Month: February 2022

HuffPost

Watchdog Finds Trump Interior Boss Ryan Zinke Violated Ethics Rules, Misused Office

Chris D’Angelo – February 16, 2022

Ryan Zinke , Donald Trump’s first scandal-plagued head of the Interior Department, violated ethics rules and misused his office with his ongoing involvement in a real estate project in his hometown of Whitefish, Montana, the department’s internal watchdog concluded in a new report.

The report from Interior’s Office of Inspector General is yet another scathing rebuke of Zinke’s repeated false claims that internal probes against him were “B.S.” and that he was cleared of all wrongdoing — a drum that he continues to pound as he campaigns for Montana’s new congressional seat.

The real estate project, known as 95 Karrow, is financially backed by David Lesar, who was the chairman of oil giant Halliburton at the time. A foundation Zinke started and was president of before resigning to take over Interior ― The Great Northern Veterans Peace Park ― owns a 14-acre lot adjacent to the project site and initially agreed to allow developers to build a parking lot on the foundation’s land. Zinke also had hopes of opening a microbrewery on the site.

While in office and after stepping down as the foundation’s president, Zinke stayed in constant contact with project developers and “played an extensive, direct, and substantive role in representing the Foundation during negotiations” on the project, according to the inspector general report.

The inspector general concluded Zinke’s actions violated the department ethics agreement that he signed upon being confirmed as secretary. Investigators also concluded that Zinke knowingly provided incorrect and incomplete information when Interior ethics officials questioned him about his involvement, a violation of his duty of candor, and misused his official government position by directing Interior staff to assist him with matters related to the project and the foundation.

Investigators, however, did not find that Zinke violated federal conflict-of-interests laws since he did not participate in any Interior matters involving the real estate project. They also did not find that Zinke acted in his official capacity to specifically benefit Halliburton.

The inspector general referred its findings to the Justice Department, which last summer declined to prosecute Zinke’s actions, according to the report.

“Today’s report shows us yet again that former President Trump’s appointees didn’t view their positions at the highest level of our government as an opportunity to serve our country, but as an opportunity to serve the interests of their personal pocketbooks,” Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement Wednesday. Grijalva is one of three House Democrats who called on the Interior’s internal watchdog to investigate the matter back in 2018.

In an email statement, Zinke’s campaign slammed the report as a “political hit job” and claimed investigators “didn’t even bother to talk to Ryan Zinke, staff or anyone else who was supposedly involved in the non-existent ‘negotiations.’”

“Only in Biden’s corrupt admin is talking to one’s neighbor about the town’s public meetings and history of the land a sin,” the campaign said.

The report was issued by Mark Greenblatt, the Trump-nominated inspector general of the Interior Department.

Investigators note in the report that Zinke and his wife, Lola, who took over as the foundation’s president after Zinke’s confirmation, refused multiple requests for an interview. The couple’s unwillingness to cooperate led to the inspector general issuing subpoenas to obtain developers’ phone and email records related to the project.

Zinke exchanged more than 60 emails and text messages, participated in up to five phone calls and met in person at least once with 95 Karrow developers while in office, investigators found. Among other things, those communications included discussions and negotiations about specific project design issues and Zinke’s interest in building and running a microbrewery.

When media outlets began asking about Zinke’s ongoing involvement with the project, he consulted with project leaders about how to respond. In one particular exchange, Zinke told a developer that an unnamed news organization was “not our friend” and stressed that he’d turned over all decision-making authority to the foundation’s board.

Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the conservation group Center for Western Priorities, said the report “confirmed what we’ve known all along — corruption was rampant in the Trump administration.”

“Self-dealing like this was par for the course. Ryan Zinke only got fired because he got caught,” she said in a statement. “It’s unfortunate that Attorney General [Merrick] Garland declined to pursue a criminal case against Secretary Zinke. The IG report makes it clear that Zinke broke the law when he ordered his staff to facilitate a meeting and private tour with the developers, one of whom was a top executive at Halliburton.”

Zinke faced at least 18 formal investigations during his tenure as head of the Interior Department, and ultimately resigned from his post in January 2019 under a cloud of scandals. He is now running for Montana’s new congressional seat.

On the campaign trail, Zinke has railed against resistance among Interior staff and dismissed investigations into his conduct as politically motivated.

“All of them ran their course,” he said of the probes during an August interview on the conservative podcast “Ruthless.” “No wrongdoing in the end, and there was no wrongdoing at the beginning.”

