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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
Gates Foundation gives $1.4 billion climate help to smallholder farmers
Simon Jessop and Virginia Furness – November 7, 2022
FILE PHOTO: Paris hosts a global gender equality conference
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $1.4 billion to help smallholder farmers cope with the impacts of climate change, part of efforts at global climate talks in Egypt to scale up supply of so-called adaptation finance.
The world is currently not doing enough to help poorer nations withstand the effects of global warming, the United Nations said last week. By 2030, the annual financing need will be $340 billion, it added.
The Gates Foundation’s commitment, announced at the COP27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, will help smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia build resilience into their work practices and improve food security.
More than 2 billion people depend on smallholder farms for food and income, yet currently less than 2% of global climate-related finance is devoted to helping them adapt to climate change, the foundation said.
“The climate crisis is causing enormous harm every day as it jeopardizes entire regions of people and economies,” Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a statement.
“More funding is necessary to ensure agricultural and technological innovations are widely available to vulnerable communities, helping them to adapt to climate change, save lives and increase economic growth.”
The foundation said its funding would go towards climate smart agriculture projects, new applications of digital technologies and other innovations, and to support women farmers.
Women account for 43% of the agricultural workforce in developing countries, but they tend to have far less access to finance, legal rights and education than men as a result of entrenched gender inequality.
“Women in rural Africa are the backbone of their food systems, but they have never had equal access to the resources they need to reach their full potential or build resilience to looming climate threats,” said foundation co-chair Melinda French Gates.
(Reporting by Virginia Furness; Editing by Mark Potter)
How climate change, rising sea levels are transforming coastlines around the world
Julia Jacobo, Daniel Manzo and Ginger Zee – November 7, 2022
Communities have gravitated toward the shore for thousands of years, building their lives in proximity to major waterways for easy access to trade, seafood and recreation.
But those who reside near coastlines will need to learn to adjust as climate change continues to create conditions that chip away at these malleable geological structures, according to experts.
One of the recurring topics of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Cairo, Egypt, is how climate change is currently affecting people around the world. As coastlines change and become battered by an increase in the number of severe weather events, homes — and, in some cases, entire communities — are being condemned as they become inundated with seawater the more the natural barriers are broken down.
PHOTO: A composite image shows the Rockaway boardwalk area after Hurricane Sandy, Oct. 31, 2012 (top) and a year later (bottom) in the Rockaway neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, Oct. 20, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images, FILE)
The transformation of coastlines is constant. Coastal erosion is a natural part of the Earth’s cycle as strong waves continually crash against the shore. But as global temperatures warm and sea levels rise, the damage to the coast’s natural barriers is being exacerbated with each subsequent monster storm with tropical force winds or higher — which typically causes the most damaging events of erosion, scientists say.
As melting glaciers and ice sheets cause sea levels to rise, the ocean waves around the coast become more intense, Raphael Crowley, associate professor at the University of North Florida’s Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, told ABC News.
In addition, gradual effects from day-to-day erosion reaching farther inland, such as land that was previously above sea level being underwater more, will weaken the structure of the coastlines even more — allowing for strong storms to do more damage when they pass through, Ronadh Cox, a professor of geology and mineralogy at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, told ABC News. Each high tide that reaches previously dry land has a cumulative effect on shoreline retreat and the associated erosion.
“So, everything from nuisance flooding associated with tides rising higher, to storm surges penetrating farther inland, all contribute to these effects of the coast,” Cox said.
PHOTO: A composite image shows the boardwalk washed away during Hurricane Sandy in the Rockaway neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York, Nov. 10, 2012 (top) and cars parked on the street in the Rockaway neighborhood, Oct. 19, 2013 (bottom). (Spencer Platt/Getty Images, FILE)
The types of natural infrastructures that can be destroyed are sand dunes, cliffs and even living shorelines, such as plants, marshes and oyster reefs — all of which can act as barriers to an influx of ocean water. A marsh measuring 15 feet deep can absorb about 50% of incoming wave energy, but these living barriers continue to dwindle, as well.
The deterioration of coastlines can also be impacted by the human tendency to develop right on top of them, according to experts.
As populations increase and more housing is built near the coast, oftentimes the coastal wetlands are drained to make room for development, Cox said.
PHOTO: (top) A man walks along the heavily damaged Rockaway beach, Nov. 2, 2012 (bottom) People walk down the beach in Rockaway neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City, Oct. 23, 2013. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images, FILE)
When the barriers along the coastlines fail to keep ocean water out, it wreaks havoc on communities, Crowley said. Roads become impassable. Homes become at risk of being destroyed or even swept away in some cases of extreme storm surge — like what happened in parts of southwest Florida due to Hurricane Ian.
“The combined effect of all of these things, of course, is increased erosion, land loss and infrastructure loss,” Cox said.
Coastal erosion is already tallying up to about $500 million annually in property damage, according to the U.S. Climate Resiliency Toolkit, an online resource that compiles data from the U.S. federal government.
“The problem with coastal engineering is that coasts are constantly evolving,” Crowley said.
PHOTO: Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pump sand from the ocean floor onto the beach in the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, Oct. 18, 2022. (Ted Shaffrey/AP, FILE)
If people want to live near the ocean, protection measures such as ensuring a high enough elevation and that there is a barrier between the structure and the water — such as a sand dune — should be implemented, Crowley said.
Severe storms can remove wide beaches in a single event. Following the passing of Hurricane Irma in 2017, Crowley witnessed what was previously a sand dune in north Florida’s Vilano Beach transformed into “a 40-foot cliff with a house hanging off of it,” he said. That structure was one of several dozen that Crowley knew would never be livable again, he said.
