol Plant in Rosholt, South Dakota. Credit: Myloupe/UIG via Getty Images
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt is facing a torrent of accusations and anger as he tours through the U.S. heartland. Farmers and Midwestern politicians are accusing the official of prioritizing fossil fuel industries over the interests of the region, which has served as a reliable base for President Trump.
Touring through states including Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota this week, Pruitt came under fire repeatedly by constituents for reasons unrelated to his lengthy list of scandals. The subject of at least a dozen federal investigations relating to financial and ethics decisions, Pruitt encountered questions of a very different variety in the Midwest.
“To be honest, Administrator Pruitt, we’re mad as hell,” Kansas farmer Dennis McNich told Pruitt earlier this week. “Today, the American farmer is struggling to make ends meet and our industry is on the cusp of financial ruin in many areas of the country.”
Oil, gas, and coal have seen a favorable reception under the Trump administration, which has rolled back Obama-era initiatives and regulations in favor of fossil fuels. While those moves are in line with the president’s conservative base, farming states argue they’ve come at a cost.
At the center of that contention is ethanol, a crucial source of income for corn-producing states. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refiners are required to blend ethanol and biodiesel with petroleum, a requirement the corn industry welcomes and the oil industry has repeatedly lobbied against.
China hits U.S. farmers where it hurts after White House trade threats
Small refineries are sometimes granted waivers in order to avoid outsized costs under the RFS. But under Pruitt, the EPA has granted a number of controversial waivers, including one to Oklahoma billionaire Carl Icahn. That trend sparked a request from 13 Midwestern senators, including Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), demanding that the EPA cease issuing such waivers.
That hasn’t happened and farmers are angry. “We ain’t going to be played for a sucker. And that’s what they’re trying to do,” Grassley told the New York Times this week.
His comments came after fellow Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst (R) called Pruitt “about as swampy as you get.” A number of other rural Republican lawmakers have similarly slammed Pruitt over seeming favoritism towards oil and gas over corn and agriculture.
“EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is embarrassing President Trump,” reads one ad currently running in the region and backed by the conservative American Future Fund, which is based in Iowa and receives funding from at least one wealthy ethanol producer.
Iowa is not among the states on Pruitt’s agenda this week, but the administrator received an earful in the areas he did visit.
“My personal opinion is farmers are demanding accountability and I think that Mr. Pruitt probably is a dead man walking,” Dane Hicks, the GOP chairman for Anderson County, Kansas, told Politico. “I can’t imagine he rebounds from this in any way to salvage his position. I would expect his resignation soon.”
Kansas Corn Growers Association President Ken McCauley had similarly harsh words. McCauley blasted Pruitt for coming to Kansas to “take a few photos with smiling farmers and tell the President that corn farmers are okay with his actions” rather than addressing the region’s needs.
“When you look at what EPA is doing, they are most definitely picking winners and losers and right now, ethanol is the loser,” McCauley said. He went on to add that the “EPA’s attacks on ethanol don’t just hurt plants like EKAE, they hurt farmers, rural communities, and American consumers who benefit from ethanol with lower prices and cleaner air.”
As trade war rhetoric grows, Appalachia and the Heartland fear backlash
Displeasure with Pruitt runs deep, but farmers aren’t completely satisfied with Trump either. Ongoing trade feuding between the Trump administration and a number of key trading partners, including Mexico, Canada, China, and the European Union, has sparked retaliatory tariffs predominately targeting the Midwest and the South. One particular source of contention is soybeans, a major export for the region. Responding to aggressive trade threats from Trump, China hit out at U.S. soybeans, threatening a 25 percent tariff and infuriating U.S. farmers in the process.
Trump has also failed to remove gasoline restrictions that limit ethanol amounts, despite promising farmers he would do so. Pruitt has said he supports lifting that restriction, but farmers have expressed frustration and skepticism.
“Agriculture is not very happy with Mr. Pruitt at this point,” said David Fremark, whose family grows and sells products including corn and soybeans in South Dakota.
“He’s done some good things, but this far and away overshadows everything he’s done,” Fremark said.
Pruitt’s visit to Nebraska on Thursday marked his final stop during the tour. It was not immediately clear to what extent the resounding criticism the administrator faced throughout the week would factor into future policy decisions or whether it would hinder his standing with the president.
By Max Greenwood June 15, 2018
President Trump said on Friday that he wants “his people” to listen to him like North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s people listen to him.
“He’s the head of a country. And I mean, he is the strong head,” Trump said of Kim in a tongue-in-cheek manner as he spoke to Steve Doocy of “Fox & Friends” outside the White House.
“Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same,” Trump said.