Not true then, not true now.

In 2019, the Office of Inspector General concluded that Zinke violated federal law when he tweeted a photo of himself wearing socks that featured Trump’s face and the words “Make America Great Again.” And in 2018, the agency watchdog determined that Zinke violated government travel policies by bringing his wife on taxpayer-funded trips and by asking staff to explore making her a department volunteer, a move that would have legitimized her travel.

CNN – Opinion

Putin could turn off Europe’s gas tap. This is the solution

Opinion by Tara Connolly – February 15, 2022

Tara Connolly is senior gas campaigner at Global Witness, an international NGO working towards a more sustainable, just and equal planet. She has over a decade of experience in EU energy policy. The views expressed in this commentary are her own.

(CNN)As Russian troops remain camped across several of Ukraine’s frontiers, Europe and the United States are scrambling to prevent an incursion, with a flurry of diplomatic efforts and by bolstering their own troops in nearby NATO countries.

Speculation over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions have ramped up from mere threats to actual war, but officials and pundits in Europe are jittery about another threat as well: Moscow could reduce — or even stop — the flow of fossil gas that the continent so heavily relies on.

There has been much talk of what Russia is trying to achieve geopolitically by fostering this reliance — to break up NATO, to split the European Union or alienate the US from its Western allies — but these other concerns are also pressing.

Soaring prices in a power crunch are driving millions of Europeans into energy poverty and the continent’s unfettered use of fossil gas is fueling the climate crisis. The solution should be self-evident — end our reliance on expensive, dirty, and overwhelmingly imported gas. This will require standing up to the powerful gas industry, and right now, far too few politicians seem willing to take this vital step.

This is by no means the first time Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian gas has been problematic. It was the same story during the last major flare-up with Ukraine in 2014, and Europe’s response — to simply find gas elsewhere — didn’t work then. It isn’t working now either.

In 2013, Russian imports accounted for around 27% of the European Union’s gas use. Instead of reducing reliance on Russia, nine years later, Europe remains more dependent on Russian gas than ever, with 38% of the EU’s supply now being piped from the country.

EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson has been holding urgent meetings with Azerbaijan and Qatar to boost the bloc’s gas supplies. Likewise, US President Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed climate champion, has been trying to ride to Europe’s rescue, and push his own ever-expanding plans for American liquefied natural gas exports.

On a practical level, it’s unlikely the US and its friends would be able to replace Russian gas in Europe quickly and effectively. Recent research by the Brussels-based think tank, Bruegel, concluded that in the event of a rupture in Russian gas, the EU would run short and have to start cutting gas use altogether.

So, if Europe can’t do without Russia for gas, the question must be asked: Why not do without the gas?

Even if the US could bring a cavalry to Europe, more gas isn’t a long-term solution. The flag on the pipeline or ship is irrelevant — it’s Europe’s dependency on the fuel, regardless of where it’s from, that makes it so vulnerable to the vagaries of the global gas market.

Europe’s addiction to gas, and indeed the world’s, will have a deep impact on the future of our planet. The idea peddled by many in the fossil fuel industry that gas can help tackle the climate crisis by replacing coal is false. The International Energy Agency has said that the world should stop adding more capacity for gas if it wants to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In the EU, gas is now responsible for more carbon emissions than coal. According to the European Commission’s own analysis, the continent must virtually eliminate fossil gas by 2050 to help keep global warming to 1.5C, although Global Witness believes it must be gone by 2035. Globally, between 2016 and 2019, fossil gas has been responsible for half of the increase in carbon dioxide emissions, according to data from the Global Carbon Project.

Methane, which can leak from almost every step in the gas supply chain, has more than 80 times the global warming power than carbon-dioxide in the short term. Methane has driven more than a quarter of all global warming to date. Not to mention the health risks attached to gas exposure both for communities near infrastructure and even in homes. A recent study by Stanford University showed, stoves used for cooking often leak methane even when turned off.

It’s not just followers of geopolitical tensions or those in the climate movement that should be concerned with this gas addiction. A sharp rise in gas prices has forced households across Europe into the impossible choice between heating and eating. In the UK, 22 million have been told their energy bills will rise by about £700 ($950) a year, which will hit the poorest the hardest. Recent, but as yet unpublished, figures crunched by the Global Witness data team found that consumer gas prices in the Netherlands and Estonia over the past year have increased by a staggering 62% and 122%, respectively.