PHOTO: Support beams for a home’s deck are exposed after the sand below was eroded from Hurricane Irma in Vilano Beach, Fla., Friday, Sept. 15, 2017. (David Goldman/AP)
The research is suggesting that what was previously considered a once-in-a-generation storm, such as Ian, could start to occur more frequently, Crowley said.
In addition, Cox has witnessed famed coastal towns such as Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, both in Massachusetts, lose measurable levels of cliff retreat of several meters per year in some places, she said.
In Pinellas County, Florida, a half-foot of sea level rise in the past 50 years has led to the loss of 120 feet of beach, John Bishop, coastal management coordinator for the Pinellas County Government, told ABC News.
Sea levels have been rising about 3.5 millimeters per year since the early 1900s, Crowley said.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but then if you add that up over 100 years — that’s quite a bit of rise,” he said, adding that the rate of rise has since accelerated.
PHOTO: Contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pump sand from the ocean floor onto the beach in the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, Oct. 18, 2022. (Ted Shaffrey/AP, FILE)
In the next 30 years, sea level along the U.S. coastline is projected to rise, on average, 10 to 12 inches — the same amount it rose in the past century, according to a new report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2022 Sea Level Rise Technical Report. Experts believe the drastic rise will continue to exacerbate coastal erosion and the problems people living near the ocean will face.
About 2 feet of sea level rise along the U.S. coastline is increasingly likely between 2020 and 2100 because of emissions to date, according to the NOAA report. An additional 1.5 to 5 feet of sea level rise is possible by the end of the century should countries around the world fail to curb emissions, the report predicted.
Rate of sea level rise ‘has doubled since 1993’ thanks to climate change, report finds
Ben Adler, SeniorEditor – November 7, 2022
The rate of global sea level rise is speeding up dramatically as temperatures continue to rise due to climate change, a new report finds, and now poses “a major threat to many millions” of people living on ocean coastlines.
Sea levels have risen by an average of 10 millimeters since January 2020, reaching a new record high this year, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which issued a stark warning in its provisional State of the Global Climate in 2022 report, released Sunday. The WMO, a division of the United Nations, found a number of striking facts about climate change and its effects, including that “the past eight years are on track to be the eight warmest on record.”
But the most alarming findings may be those related to sea level rise, as the encroaching ocean threatens major coastal population centers with stronger storms, higher storm surges and flooding. “The rate of sea level rise has doubled since 1993,” the WMO noted. “The past two and a half years alone account for 10 percent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements started nearly 30 years ago.”
Meltwater flows from the Greenland ice sheet into the Baffin Bay in July. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
One of the main causes of the accelerating pace of sea level rise is melting glaciers. According to the WMO, “2022 took an exceptionally heavy toll on glaciers in the European Alps, with initial indications of record-shattering melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost mass for the 26th consecutive year and it rained (rather than snowed) there for the first time in September.”
Last week, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued a report on endangered glaciers finding that one-third of the glaciers in UNESCO World Heritage sites are expected to disappear by 2050. The remaining two-thirds can be saved if greenhouse gas emissions are cut quickly and deeply enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report concluded.
The devastating effects of melting glaciers is already being witnessed in Pakistan, where an unusually warm spring caused glacial melt that contributed to the floods that have submerged one-third of the country, displacing millions of residents.
The report’s release coincided with the opening of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Sharm-el Sheik, Egypt, also known as COP27, with the intent of bolstering support for more aggressive action to curb emissions. Political developments, however, have diminished hopes that major new commitments of reducing greenhouse gases will be announced during COP27.
People wade across a flooded street after heavy monsoon rainfall in Karachi, Pakistan, in July. (Asif Hassan /AFP via Getty Images)
“The greater the warming, the worse the impacts,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “We have such high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere now that the lower 1.5°C of the Paris Agreement is barely within reach. It’s already too late for many glaciers, and the melting will continue for hundreds if not thousands of years. … Although we still measure this in terms of millimeters per year, it adds up to half to 1 meter per century, and that is a long-term and a major threat to many millions of coastal dwellers and low-lying states.”
As the oceans rise from melting glaciers and polar ice caps, they also are getting warmer as they absorb more heat, causing their volume to expand further. Ocean temperatures reached record levels in 2021 (the latest year for which data was available). Hotter oceans lead to an array of effects on the ecosystem, including coral bleaching and declining fish populations. It also powers stronger storms like Hurricane Fiona, which recently devastated Puerto Rico with 30 inches of rain, causing landslides and overflowing rivers and widespread power outages.
In 2022, the average global temperature is estimated to be about 1.15 °C above the 1850-1900 average. This actually could have been worse. For the first time in a century, La Niña, a weather pattern that causes cool water to rise to the surface in the Pacific Ocean — leading to cooler-than-usual weather — occurred for the third year in a row. The WMO estimates that this means 2022 will be the fifth- or sixth-hottest year on record, rather than the hottest ever. But the trend toward ever-higher temperatures remains clear.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Monday. (Fayez Nureldine/AFP via Getty Images)
“The latest State of the Global Climate report is a chronicle of climate chaos,” said U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in response to the report’s release. “As the World Meteorological Organization shows so clearly, change is happening with catastrophic speed, devastating lives and livelihoods on every continent. Glacier melt records are themselves melting away, jeopardizing water security for whole continents. We must answer the planet’s distress signal with action — ambitious, credible climate action. COP27 must be the place, and now must be the time.”
