Business – Finance – Page 123

Why a Trump-appointed Texas judge blocked Biden’s student-debt cancellation plan

Insider

Why a Trump-appointed Texas judge blocked Biden’s student-debt cancellation plan

Ayelet Sheffey – November 14, 2022

A view of the US Capitol before a news conference to discuss student-debt cancellation on September 29, 2022.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Trump-appointed Judge Mark Pittman struck down Biden’s debt relief in Texas last week.
He argued the two student-loan borrowers who sued have sufficient standing to block the plan.
But some legal experts and Democrats said Pittman should never have taken up the case in the first place.

A federal judge doesn’t think President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel student debt for millions of borrowers is legal.

On Thursday evening, Mark Pittman — a Texas judge appointed by former President Donald Trump — struck down Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student-loans for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year. He ruled in favor of two student-loan borrowers who filed the lawsuit because each of them didn’t qualify for the full amount of relief, and at this point, Pittman’s ruing bars the Education Department from discharging student loans until a final verdict is made.

Biden’s Justice Department has filed an appeal, but the administration is not accepting any new student-loan applications at this time.

The Texas case, along with a number of other lawsuits backed by conservative groups, challenges Biden’s authority to use the HEROES Act of 2003, which gives the Education Secretary the ability to waive or modify student-loan balances in connection with a national emergency, like COVID-19. They claimed that enacting broad student-loan forgiveness is an overreach of the authority and should require Congressional approval, while Biden has maintained one-time student-loan forgiveness is well within the administration’s legal authority.

Pittman appeared sympathetic to the conservatives’ arguments in his ruling. “This case involves the question of whether Congress—through the HEROES Act—gave the Secretary authority to implement a Program that provides debt forgiveness to millions of student-loan borrowers, totaling over $400 billion,” Pittman wrote in his ruling. “Whether the Program constitutes good public policy is not the role of this Court to determine. Still, no one can plausibly deny that it is either one of the largest delegations of legislative power to the executive branch, or one of the largest exercises of legislative power without congressional authority in the history of the United States.”

The other lawsuits are also moving through the courts. The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, ruled on Monday that its temporary pause on student-debt relief will remain in place until further orders from the court on a separate lawsuit in which six Republican-led states sued the loan forgiveness, arguing it would hurt their states’ tax revenues.

One of the key parts of Pittman’s ruling is that the plaintiffs actually met the legal requirements for a valid lawsuit. He ruled that they have standing to sue the administration, but several prominent Democrats and legal experts have questioned that decision — and other courts have thrown out similar conservative lawsuits due to a lack of standing.

The plaintiffs’ standing to sue

Both of the plaintiffs who brought the Texas lawsuit hold student loans. The first plaintiff, Myra Brown, sued because her loans are commercially-held and therefore ineligible for Biden’s debt relief, which requires the borrower to owe their debt directly to the federal government. And the other plaintiff, Alexander Taylor, sued because he was eligible only for $10,000 in debt forgiveness and not the full $20,000 since he did not receive a Pell Grant in college.

They both argued they were not given the opportunity to challenge the relief before its announcement since it didn’t go through the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice-and-comment period, and they said that failure to go through typical rulemaking processes, along with overstepping authority granted through the HEROES Act, were reasons why the debt relief should be blocked.

Pittman ruled that the plaintiffs have valid reasons for suing the administration. In his opinion, Pittman wrote that standing contains three legal requirements: there must be concrete injury, there must be causation, and there must be redressability, which is the likelihood the requested relief — in this case, blocking debt cancellation — would repair the injury caused. Pittman said that Biden’s Justice Department argument that the plaintiffs’ standing does not exist is “untrue.”

“Plaintiffs do not argue that they are injured because other people are receiving loan forgiveness,” Pittman wrote. “Their injury—no matter how many people are receiving loan forgiveness—is that they personally did not receive forgiveness and were denied a procedural right to comment on the Program’s eligibility requirements.”