As European households suffer, it’s a very different picture for major fossil fuel firms. Shell recently announced its most profitable fourth quarter in almost a decade, posting almost $20 billion in profit for 2021. ExxonMobil and Chevron recorded a combined $38.6 billion in profits last year. With other oil and gas majors set to post similarly strong years in the coming days — including Russia’s own Gazprom, which saw record-breaking Q3 profits — it’s a pointer as to just why politicians continue to back gas, despite all its associated woes.

Even with the tide turning against fossil fuels, many European lawmakers seem to continue to buy into the argument that the gas industry is vital for jobs and growth in their countries, even though the renovation and renewables sectors are already significant contributors to the economy with huge potential.

This is an industry that is directly benefiting from rising gas prices while ordinary citizens fall further into energy poverty and the climate crisis intensifies. It’s therefore no surprise that gas companies are pushing to keep gas locked in, using the two-pronged approach of lobbying and greenwashing. While announcing his company’s highest profits in eight years, the CEO of BP, Bernard Looney, called for even more investment into gas. And it’s clearly having the desired effect.

In December, the European Commission published its proposals to reform Europe’s gas market, in what could have been an opportunity to move towards the phaseout of gas. Worryingly, it chose to lock gas in for years to come, in line with calls from the gas industry.

The Commission’s proposals rest on the impossible assumption that fossil gas infrastructure — like pipelines — can eventually be used with substitutes by nascent technologies like hydrogen. In Europe’s existing networks, however, this would do little to reduce gas use, given most hydrogen is produced using fossil gas. There is little being done to challenge the power and influence of the fossil fuel companies at the heart of the gas market.

Another way is possible, but it requires a monumental shift. The huge political and financial support afforded to the fossil fuel industry needs to be redirected to give a much-needed boost for genuine solutions.

Modeling carried out by the Climate Action Network Europe and the European Environmental Bureau shows that the use of fossil gas could virtually be phased out by 2035. That would require accelerating deep renovations of Europe’s buildings, ramping up the deployment of renewable electricity technologies and the electrification of heating and transportation — all measures that are entirely realistic.

This includes accelerating the deployment of renewable energy, like wind and solar, so that we can replace gas with green electricity. Schemes to renovate large-scale buildings or to insulate homes and replace gas boilers with green heating solutions, like heat pumps and geothermal, would go a long way.

But, outrageously, the majority of the EU’s 27 member states still give more subsidies to fossil fuels than renewables.Europe’s deep gas dependency is impacting its citizens, the future of the planet and limiting its ability to shield from geopolitical threats. Already, rich big polluters in the gas industry — whether in Russia or elsewhere — are the only ones who stand to benefit from the status quo. European leaders should be putting in place plans to get Europe off gas as quickly as possible. This shouldn’t be a courageous act. It’s just common sense.

Scientists say this invisible gas could seal our fate on climate change

Europe’s plan to call natural gas ‘sustainable’ triggers backlash from climate campaigners

Good Morning America

Sandy Hook families settle with Remington marking 1st time gun maker is held liable for mass shooting

AAron Katersky – February 15, 2022

Remington Arms agreed Tuesday to settle liability claims from the families of five adults and four children killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, according to a new court filing, marking the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting in the U.S.

The settlement comes nearly eight years after the families sued the maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle that was used in the 2012 mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

More details will be announced at a news conference from the families.

On Dec. 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, forced his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, and in the course of 264 seconds, fatally shot 20 first-graders and six staff members.

Video: Survivors share how ‘teenage dreams’ disappeared after school shootings https://s.yimg.com/rx/martini/builds/39517272/executor.htmlScroll back up to restore default view.

MORE: Supreme Court clears way for Newtown shooting victim families to sue AR-15 gun-maker

The rifle Lanza used was Remington’s version of the AR-15 assault rifle, which is substantially similar to the standard issue M16 military service rifle used by the U.S. Army and other nations’ armed forces, but fires only in semiautomatic mode.

The families argued Remington negligently entrusted to civilian consumers an assault-style rifle that is suitable for use only by military and law enforcement personnel and violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act through the sale or wrongful marketing of the rifle.

MORE: Sandy Hook families push to reinstate lawsuit against gun manufacturer

Remington, which filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2020, had argued all of the plaintiffs’ legal theories were barred under Connecticut law and by a federal statute — the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act — which, with limited exceptions, immunizes firearms manufacturers, distributors and dealers from civil liability for crimes committed by third parties using their weapons.