Opinion: MAGA Republicans a bitter, lonely, violent bunch
Pat Brothwell – November 6, 2022
“Violence of any kind against anyone, even elected officials or a member of their family simply cannot be tolerated in our great country. The attacker of Paul Pelosi should be prosecuted to the full extent the law will allow.” NC-11 Republican congressional candidate Chuck Edwards tweeted this on Oct. 28 in response to the physical attack via hammer of Nancy Pelosi’s husband.
Chuck Edwards can say he condemns violence until his face turns blue, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. He’s aligned himself with a party whose ethos is cruelty. I genuinely want to believe that more people than not are fundamentally good, that they can think for themselves and reject cruelty and violence. However, as much as I want to believe this, I don’t know that I can, not the way things are going, where so many people and politicians are complicit in allowing hate and violence to thrive. Are you OK with it? It’s something you’ll have to ask yourself when voting this week.
Merriam-Webster defines violence as “intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force.” So while yes, a hammer attack on an elderly gentleman is an unequivocal act of violence (and easy to denounce), any action that perpetuates the destruction is violent.
Chuck Edwards seems OK with the violence of the Jan. 6 insurrection, where police officers were beaten unconscious and people were killed. He’s never denounced Trump’s “Big Lie.”
Edwards seemingly tolerates the vitriol of our Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Edwards has campaigned with Robinson, who regularly engages in violence-inspiring hate speech — the same day Edwards tweeted about “not tolerating” violence, Robinson posted on Facebook, “I’m sorry Paul I don’t believe you or the press!!!!” No prominent NC Republicans denounced Robinson’s callousness.
Edwards prides himself on being pro-life, but anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that if abortion is criminalized in North Carolina, many women and girls may meet violent ends. He’ll tolerate that violence, though, because he belongs to a religion more concerned with sanctimony than empathy or people.
And lest we forget, on the afternoon that 19 children and two teachers were violently torn apart by the bullets of an AR-15, Edwards’s Republican State Senate colleagues held a press conference to introduce a North Carolina version of Florida’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill that would lead to increased violence towards LGBTQ+ students. Edwards voted affirmatively for that bill and has neglected to address gun control — the kind that would make it harder for mentally disturbed young men to obtain and perpetrate violence with semi-automatic weapons — in any meaningful way because that might dent his income.
Edwards isn’t the worst of the bunch by any means, but his complicity is emblematic of today’s MAGA right.
On Oct. 29, also in response to the Pelosi attack, U. S Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) tweeted, “Almost all my family are Republicans. We’ve disagreed about a lot throughout the years, but I never thought they were cruel. This isn’t my parents’ Republican party. MAGA-Republicans are a bitter, lonely, and violent bunch. When we need compassion they choose cruelty.” This resonated with me.
Like Swalwell, I grew up in a very conservative area and often disagreed politically with my mostly Republican family. However, while I think many are guilty of not thinking critically enough about why they believe what they believe, I don’t think most are cruel and maintain close relationships with many.
My father, one of my favorite people in the world, and cliche as it may be, still my hero, had always been a Republican, the type Swalwell alludes doesn’t have a place in this new order. After Trump was elected and made abject cruelty and violent rhetoric under the guise of “telling it like it is” an accepted norm, I watched my father become just as disturbed and disgusted with the flagrant hypocrisy and cruelty of the MAGA right as I was. My father and I might have once disagreed politically, but we’ve always shared the same values, those he taught me: treating others with kindness, making people feel welcome, fairness, integrity, and that as long as people aren’t hurting you, their personal choices aren’t any of your business.
At one point, my father and Chuck Edwards probably had similar political views, but my father actually doesn’t tolerate violence, and he doesn’t just say this, his actions and shifting votes show so. I hope more people show that they don’t tolerate violence this election day. There’s nothing weak about changing your point of view.
Pat Brothwell is a former high school teacher, and current writer and marketing professional living and working in Asheville.
The answer to both questions is, in part, the same: To the graveyards of soldiers. But a lot of the missing men of Moscow have also fled Russian President Vladimir Putin’s draft for his war in Ukraine. In fact, demographers say Russia may not recover for generations, if ever.
“Putin spent years racing against Russia’s demographic clock, only to order an invasion of Ukraine that’s consigning his country’s population to a historic decline,” Bloomberg News reports. Here’s a look at what demographer Alexei Raksha calls Russia’s “perfect storm” of demographic decline:
So where have all the young men gone?
Putin says his recent mobilization drafted about 300,000 men, 82,000 of whom are already in Ukraine. Another 300,000 Russians are believed to have fled to other countries to avoid the draft. The Pentagon estimated in August, before Kyiv’s autumn counteroffensive, that Russia had incurred about 80,000 casualties in Ukraine, including wounded troops. “I feel like we are a country of women now,” Moscow resident Stanislava, 33, told the Times. “I was searching for male friends to help me move some furniture, and I realized almost all of them had left.”
Aleksei Ermilov, the founder of Russia’s Chop-Chop barber shop empire, tells the Times you “can see the massive relocation wave more in Moscow and St. Petersburg than in other cities, partially because more people have the means to leave there.”
The urban professionals who could blithely avoid thinking about the war over the summer did get a rude awakening when the Kremlin started pressing them into military service. The ranks of Moscow’s “intelligentsia, who often have disposable income and passports for foreign travel,” have “thinned noticeably — in restaurants, in the hipster community, and at social gatherings like dinners and parties,” the Times reports. But ethnic and religious minorities in some regions have it worse.