It wasn’t clear what Trump meant by “his people” and “my people,” phrasings that could be interpreted to mean all North Koreans and Americans but that could also mean those people reporting directly to the two leaders.
Doocy did not ask a direct follow-up question to clarify.
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn after the Fox interview, Trump was pressed on what he meant when he said that he wanted his “people” to listen to him like the North Koreans listen to Kim.
“I was kidding,” he said. “You don’t understand sarcasm.”
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for clarification.
The president praised Kim during the Fox interview, a continuation of compliments he has offered the dictator since their summit in Singapore earlier this week.
He said that he had “hit it off” with Kim.
“We get along very well, we had good chemistry,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments came three days after his meeting with Kim — the first between a sitting U.S. president and North Korean leader — in which the two signed a brief document committing the Korean Peninsula to denuclearization in exchange for unspecified security guarantees from the U.S.
Trump has also come under fire from some lawmakers for his friendly comments towards Kim, whose government has a notorious human rights record and a history of cruel treatment of prisoners, including Americans.
By Swati Gupta June 15, 2018
Indian women fetch water from a pit in the bed of Lokpal Sagar Lake in Madhya Pradesh.
Story Highlights
Six hundred million people are dealing with high to extreme water shortage
“We have 4% of the global water and 16% of the global population,” an expert notes
(CNN)India is facing its worst water shortage in history. Six hundred million people are dealing with high to extreme water shortage, according to a report by Niti Aayog, a policy think tank for the Indian government.
The report states that an average of 200,000 Indian lives are lost every year due to inadequate supply or contamination of water.
Sustainable water development has seen slow progress in India in recent years. Though 80% of the country’s states have water conservation legislation, bad data management and nonexistent pricing of water have kept the country from making significant change, the report states.
Poor irrigation techniques and severe contamination of groundwater have brought India to the edge of this crisis.
India is predominantly an agricultural country, with 80% of its water used for irrigation, the report says. The irrigation practices followed by farmers are inefficient at best.
Cape Town rejoices as rain falls on drought-stricken city
“Policies like several states giving free electricity to farmers or giving financial support for groundwater extraction — borewells and tube wells — results in uncontrolled exploitation and wastage of resource,” said Suresh Rohilla, director of urban water management at the Centre for Science and Environment.
Drip irrigation, which is a method to provide an exact amount of water directly to the root of the plant, has seen few customers. The implementation is costly for the average farmer, and state government provides limited support, said Samrat Basak, director for urban water at the World Resources Institute.
“Primarily, water is not valued in India. It is very cheap in India. People think it is free,” Basak added.
According to the report, three-quarters of the Indian population is affected by contaminated water, and 20% of the country’s disease is thought to directly correlate.
India does not have an adequate number of sewage treatment plants, so untreated urban wastewater is often added to water flowing downstream — the same contaminated water used in rural areas for drinking, according to the report.
Twenty-one major Indian cities are estimated to run out of groundwater by 2020 — just two years away.
Indian residents wait to collect drinking water in Shimla as the city faces water shortage.
One hundred million people, including those in the large cities of Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad, will be living in zero groundwater cities, according to the report.
“People think that if they own the land, they own the water. India as a country extracts the highest amount of groundwater in the world,” Basak said.
As India develops and grows to support its 1.3 billion people, the country is on the brink of an inescapable crisis.
Some states have shown a marked improvement in water quality standards during the past year.
“There have been time to time policies and programs launched by central and state governments,” Rohilla said. However, the government has not shown that it is serious enough to translate its goals into reality,” he added.
Authorities have launched better water management practices and legislation for the protection and restoration of water bodies, the report says.
The initiative to release this report is a step in the right direction, Basak said.
State governments have control over water-related policies, and the lack of legislation for groundwater extraction and the inability to price water for every home due to political constraints has led to a paralysis in the formation of a sustainable framework.
Cities have seen a return to the use of water tankers due to a lack of groundwater and in turn no water being supplied to the taps in people’s homes.
At a single tap at the back of the tanker, hundreds of people line up with cans and containers to get a few liters every day.
“We have 4% of the global water and 16% of the global population. The minute you bring this statistic into the equation, there is a non-rocket-science understanding of how this has happened,” Basak said.
AP June 14, 2018
NEW DELHI – New Delhi officials have ordered a two-day halt to construction in an attempt to reduce choking pollution that has cloaked the city in smog and dust.
The government’s Central Pollution Control Board rated the city’s air quality Friday as “severe” — the worst possible category — for the fourth day in a row.
New Delhi’s level of PM2.5, tiny particulate matter that can dangerously clog lungs, exceeded 170 Friday morning, more than six times higher than the World Health Organization considers safe.