The settlement with the maker of the rifle used in the 2012 elementary school massacre marks the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable in a U.S. mass shooting.

NBC News

Sandy Hook families reach historic $73M settlement with gunmaker Remington

Elizabeth Chuck – February 15, 2022

Relatives of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have reached a $73 million settlement with Remington, the maker of the rifle used in the massacre, marking the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting in the United States.

“Today marks an inflection point,” Veronique de la Rosa, the mother of six-year-old victim Noah Pozner, said at a press conference Tuesday. “Today is a day of accountability for an industry that has thus far enjoyed operating with immunity and impunity, and for this I am grateful.”

The landmark victory comes after a protracted legal battle over how Remington marketed its Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, which was used in the December 2012 killings of the 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman fatally shot his mother before the elementary school rampage, then killed himself.

In their lawsuit against Remington, which has since filed for bankruptcy, families of the victims argued that the gun maker irresponsibly marketed the weapon to at-risk young men such as the Sandy Hook shooter through product placement in violent video games.

Remington, based in Madison, North Carolina, has denied the allegations. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News on Tuesday.

Attorney for the families, Joshua Koskoff, began Tuesday’s press conference by displaying photos of the victims and described details about the final days of their lives: the Hanukkah candles that Noah proudly lit for the first time; the favorite diner breakfast that fellow first-grader Jesse Lewis loved to eat; the Christmas music that teacher Victoria Soto would listen to on her drive into work.

Last July, attorneys for Remington offered nearly $33 million to the families to settle the suit. At the time, Koskoff praised Remington’s insurers for their offer, even though the families did not accept at the time.

“These families would pay everything, give it all back, just for one minute” more with their loved ones, Koskoff said Tuesday.

The path to a settlement was complicated, with the lawsuit making its way through the state Supreme Court after Remington argued it should be shielded under a federal law designed to prevent gun manufacturers from being held liable for crimes in which their guns were used. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would allow the suit to go forward.

In September, a couple months after presenting its settlement offer, Remington subpoenaed school records of children and educators killed in the massacre.

Attorneys for the families immediately moved to seal the records.

“We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first-grade academic, attendance and disciplinary records of these five schoolchildren,” Koskoff said, The Connecticut Post reported. “The records cannot possibly excuse Remington’s egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case. The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.”

U.S. NEWS4-year-old girl missing since 2019 found alive, hidden under stairs in New York, police say

CORONAVIRUS Babies get Covid protection from mothers vaccinated during pregnancy, CDC says

USA Today

NY girl missing for 2 years found alive, stashed inside ‘small, cold and wet’ staircase

Matt Spillane, Poughkeepsie Journal – February 15, 2022

SAUGERTIES, New York — More than two years after she disappeared, a 6-year-old girl was found stashed under the staircase of a home in eastern New York.

The case broke Monday night when a detective pried open the staircase and found Paislee Shultis in a “small, cold, and wet” secret room, where she was hiding with her biological, “non-custodial” mother in a Fawn Road home, according to Town of Saugerties police.

Police arrested Paislee’s biological parents, who did not have custody of her and had been suspected of abducting her.

Saugerties police initially said Paislee disappeared in Cayuga Heights in Tompkins County, but Cayuga Heights police said Tuesday that was untrue. Saugerties police said in a Facebook post in 2020 that Paislee went missing in Spencer, a village in Tioga County. Saugerties police could not be reached for clarification Tuesday.

She had last been seen with Kimberly Cooper and Kirk Shultis Jr., police said at the time. Multiple police agencies had investigated numerous leads about Paislee’s disappearance, including several that led police to that Saugerties house. But each time police checked it out the residents denied any knowledge of the girl’s whereabouts.

It was not immediately clear with whom the girl was living when she disappeared.

Cooper and Shultis Jr. were arrested Monday, along with Kirk Shultis Sr., who owns the house on Fawn Road with his wife.

Police said the investigation is ongoing and more arrests are pending.

Paislee was taken to the police station, where she was met by paramedics. She was in good health and released to her legal guardian, police said.

The Ulster County District Attorney’s Office could not immediately be reached for more information.

‘Something out of place’

Police said Shultis Jr., the girl’s biological father, “resurfaced shortly after Paislee’s disappearance” and denied knowledge of his daughter’s whereabouts, and told police that he had not seen her since 2019, when he reported Cooper fled to Pennsylvania with his daughter.