In the remote far north of Russia and along the Mongolia border, in the regions of Sakha and Buryatia, mobilization rates are up to six times higher than in Russia’s European regions, according to Yekaterina Morland at the Asians of Russia Foundation. Indigenous people in those regions were “rounded up in their villages” and enlistment officers scoured the tundra and “handed out summonses to anyone they met,” Vladimir Budaev of the Free Buryatia Foundation told The Associated Press.
How has the male exodus affected Russian demography?
Russia already had a huge gender imbalance before the Ukraine invasion, dating back to massive battlefield losses in World War II, Paul Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. Results from the 2021 census are expected to show that Russia has 10.5 million more women than men, almost the same disparity as a decade ago — the double blow being that Russian men at “prime child-bearing age” are dying in Ukraine or fleeing Putin’s draft, which will “further depress the already low birthrates in the Russian Federation and put the country’s demographic future, already troubled, at even greater risk.”
“The mobilization is upending families at perhaps the most fraught moment ever for Russian demographics, with the number of women of childbearing age down by about a third in the past decade” amid the country’s broader population decline, Bloomberg reports. “While demographic traumas usually play out over decades, the fallout of the invasion is making the worst scenarios more likely — and much sooner than expected.”
Continuing with the Ukraine war and mobilization efforts until the end of next spring would be “catastrophic” for Russia, Moscow demographer Igor Efremov tells Bloomberg. It would likely bring birth rates down to 1 million between mid-2023 and mid-2024, dropping the fertility rate to 1.2 children per woman, a low mark Russia hit only once, in the 1999-2000 period. “A fertility rate of 2.1 is needed to keep populations stable without migration,” Bloomberg adds, and currently Russia is facing “immigration outflows” and serious questions about its “ability to attract workers from abroad.”
The war is bad for Ukraine, too, right?
Yes — and like Russia, Ukraine was already hurting demographically even before the invasion, Lyman Stone, a research fellow at the conservative Institute for Family Studies, wrote in March. “Both Russia and Ukraine have low fertility rates, but in recent years, Russia has implemented pro-natal policies that have helped the country avoid extreme fertility declines,” while Ukraine has been relatively lacking in such policies as it struggled through 15 years of war and political and economic upheaval.
Given Russia’s much larger population and less severe recent population decline, “Ukraine’s position compared to Russia’s is steadily eroding,” and “this trend will continue at an even greater pace in the future as the gaps in fertility rates between the two countries grow wider,” Stone predicts. But “core demographic factors like birth rates and migration rates,” while important, “are not destiny,” and Ukraine has “turned demographic decline into military rejuvenation” through alliance-building and the “sharp willingness” of Ukrainians to fight.
Moreover, if Russia succeeds in annexing significant parts of Ukraine, Putin will have succeeded in bulking up Russia’s population — but he’ll also be adding Ukraine’s “unfavorable demographics” to his own problems, Bloomberg notes.
Might there be a Russian post-war baby boom?
It’s possible. Sometimes wars “lead to higher fertility,” as when “sudden bursts of conception” occur as men deploy for battle, Goble writes at Eurasia Daily Monitor. “For example, monthly birth data from the 1940s clearly shows that U.S. baby boom began not as the G.I.’s returned from war, but as they were leaving for war.” After the fighting stops, he adds, “wars may trigger a surge of nationalist ideas making people susceptible to pro-natal ideas and policies, even as so-called ‘replacement fertility’ often leads families to ‘respond’ to high-casualty events by having ‘replacement’ children.'”
In the short term, though, “it is likely that in conditions of uncertainty, many couples will postpone having children for some time until the situation stabilizes,” Elena Churilova, research fellow in the Higher School Economics’s International Laboratory for Population and Health, tells Bloomberg. “In 2023, we are likely to see a further decline in the birth rate.”
And in the meantime, “downloads of dating apps have significantly increased in the countries to which Russian men fled,” the Times reports, noting sharp rises in downloads in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. “All of the most reasonable guys are gone,” said Tatiana, a 36-year-old Muscovite. “The dating pool has shrunk by at least 50 percent.”
Is there any way Russia can reverse its demographic spiral?
The most likely outcome is that “Putin’s war will cast a shadow on Russia for a long time to come — one growing ever darker the longer the war carries on,” Goble writes. Not only will the loss of Russian men to emigration and battlefield death “leave a huge hole in Russian society,” but “those Russian men who do indeed manage to return will experience enormous problems,” from PTSD and other health struggles to participating in a “proliferation of crime waves similar to those that followed the Afghan and Chechen wars.”
The shape of “Russia’s population pyramid” means “the birthrate is almost destined to decline,” Brent Peabody wrote at Foreign Policy in January. Putin has said he’s haunted by that fact, and “Russia’s need for more people is no doubt a motivating consideration for its current aggressive posture toward Ukraine,” even as “the idea that Ukrainians would sign up to be good Russians is largely delusional.”
Ukrainians may not sign up to be good Russians willingly, but thousands of Ukrainian children have been spirited off to Russia to be placed in Russian “foster families,” AP reports.
Ukrainian authorities say they are launching a criminal case against Russia’s children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who said in mid-October that she herself had adopted a boy sized by Russian forces in Ukraine’s bombed-out Mariupol, AP reports. U.S., British, and other Western nations sanctioned Lvova-Belova in September over allegations she masterminded the removal to Russia of more than 2,000 vulnerable children from Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
Demography, and assumptions about how nations will react to demographic changes, are not exact arts, Rhodes College professor Jennifer Sciubba wrote at Population Reference Bureau in April. For example, “for years, one common argument in the U.S. policy community was that Russia’s demographic troubles would curtail its ability to project power outside its borders.”