The New Delhi government has made scattered attempts in recent years to try to control worsening air pollution, including stricter emission norms for cars and a tax on diesel-fueled trucks entering the city. But the pollution has only gotten worse.
By Noah Smith June 13, 2018
On the right side. Photographer: Stephen F. Somerstein/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Politically and economically, unions are sort of an odd duck. They aren’t part of the apparatus of the state, yet they depend crucially on state protections in order to wield their power. They’re stakeholders in corporations, but often have adversarial relationships with management. Historically, unions are a big reason that the working class won many of the protections and rights it now enjoys, but they often leave the working class fragmented and divided — between different companies, between union and non-union workers, and even between different ethnic groups.
Economists, too, have long puzzled about how to think about unions. They don’t fit easily into the standard paradigm of modern economic theory in which atomistic individuals and companies abide by rules overseen by an all-powerful government. Some economists see unions as a cartel, protecting insiders at the expense of outsiders. According to this theory, unions raise wages but also drive up unemployment. This is the interpretation of unions taught in many introductory courses and textbooks.
If this were really what unions did, it might be worth it to simply let them slip into oblivion, as private-sector unions have been doing in the U.S.:
It’s Been a While Since the Union Made Us Strong. Share of workforce belonging to unions in the private sector is now just over 6%.
But there are many reasons to think that this theory of unions isn’t right — or, at least, is woefully incomplete.
First, even back in the 1970s, some economists realized that unions do a lot more than just push up wages. In a 1979 paper entitled “The Two Faces of Unionism,” economists Richard Freeman and James Medoff argued that “by providing workers with a voice both at the workplace and in the political arena, unions can and do affect positively the functioning of the economic and social systems.”
Freeman and Medoff cite data showing that unions reduced turnover, which lowers costs associated with constantly finding and training new workers. They also show that unions engaged in political activity that benefitted the working class more broadly, rather than just union members. And they showed that contrary to popular belief, unions actually decreased racial wage disparities. Finally, Freeman and Medoff argue that by defining standard wage rates within industries, unions actually reduced wage inequality overall, despite the cartel-like effect emphasized in econ textbooks.
But the world didn’t listen to Freeman and Medoff, and private-sectors unions declined into near-insignificance. Now, four decades later, economists are again starting to suspect that unions were a better deal than the textbooks made them out to be. A recent paper by economists Henry Farber, Daniel Herbst, Ilyana Kuziemko and Suresh Naidu concludes that unions were an important force reducing inequality in the U.S.
Since past data tends to be patchy, Farber et al. combine a huge number of different data sources to get a detailed picture of unionization rates going all the way back to 1936, the year after Congress passed a law letting private-sector employees form unions. The authors find that as unionization rises, inequality tends to fall, and vice versa. Nor is this effect driven by greater skills and education on the part of union workers; during the era from 1940 through 1970, when unionization rose and inequality fell, union workers tended to be less educated than others. In other words, unions lifted the workers at the bottom of the distribution. Black workers, and other nonwhite workers, tended to benefit the most from the union boost.
Now, however, private-sector unions are mostly a faded memory and their power to raise wages has waned — Farber et al. find that although there’s still a union wage premium, it’s now much more due to the fact that higher-skilled workers tended to be the ones who stayed unionized. A 2004 paper by economists John DiNardo and David Lee found that by 1984-1999, unions had lost much of their ability to force wages higher.
Given the contrast between the golden age of 1940-1970 and the current age of spiraling inequality, wouldn’t it make sense to bring unions back? Perhaps. The key question is why private-sector unions mostly died out. Policy changes — right-to-work laws, and the appointment of anti-union regulators, probably played a key role in reducing unionization. But globalization may have also played a big part. Competition from companies in countries like Germany — where unions often bargain to hold down wages in order to increase their companies’ competitiveness — might have made the old American model of unionization unsustainable. Now, with even stiffer competition from China, the challenge of re-unionizing the U.S. might be an insurmountable one.
But it might be worth it to try. Other than massive government redistribution of income and wealth, there’s really no other obvious way to address the country’s rising inequality. Also, there’s the chance that unions might be an effective remedy for the problem of increasing corporate market power — evidence suggests that when unionization rates are high, industry concentration is less effective at suppressing wages. Repealing right-to-work laws and appointing more pro-union regulators could be just the medicine the economy needs.
So supporters of free markets should rethink their antipathy to unions. As socialism gains support among the young, both economists and free-market thinkers should consider the possibility that unions — that odd hybrid of free-market bargaining and government intervention — were the vaccine that allowed the U.S. and other rich nations to largely escape the disasters of communism in the 20th century.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.