During some follow-ups at the Fawn Road home, police said Shultis Jr. and his father allowed officers “limited access” to look around the home, “knowing the child and her abductor were hidden within the house and would not be found.”

The mystery of Paislee’s whereabouts was solved Monday, though, when police went to the Shultis’ home on a tip that Paislee was being held there. At 8:06 p.m. Saugerties police and state police took a search warrant to the house.

Shultis Sr. allegedly told police he did not know where Paislee was and he had not seen her since she was reported missing in 2019.

Police had been searching the house for more than an hour when Detective Erik Thiele noticed something odd about the way the steps were built on the staircase leading from the back of the home to the basement, where “something was out of place,” police said.

Thiele shined a flashlight through a crack between the wooden steps and saw what he thought was a blanket. The staircase seemed solid, police said, but they grabbed a tool and removed several of the wooden steps.

Detectives then “saw a pair of tiny feet,” police said, and after removing several more steps, they found Paislee and Cooper.

Cooper, 33, was charged with second-degree custodial interference and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors. She was also wanted on an arrest warrant issued through Ulster County Family Court, police said.

Cooper was arraigned in Saugerties Town Court and taken to the Ulster County Jail on the warrant.

Shultis Jr., 32, and Shultis Sr., 57, were both charged with first-degree custodial interference, a felony, and endangering the welfare of a child. They were both arraigned in Saugerties Town Court and released. They could not be reached for comment.

Cooper, Shultis Jr. and Shultis Sr. all had orders of protection issued against them to stay away from Paislee. They are due back in court Wednesday.

Yahoo! Money

IRS Chief: We’re facing enormous challenges this tax filing season

Charles P. Rettig – February 15, 2022

As the IRS begins this tax season, it continues to face enormous challenges. Our dedicated workforce has done everything it can to prepare for filing day on April 18. Our immediate focus is simplifying the taxpayer’s filing experience by streamlining the process, answering as many questions as possible and reducing our historic inventories.

Today, millions of people are still waiting for prior years’ returns to be processed, and refund checks to arrive in the mail, while preparing for their upcoming tax filing. While we can’t immediately solve these significant issues, our employees are doing everything they can, and I am committed to returning to normal inventory levels before next year.

The IRS is operating without stable, multi-year funding in place, which creates additional impediments to our efforts to deal with our current situation. However, we have taken extraordinary measures to work through unprocessed returns and correspondence, including mandatory overtime by IRS employees, creating and redirecting surge teams to address the inventories, temporarily suspending certain automated compliance notices and, where possible, modernizing operating systems to accelerate the manual processing of inventories.

COVID hit us all. While facing consequential resource challenges as a result of chronic underfunding, the IRS worked as hard as possible, while taking on a significant increase in responsibilities while also facing unprecedented challenges from the pandemic. It has been my privilege to lead the IRS since 2018 as we have worked through the successful delivery of more than $1.5 trillion in refunds, stimulus payments, and advance payments of the Child Tax Credits – all during an excruciating pandemic. Through our work, we touch more Americans than any other private or public sector organization—and we are deeply proud to serve our country.

For the current tax season, the IRS workforce has already delivered more than 4 million refunds worth nearly $10 billion just through Feb. 4. And yet millions are waiting for their returns to be processed, and many won’t be able to reach us when they call with questions this filing season. This is frustrating for taxpayers and for us.

We want to do more, but we face major challenges. Over the past decade, the IRS budget has been cut by nearly 20%. The agency today has as few employees as it did in the 1970s, despite a 60% increase in the United States population during that time and an unprecedented increase in responsibilities. While more than 90% of the over 160 million individual returns are filed electronically, the remaining people who file on paper lead to millions of time-intensive, manually processed paper returns.

As we have seen across our economy, technological improvements can do wonders to increase the efficiency of workforces and organizations. Without long-term, predictable funding, the IRS will continue to face severe limitations, unable to provide the service taxpayers deserve and need.

There are tangible consequences to American taxpayers who aren’t able to receive the level of service they deserve, as well as the IRS’s ability to enforce tax laws for ultra-wealthy tax cheats. Last year, the IRS received 120 million calls on certain phone lines during filing season (at times, calls came in at the rate of about 1,500 per second), but our limited workforce was able to answer fewer than 20% of them. Over the last several years, staffing for taxpayer assistance centers decreased so dramatically that less than a third as many taxpayers are able to receive face-to-face assistance from the IRS than they were in 2016.