Obviously, the “geriatric peace theory” was not a good fit for Russia, Sciubba adds. But more broadly, “population aging and contraction are such new trends that we know little about how states conduct foreign policy under these conditions, and we shouldn’t expect aging states to act like aging individuals.”
A recent Pew poll concluded nearly eight in 10 voters said the economy will be “very important” to their voting decisions. Another such poll, by ABC News and Ipsos, showed that almost half of respondents cited either the economy or inflation as the issue about which they were most concerned. The poll indicated that concerns about the economy and inflation are “much more likely to drive voters towards Republicans.”
But that impulse is not only ill-considered, every bit of available evidence makes clear that the GOP is the wrong party to which to turn if you seek better U.S. economic performance in the future.
In fact, it is not close. When it comes to the economy, the GOP is the problem and not the solution. If anything, it is a greater obstacle to our economic well-being today than it has ever been.
At the same time, the economic record of President Joe Biden and the Democrats is not just consistent—in creating jobs, reducing the deficit, and enhancing our competitiveness—during the past two years their record has been one of extraordinary, often record-breaking success.
History tells a very stark tale. Ten of the last 11 recessions began under Republicans. The one that started under former President Donald Trump and the current GOP leadership was the worst since the Great Depression–and while perhaps any president presiding over a pandemic might have seen the economy suffer, Trump’s gross mismanagement of COVID-19 clearly and greatly deepened the problems the U.S. economy faced. Meanwhile, historically, Democratic administrations have overseen recoveries from those Republican lows. During the seven decades before Trump, real GDP growth averaged just over 2.5 percent under Republicans and a little more than 4.3 percent under Democrats.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Republicans have also historically presided over huge expansions in the U.S. deficit, while Democrats (since Bill Clinton’s administration) have overseen dramatic deficit reduction. Ronald Reagan more than doubled the deficit from $70 billion to more than $175 billion. George H.W. Bush nearly doubled that to $290 billion. Clinton ended his administration with a $128.2 billion surplus.
George W. Bush inherited that… and left office with a record deficit of more than $1.4 trillion. Obama reduced that by very nearly $1 trillion. Each of Donald Trump’s last two years in office saw federal budgets with deficits of over $3 trillion. In fact, in total, the national debt rose almost $8 trillion during Trump’s time in office. According to ProPublica, it was the third biggest such increase in U.S. history—after George W. Bush and Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War years.
What about job creation?
The U.S. lost jobs under Trump and created relatively few under George W. Bush. Of the 14 presidents since World War II, seven were Democrats and seven were Republican. Of the seven with the highest job creation rates, six were Democrats. Of the seven with the lowest job creation rates, six were Republicans.
What about now? Biden and the current Democratic Congress have created more jobs than the past three Republican administrations combined.
Saul Loeb/Getty
The job creation rate in 2021 was the most ever in a single year. GDP growth in 2021 was the highest since 1984. This year, the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, its lowest level in 50 years. As part of that, we are seeing record low unemployment for Blacks and Latinos.
Ok, you might say, but what about inflation?
Rising prices are a real problem for many Americans. But the origins of inflation have very little to do with the Biden administration or the Congress. Inflation is a global problem that is related, according to economists, primarily to supply chain problems associated with COVID, Vladimir Putin’s escalation of the war in Ukraine, and corporate profiteering.
What makes the Republican focus on this issue so shockingly hypocritical is that Trump’s mismanagement of the COVID crisis, his support for Putin, and Republicans’ protection of Big Oil (and big businesses) actually helped create the conditions that have driven prices up. Further, Republicans unanimously opposed every single measure by the Biden administration to reduce prices and help those hit by inflation—including the landmark Inflation Reduction Act’s efforts to lower drug costs and to help those hardest hit.
Meanwhile, the U.S. just reported stronger than expected growth in the last quarter and the price of gasoline, an oft-cited sign of inflation, has been falling for months.
At the same time, a substantial majority within the GOP have sought to block virtually every single new economic measure proposed or passed by Biden and the Democratic Congress. That includes the America Recovery Act that lifted millions out of poverty and drove job creation, the Chips and Science Act to enhance competitiveness, and even the so-called “Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill” which garnered the support of fewer than half of the GOP caucus in the Senate.
You might assume that if the GOP opposed these initiatives but were critical of what Biden was doing, that they had alternative plans that they have presented to the American people. But, you would be wrong. In fact, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has bragged that he would not even discuss his agenda until after the election. They have no inflation plan. And the plans they’ve said they admire—like that of the United Kingdom’s prime minister-for-a-second Liz Truss—have been a catastrophe.
The last time the Republicans were in charge, during the Trump years, they passed precisely one significant piece of economic legislation, a tax cut that benefited the very rich at the expense of everyone else and, as we have established, helped explode the federal budget deficit.
Republicans are just plain bad at managing the economy. They have been for as long as anyone who is alive can remember. And they continue to be—although they are achieving previously unattained new levels of cynicism and obstructionism that make the current crowd of Republicans look even worse than their very unsuccessful predecessors.
History and data make it clear that Democrats are good for the economy—while Republicans, especially the current Republicans in Congress, are not.
Up next for the Republicans are plans to cut Medicare and social security, plans to increase costs for average Americans on a wide variety of fronts, and they’re even contemplating reducing support for Ukraine—at a critical moment in its war to defend its democracy and stop the Russian aggression that threatens not only them, but the West.
Republicans have done a great job fooling voters into thinking that their simplistic economic philosophies of tax cuts and minimal regulation are “good for business.” But facts, history, and logic show otherwise.
If you care about the economy, want to fight inflation, want to create jobs, want a better life for your family, want to preserve democracy, and want to defend your fundamental rights, then you should vote for the Democrats.
Herschel Walker’s Senate run is a stain on American democracy
Rita Omokha – November 4, 2022
So much has been said about Herschel Walker’s gross incompetency as he takes aim at securing a seat in the U.S. Senate. As I looked at the recent nail-biter polling – Walker and incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock are even at 46.4% on Thursday night – my first thought was: How could this race be this close?
Then, I felt enormous shame for this country. A place my family and I, Nigerian immigrants who became naturalized citizens more than 20 years ago, have always viewed as a symbol of true democracy. A country where we proclaim justice and freedom and fight fiercely to uphold those signature markers. A nation fervently striving, still, for common decency.
But in recent years, there has been a trend away from these American hallmark qualities. Since the rise of Donald Trump, the pursuit and upkeep of democracy is slipping away before our eyes, morphing into his vision of totalitarianism by way of misinformation indoctrination. Walker’s ascending candidacy, endorsed by Trump, has proved just that.
Here is a verifiable unqualified man following the same playbook of the former, similarly inept president who willfully and gleefully incited a takedown of democracy on Jan. 6, 2021, and God help us all, Walker may just break through in Georgia.
Shame on you, America
Much like Trump with the presidency, when Walker threw his hat into the Senate race, people scoffed at the idea. There was no way a man who can barely form a coherent sentence could convince reasonable citizens that he, over a well-respected, educated pastor, was the better choice. And, much like Trump, I strongly doubt, given his rambling speeches and cringe gaffes, that Walker knows what the Constitution is, let alone grasp his duties to protect it. The celebrity-turned-politician based on popularity and name recognition needs to end. Walker is the most dangerous embodiment of this.
The requirements to run for Senate ought to be more than that, no? The actual prerequisite is that the nominee must be 30, a U.S. citizen and a resident of the state. That’s it.
Perhaps after this embarrassment of a candidate and the slew of election deniers we’ve seen throw their hats into races, we ought to have stricter rules. Perhaps testing their knowledge of the Constitution? The founding of democracy? A standard qualifier that serves as a screening of those seeking to be responsible for preserving America’s self-governing system.
And no, neither Walker’s former quick feet on the field of the University of Georgia (where he did not graduate) and later in the NFL nor his Heisman Trophy are qualifications.
And not his faith. As someone of Christian faith, and a staunch one at that, it’s infuriating to see Walker use God as a guise for his numerous depravities. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in “being born again,” being repentant, and receiving grace. I’m all for it. That’s the core principle of the Bible – to aspire to walk and live like Christ. But, when someone who clearly doesn’t understand being “saved by grace through faith in Christ Jesus,” as the Ephesians scripture promises, and all but uses the faith as a prop to blind voters, to cover up lie after lie, to bend reality, where is the integrity in that? Where is God in that?
With 64% of Americans practicing the faith, Christianity is the dominant religion in the nation. In Georgia, among the most religious states, 80% of the population practices the faith. It’s a con people like Walker have realized help their candidacy, and voters, mostly white evangelicals, are none the wiser.
Republican U.S. Senate Herschel Walker campaigns in Cumming, Ga., on Oct. 27, 2022.
Similar to Trump, who before the presidential election had an audio leaked where he bragged about sexual assaults and his pervasive objectification of women, yet, voters – overwhelmingly, white evangelicals – overlooked this, and this man who knew and knows nothing about American democracy, the Constitution and the urgent need to protect it became president because … God. Because religion. Shame on you, America.
Token Black puppet of the GOP
This, I’m afraid, is the Republicans’ new playbook. Bad people behaving badly has become on brand with American conservatism.
And much like Trump taking the highest office in the land, Walker could follow suit in Georgia. A man prone to violent outbursts, with a track record of domestic violence and sexual abuse, who once talked about “having a shoot-out with police” and threatened his former wife’s life with a gun, is who Georgians see as the best man to represent them in the U.S. Senate? A man who flashed a phony law enforcement badge as a campaign prop? The token Black puppet of the GOP who doesn’t know the supreme law of the land from the Bill of Rights, who, because of a famous name, has voters seriously thinking, yes, he can represent the state because he’s run down a football field?
Walker symbolizes the stereotyped Black man, forever misunderstood. He’s being paraded around by GOP leaders as a pervasive caricature of who Black Americans, specifically men, have been typecast to be – illiterate, lazy, only good at being an athlete, absent father and a dunce. And he wears it like a prize. And Georgia voters – predominantly white Americans – love all of it. This is the kind of Black candidate they want – the antithesis of Warnock.
This combination of photos shows Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, left, and Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.
That is exactly what the GOP has been banking on. Walker resembles Warnock in skin tone alone but is an empty vessel – an instrument they can contort to get Republicans one more vote in the Senate. It’s all about the vote.
A threat of fascism swirling
To be clear, this is not a knock on American conservatism. American conservatism is intended to preserve the principles of this nation and its Founding Fathers. Founders who were rebelling against tyranny.
Now, conservatism is synonymous with tyrannical oppressors and criminals.