There are several ways people can ensure a smoother filing process this year. Filing electronically with direct deposit can avoid processing delays, refund delays and later IRS notices. Taxpayers should pay extra attention if they received Economic Impact Payments or an advance Child Tax Credit in 2021. The IRS has sent out more than 150 million information letters this year. This will help assure information is reported accurately.

The reality at the IRS is that we know we need to do better, we’re committed to doing better, and we are trending in a positive direction. Our employees are doing everything they can. But we need help. As many IRS leaders have stated for most of the past decade, without long-term, predictable funding, the IRS will continue to be hamstrung, failing to provide the experience that taxpayers deserve.

Chuck Rettig currently serves as the 49th Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

NPR – Economy

It’s not just home prices. Rents rise sharply across the U.S.

Chris Arnold – February 14, 2022

A for rent sign in Palo Alto, California. Across the country rents are on the rise, in part due to a historic shortage of homes either to rent or buy.PAUL SAKUMA/AP

Last year, Laura Kraft landed a job in Orlando, Florida. She’d just gotten her PhD in entomology, meaning she studies bugs, and she’d be working on a big nature exhibit at a theme park. All that sounded great until she started looking for an apartment.

“I started looking at rent and was like, not sure if I was going to take the job,” she says. “The rent was so high in Orlando… it really blew me away.”

At first she looked for a place of her own. But anything in her price range had a waiting list at least 6 months long. So she found a Facebook group for theme park employees looking for roommates in order to afford a place to live.

Laura Kraft in her apartment in the Orlando area. She moved across the country for a new job and couldn’t believe how much it cost to rent a place.Courtesy of Laura Kraft

“My roommate and I together are paying $2,200,” Kraft says. “A lot of people that I know have like three, four, sometimes five roommates in a house.”

The cost of renting a place in Orlando rose nearly 30% just last year alone, according to a survey by the real estate firm Redfin. Cities in Florida, New York, and New Jersey are seeing particularly steep jumps in rent. As is Austin, Texas, with the biggest one year gain of 40%.

The survey, it should be noted, tracks new listings for apartments.

“That doesn’t literally mean that every person in Austin is going to see their rent go up 40 percent,” says Redfin’s Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather. “But it means that if you are on the market right now looking for an apartment or home to rent, the prices will be 40 percent higher than they were the year before.”

Some of the forces driving rents higher differ from city to city. Fairweather says a lot of technology workers have been moving to Austin and the migration of more people there is pushing up both rents and home prices. In New York City, rents are rebounding after falling earlier in the pandemic.

But she says rents are rising more than usual just about everywhere.

“The root cause of the problem is a lack of supply,” Fairweather says. “We have not built enough homes to meet demand.”

There a bunch of reasons for that. One of the biggest, she says, is restrictive zoning. Especially in higher-cost parts of the country, zoning rules make it hard to build cheaper smaller houses or apartments that are tightly packed together.

Meanwhile, Fairweather says more millennials in their late 20s and early 30s feel like they’re done with roommates or their parents’ basement.

“Millennials are the biggest generation,” she says. “We’re forming households, and we want a place of our own and that is causing an increase in demand.”

Redfin’s survey looks at the 50 largest U.S. cities. On average, it found the rents landlords were seeking for available homes and apartments rose 3% in 2020, which is about normal for recent years. But then last year, they rose 14%.

Government data show that the rent Americans are actually paying — not just the change in price for new listings — rose 3.8% over the past year. But, while less dramatic, that consumer price index also shows rents have been rising more than usual the past few months.

Allison Best-VanLiew is feeling the bite of those rising rents up in Buffalo, New York. “It’s been a little wild, to be honest,” she says.

By no stretch is Buffalo a hot housing market historically. Best-VanLiew and her husband have been renting on a busy street for a few years and they pay $900 a month.

“We do not have a dishwasher, which is normally fine.” But she says now they are thinking of having a baby. “The bottles alone, like you kind of need that.

And as they’ve been looking around for a better place, she says everything seems more expensive than it was a few years ago. “Between $1,200 and $1,400 for a place relatively close to this size with just a dishwasher,” she says.

Like a lot of young couples, she and her husband would rather buy a house. But with home prices hitting new records she says they’re having trouble saving enough for a down payment. And with so many would-be first time homebuyers priced out of the market, that boosts demand for rentals and helps push rents even higher.