It’s a stain, like Walker’s candidacy and ascent, on America’s storied legacy that has long been the pride of many. For immigrants like me, knowing that America is our beacon of hope and a land of endless opportunities, we fight to hold on to what America has always symbolized. A hope-against-hope type of faith in its still-young democracy, remembering still and always what the fight up to this point has been for. When ill-equipped, dishonest people like Walker threaten America’s path forward with their baseless candidacy, it fractures the hard-fought foundation of this country.
Trump’s presidency cracked open this setback. Since then, there has been a threat of fascism swirling. If this trajectory of tyranny and misinformation continues, the regression is far worse than any of us could’ve imagined. Just this year alone, we’ve seen glimpses of it: the reversal of Roe v. Wade, and the legal challenges to same-sex marriage, contraception and affirmative action.
It’s a stain on America’s legacy that we’ve allowed election deniers, demonstrated idiots and outright criminals to hold any power. Walker may very well become the U.S. senator of Georgia, and that’s on you – on us – America.
Rita Omokha, an adjunct at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, is an award-winning Nigerian American journalist and essayist.
Midterm elections will leave us even more divided — the ‘Disunited States of America | Opinion
Andres Oppenheimer – November 4, 2022
If Republicans win the Nov. 8 midterm elections by a wide margin, as several polls are forecasting, the U.S. Congress will be virtually controlled by legislators who have not accepted the results of the 2020 elections, including many who have supported the violent takeover of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A Congress controlled by election skeptics and coup-mongers — people who are not willing to accept their rivals’ victory — may turn an already politically divided country into an even more polarized one.
Worse, it may lead to greater political violence, prompting more incidents like the recent attack on the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi by a right-wing extremist. We may soon become known as the Disunited States of America.
According to a Washington Post investigation, 51% of Republican candidates running for Congress, governorships and attorney general positions in Tuesday’s elections have either challenged or questioned President Biden’s victory in 2020. Many of those candidates are likely to be elected, and will be in charge of certifying the votes in the 2024 presidential elections.
A similar study by the New York Times found that 70% of Republicans running for Congress on Nov. 8 have echoed former President Trump’ s false claims that Biden’s election was rigged.
For the record, virtually all of Trump’s lies about the 2020 elections have been proven wrong by numerous vote recounts.
In addition to the Electoral College, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court, more than 60 lower courts, Trump’s then-Vice President Mike Pence and former Trump Attorney General William Barr looked into Trump’s fraud claims and concluded that Biden was legitimately elected in 2020.
Biden won the Electoral College by 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232 and the popular vote by 7.5 million votes. By comparison, Trump had won the Electoral College in 2016, but lost the popular vote by 3 million votes.
Even the conservative Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, after supporting Trump during his term, concluded after the 2020 elections that the former president’s fraud claims were rubbish. The newspaper said that isolated disputes over mailed ballots did “not add up to a stolen election.” It added that even if Biden’s victory had been overturned in one of the contested states’ vote recounts, Biden would have won in the Electoral College by a comfortable margin.
And yet, despite all of this, Americans are likely to elect many Republicans who reject the basic foundation of democracy: the sanctity of the vote.
Historically, the opposition party tends to win U.S. midterm elections. And polls suggest that the same will happen on Tuesday, with Republicans almost sure to retake the House of Representatives and, perhaps, also the Senate.
Many voters are more concerned about inflation than about the future of democracy.
Although 71% of Americans say they are worried about the future of democracy, only 7% say this is the most important issue facing the country, a recent New York Times -Siena poll shows.
But the Republican Party has been successful in pushing the narrative that the high U.S. inflation rate is all of Biden’s fault and not an international problem mainly caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In fact, America remains one of the world’s strongest economies. The country’s 8.1 annual inflation rate is below Germany’s 10.2%, or Great Britain’s 11.3%, according to International Monetary Fund data.
And Biden has done a good job countering Russia’s invasion, which is the biggest current threat to world peace. Biden managed to revamp U.S. ties with the European Union, which Trump had crippled when he threatened to withdraw from the NATO military alliance, and added Japan and other Asian countries to the trans-Atlantic bloc that is helping defend Ukraine.
Still, I’m pretty pessimistic about the future of America’s democracy. I’m afraid that despite the fact that many moderate Republicans don’t believe Trump’s election lies and are true believers in the rule of law, they will cast their votes based on other issues, and will elect a new generation of extremists who are not ready to play by the rules of democracy.
We are heading toward a more divided, and probably more violence-ridden country.
Americans among dozens held hostage by Indigenous group in Amazon
CBSNews – November 4, 2022
A photo posted online by Angela Ramirez on November 3, 2022, shows a group of tourists, including Ramirez, being held on a boat in Peru’s Amazon region by an Indigenous group protesting what they say is the government’s failure to help after an oil spill. / Credit: Angela Ramirez/Facebook
A group of Indigenous people in Peru’s Amazon region has taken dozens of foreign and Peruvian tourists hostage as they made their way through the area on river tour boat. The Indigenous group says it took the action to protest the lack of government aid following an oil spill in the area, according to local media and members of the tour group.
“(We want) to call the government’s attention with this action, there are foreigners and Peruvians, there are about 70 people,” Watson Trujillo Acosta, the leader of the Cuninico community, told the country’s national RPP radio network.
The tourists include citizens from the United States, Spain, France, the U.K. and Switzerland.
Lon Haldeman, one of the Americans held captive, said in a statement shared with CBS News on Friday by his wife that the group had been held “for the past 26 hours.”
He said that the hostage-takers were demanding “medical help and clean water and food” after an oil spill in the area “contaminated the wells and river.”