BUSINESS

The Housing Shortage Is Significant. It’s Acute For Small, Entry-Level Homes

YOUR MONEY

Home prices rose faster than ever in 2021. The typical home gained $50,000 in value

Reuters

Pollution causing more deaths than COVID, action needed, says U.N. expert

By Emma Farge – February 15, 2022

GENEVA (Reuters) – Pollution by states and companies is contributing to more deaths globally than COVID-19, a U.N. environmental report published on Tuesday said, calling for “immediate and ambitious action” to ban some toxic chemicals.

The report said pollution from pesticides, plastics and electronic waste is causing widespread human rights violations and at least 9 million premature deaths a year, and that the issue is largely being overlooked.

The coronavirus pandemic has caused close to 5.9 million deaths, according to data aggregator Worldometer.

“Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment,” the report’s author, U.N. Special Rapporteur David Boyd, concluded.

“I think we have an ethical and now a legal obligation to do better by these people,” he told Reuters later in an interview.

Due to be presented next month to the U.N. Human Rights Council, which has declared a clean environment a human right, the document was posted on the Council’s website on Tuesday.

It urges a ban on polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl, man-made substances used in household products such as non-stick cookware that have been linked to cancer and dubbed “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down easily.

It also seeks the clean-up of polluted sites and, in extreme cases, the possible relocations of affected communities – many of them poor, marginalized and indigenous – from so-called “sacrifice zones”.

That term, originally used to describe nuclear test zones, was expanded in the report to include any heavily contaminated site or place rendered uninhabitable by climate change.

“What I hope to do by telling these stories of sacrifice zones is to really put a human face on these otherwise inexplicable, incomprehensible statistics (of pollution death tolls),” Boyd said.

Boyd considers the report, his latest in a series, to be his most hard-hitting yet and told Reuters he expects “push back” when he presents it to the Council in Geneva.

U.N. rights chief Michelle Bachelet has called environmental threats the biggest global rights challenge, and a growing number of climate and environmental justice cases are invoking human rights with success.

Chemical waste is set to be part of negotiations at a U.N. environment conference in Nairobi, Kenya, starting on Feb. 28, including a proposal to establish a devoted panel, similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

(Reporting by Emma Farge; editing by John Stonestreet and Grant McCool)

Daily Beast

Accounting Firm Drops Trump Organization Over Dubious Financial Docs

Jose Pagliery – February 14, 2022

The Trump Organization’s trusted outside accounting firm has taken the unprecedented step of ditching its client, explaining that the former president’s family company has a decade of financial statements that can’t be trusted.

The bombshell move by Mazars USA—the accounting firm that has long worked with former President Donald Trump’s family and friends—was revealed in court filings in New York on Monday.

The decision to drop Trump follows last month’s aggressive move by New York Attorney General Letitia James to publicly file documents detailing accounts of what it called “significant evidence” of financial fraud.

The AG’s office is in the midst of two similar investigations of the Trump empire: A civil lawsuit exploring potential bank fraud by the company, and a joint criminal probe with the Manhattan District Attorney into alleged tax dodging and financial fraud.

Judge Forces Top Trump Org Lieutenants to Turn Over Key Documents

While the criminal case is proceeding quietly before a grand jury in New York City, Monday’s revelations stem from the AG’s civil lawsuit, which seeks to force Trump and two of his adult children to testify about business dealings.

In a letter to the Trump Organization on Feb. 9, the U.S. branch of the global accounting firm Mazars told the company that “the statements of financial condition for Donald J. Trump” ranging between 2011 and 2020 “should no longer be relied upon and you should inform any recipients thereof… that those documents should not be relied upon.” The firm explained that the decision was made in light of the AG’s revelations as well as “our own investigation.”

The letter goes on to sever all future business ties. “We have also reached the point such that there is a non-waivable conflict of interest with the Trump Organization,” Mazars wrote. “As a result, we are not able to provide any new work product to the Trump Organization.”

The AG’s office, which got a hold of the letter, filed it in court to bolster its case that Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Don Jr. should be forced to testify about how so many family real estate development projects and properties had wildly fluctuating values that seemed high whenever they needed loans but low whenever it came time to pay taxes.