“The villagers are peaceful toward us but they did take over the boat with spears and clubs,” Haldeman said in the statement. “No one had guns. We were parked near an island last night and the villagers took the battery from the boat motor. The captain and drivers are being held in a village jail. The village wants to keep the big boat for ransom. We might get some small rescue boats. There is new action every hour.”
Angela Ramirez, a Peruvian national who said she was among the hostages, said in a Facebook post on Thursday afternoon that there were children, pregnant women and disabled people among those seized on the boat.
Ramirez also said the Indigenous community was treating them with kindness and respect, adding that holding the tourists was “the only way they have found to look for solutions for their community” after oil spills that allegedly led to the deaths of two children and one woman.https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3Dpfbid02yScfATG6Qmr29TXQNkKMV8bBK6EV45qzSrrcmG8d2GrJkjjmJ791JQDJNJMqzR6Wl%26id%3D100005041500479&show_text=true&width=500
“The sooner they are heard, the sooner they will let us go,” said Ramirez in the online post. “Help me help them be heard.”
Acosta said his group had taken the “radical measure” in an effort to put pressure on the government to send a delegation to assess the environmental damage from a September 16 incident that spilled 2,500 tons of crude oil into the Cuninico River. He said the detainees would spend the night inside the vessel while awaiting a resolution to the situation.
Susan Notorangelo, Haldeman’s wife, told CBS News her husband had been sending sporadic updates to let her know he was OK, but not responding to many questions, which she suspected was an effort to conserve battery power on his iPad. Notorangelo said she had been told the U.S. State Department was sending a boat with food and water, but didn’t believe it had yet arrived at the remote location.
Haldeman is a tour guide, but was not running the tour that was detained. Notorangelo said her husband and the other tourists were supposed to have ended their boat ride at noon on Thursday and then ridden bikes to the nearby town of Iquitos. She said her husband has an airline ticket to leave Peru on Tuesday, and hopes he and the other hostages will be released in time for him to make the flight.
Ramirez told RPP that the Cuninico community had said it was prepared to hold the hostages for six to eight days, until it receives a response from the government.
She said they were “physically fine,” but in a new post on Friday morning she said the sun was strong, babies were crying and they were almost out of water.
Local media indicated no public comment from the Peruvian government or police on the incident, which took place on a tributary of the Maranon River.
Environmental activists protest outside the headquarters of the Peruvian Petroleum Company (Petroperu) in Lima, Peru, August 22, 2016. / Credit: Getty
Indigenous communities had already been blocking the transit of all vessels on the river in protest against the spill, which was caused by a rupture in the Norperuano oil pipeline.
On September 27, the government declared a 90-day state of emergency in the impacted region, which is home to about 2,500 members of the Cuninico and Urarinas communities.
The roughly 500-mile-long Norperuano pipeline, owned by the state-run Petroperu, was built four decades ago to transport crude oil from the Amazon region to the ports of Piura, on the coast.
According to Petroperu, the spill was the result of an eight-inch cut made deliberately in the pipeline, which the company said had suffered over a dozen similar attacks in the past.
CBS News’ Maddie Richards and April Alexander contributed to this report.
About 150 tourists are reportedly being held hostage in Peru. Locals are demanding a response to oil spills that have polluted their river.
Paola Rosa-Aquino, Natalie Musumeci – November 4, 2022
A man shows oil contamination inside Block 192, a dormant Amazon oil field in Peru.Reuters
Locals from a Peruvian area of the Amazon rainforest have reportedly taken up to 150 tourists hostage.
Those detained reportedly include citizens from the US, UK, Spain, France, and Switzerland.
Locals took the hostages in protest of repeated oil spills plaguing the region, RPP Noticias reported.
Locals from an Indigenous tribe in a Peruvian area of the Amazon rainforest have taken up to 150 tourists, including Americans, hostage in protest of repeated oil spills plaguing the region, according to a local report.
Ángela Ramírez, who was among those taken hostage on Thursday while traveling by boat near Cuninico in the Loreto province of Peru, told local media that those taken captive include elderly people, pregnant women, and a one-month-old baby.
“They told us that it was because they wanted attention from the state, in search of a solution for oil spills that have happened 46 times, which led to the death of two children and a woman,” Ramírez told RPP Noticias.
The people being held include Peruvian nationals as well as citizens from the United States, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, and Switzerland, Ramírez told the news outlet.
The woman said that it has been indicated that the hostages could be held for up to eight days. No one had been harmed.
Ramírez’s mother, Araceli Alva, told RPP Noticias that her daughter had been traveling with cyclists through the Peruvian jungle last week. Ramírez decided to leave by boat via the river on Thursday and was taken, Alva said.
Ramírez issued a plea on her Facebook story, saying, “The sooner they’re heard, the sooner they’ll let us go. Help me share, we are well physically. Help me help them be heard,” according to the news outlet.
Watson Trujillo Acosta, the leader of the Cuninico community behind the action, told RPP Noticias that the tourists were taken hostage “in a radical and indefinite manner” in order “to be able to attract the attention of the government.”
“They are in a safe place on the banks of the Marañón River gorge in front of the native community of Cuninico,” said Acosta, who claimed 70 tourists and nationals were taken, according to the news outlet.
Acosta said that his community is seeking “a state of emergency [to] be declared due to the constant [oil] spills that have been taking place in our territory.”
He also wants the Peruvian government to lead an investigation into the matter.
The US Department of State and Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the situation by Insider on Friday.