Trump Organization Indictment May Spell Trouble for Trump Spawn

The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The letter also alluded to another matter that criminal investigators reviewed with the Manhattan DA’s office: A Trump building apartment in New York City that was provided to Matt Calamari Jr.—a family insider who is now the corporate director of security.

Junior, the son of Trump Organization COO Matthew Calamari Sr., received immunity from a criminal prosecution when he testified before the grand jury investigating company benefits—such as corporate apartments—that may have run afoul of taxing laws, according to a source with direct knowledge of his testimony.

In the firm’s Feb. 9 letter, Mazars general counsel William J. Kelly described how accountants had not yet been able to finish preparing the tax paperwork for the former president and first lady, Melania, because they hadn’t answered questions about Calamari Jr.’s fringe benefits.

“We believe the only information left to complete those returns is the information regarding the Matt Calimari Jr. apartment. As you know, Donald Bender has been asking for this information for several months but has not received it,” Kelly wrote.

Donald Bender, a partner at Mazars, has served as the trusted accountant for Trump and his lieutenants for years, a role that has since drawn scrutiny from law enforcement, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of the transactions and current investigations.

Mazars has found itself in the spotlight since at least 2016, when Trump successfully ran for president but broke with tradition and refused to disclose his tax returns. The firm successfully protected Trump’s tax returns from seeing the light of day, receiving widespread rebuke in the process. And the precedent-establishing Supreme Court fight that ultimately handed those tax documents to the Manhattan DA—but not Congress—bears the firm’s name.

Associated Press

West megadrought worsens to driest in at least 1,200 years

Seth Borenstein – February 14, 2022

Water drips from a faucet near boat docks sitting on dry land at the Browns Ravine Cove area of drought-stricken Folsom Lake in Folsom, Calif., on May 22, 2022. The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest it has been in at least 1200 years and a worst-case scenario playing out live, a new study finds. (AP Photo/Josh Edelson, File)ASSOCIATED PRESS

The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.

A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.

“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”

Williams studied soil moisture levels in the West — a box that includes California, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, most of Oregon and Idaho, much of New Mexico, western Colorado, northern Mexico, and the southwest corners of Montana and Texas — using modern measurements and tree rings for estimates that go back to the year 800. That’s about as far back as estimates can reliably go with tree rings.

A few years ago, Williams studied the current drought and said it qualified as a lengthy and deep “megadrought” and that the only worse one was in the 1500s. He figured the current drought wouldn’t surpass that one because megadroughts tended to peter out after 20 years. And, he said, 2019 was a wet year so it looked like the western drought might be coming to an end.

But the region dried up in late 2020 and 2021.

All of California was considered in official drought from mid-May until the end of 2021, and at least three-quarters of the state was at the highest two drought levels from June through Christmas, according to the U.S. drought monitor.

“For this drought to have just cranked up back to maximum drought intensity in late 2020 through 2021 is a quite emphatic statement by this 2000s drought saying that we’re nowhere close to the end,” Williams said. This drought is now 5% drier than the old record from the 1500s, he said.

The drought monitor says 55% of the U.S. West is in drought with 13% experiencing the two highest drought levels.

This megadrought really kicked off in 2002 — one of the driest years ever, based on humidity and tree rings, Williams said.

“I was wondering if we’d ever see a year like 2002 again in my life and in fact, we saw it 20 years later, within the same drought,” Williams said. The drought levels in 2002 and 2021 were a statistical tie, though still behind 1580 for the worst single year.

Climate change from the burning of fossil fuels is bringing hotter temperatures and increasing evaporation in the air, scientists say.

Williams used 29 models to create a hypothetical world with no human-caused warming then compared it to what happened in real life — the scientifically accepted way to check if an extreme weather event is due to climate change. He found that 42% of the drought conditions are directly from human-caused warming. Without climate change, he said, the megadrought would have ended early on because 2005 and 2006 would have been wet enough to break it.

The study “is an important wake-up call,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of environment at the University of Michigan, who wasn’t part of the study. “Climate change is literally baking the water supply and forests of the Southwest, and it could get a whole lot worse if we don’t halt climate change soon.”

Williams said there is a direct link between drought and heat and the increased wildfires that have been devastating the West for years. Fires need dry fuel that drought and heat promote.

Eventually, this megadrought will end by sheer luck of a few good rainy years, Williams said. But then another one will start.

Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist who wasn’t involved in the study, said climate change is likely to make megadrought “a permanent feature of the climate of the Colorado River watershed during the 21st century.”

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Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/Climate