And while Pittman concluded that debt relief did not violate procedural requirements, he said it violates authority under the HEROES Act because the “pandemic was declared a national emergency almost three years ago and declared weeks before the Program by the President as ‘over.’ Thus, it is unclear if COVID-19 is still a ‘national emergency’ under the Act.”

Some Democrats and legal experts take issue with the ruling

While Republican lawmakers were quick to laud Pittman’s decision, some legal experts weren’t sold on the merits of the ruling. Steve Vladeck, a CNN legal analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, wrote in an opinion piece that “the biggest problem with Pittman’s ruling isn’t its substance; it’s why he allowed the case to be brought in the first place.”

Vladeck referenced prior conservative lawsuits seeking to challenge the debt relief that had been dismissed for lack of standing, and that if “the complaint is just that the government is acting unlawfully in a way that doesn’t affect plaintiffs personally, that’s a matter to be resolved through the political process – not a judicial one.”

And Leah Litman, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Law, wrote on Twitter that the ruling “is just the latest example of Trump-appointed district judges doing completely outlandish, lawless things to rule against policies by Democratic administrations,” referring to what she said was a lack of standing on the plaintiffs’ side.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren also slammed the ruling, telling NBC News on Sunday that “we have a court down in Texas, and if they’re going to play politics instead of actually following the law, they do put the program at risk.”

Mexico releases ‘ambitious’ renewable energy targets to fight climate change

Yahoo! News

Mexico releases ‘ambitious’ renewable energy targets to fight climate change

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 14, 2022

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry and Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard hold a press conference at the COP27 climate conference in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

Mexico announced Monday that it plans to dramatically increase the amount of power it generates from renewable sources of energy, deploying more than 30 additional gigawatts of annual electricity generation from wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2030.

The new clean energy targets were made public at a news conference at the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP27, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. By the end of the decade, Mexico aims to generate more than 40 gigawatts of power from wind and solar alone.

As of 2019, Mexico had 80 gigawatts of installed electricity generation capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The majority of that comes from natural gas, while renewables account for 10% and hydropower 7%, so the new target would represent a major shift toward a largely renewable energy portfolio if the country succeeds in meeting its new target.

John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate change, joined Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard at Monday’s news conference.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry speaks at the COP27 climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

“Secretary Kerry indicated his support for Mexico’s new renewable goal, and the United States intends to work closely with Mexico to achieve these ambitious goals, including through U.S. efforts to mobilize financial support and joint efforts to catalyze and incentivize investments into new Mexican renewable energy deployment and transmission,” the U.S. Embassy in Mexico reported.

Mexico is the 13th-largest global emitter of greenhouse gases. It is one of the few countries that updated its plan to reduce emissions at COP27, pledging to reduce emissions by 35% from business-as-usual levels by 2030. The renewable energy targets are intended to help it meet that goal. Mexico also said it plans to double its spending on clean energy by 2030, protect more of its forests, increase electric vehicle usage and cut down on methane emissions from its oil and gas drilling sectors.

“This is a huge, significant shift from where Mexico was last year in Glasgow,” Kerry told reporters on Saturday, in response to Mexico’s new emissions reduction promise and in reference to the last climate change conference, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland. Kerry added that he had negotiated extensively with his Mexican counterparts and said Mexico has “extraordinary availability of sun, extraordinary availability of wind power.”

Earlier on Monday the U.S. and China achieved a diplomatic breakthrough when President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to restart stalled climate change negotiations.

The sun sets behind the sign showing the logo of the COP27 climate conference at the Sharm el-Sheikh resort. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images)

Kerry has been working to persuade large developing countries to take new actions to decarbonize their economies and offering assistance to do so. Last week, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union countries committed to jointly mobilizing $8.5 billion to finance South Africa’s deployment of electric vehicles and clean energy and a new low-carbon source of energy called ‘green hydrogen.'” On Monday, Indonesia announced the planned retirement of a coal-fired power plant with assistance from the Asian Development Bank, and it is expected to announce on Tuesday a similar plan to South Africa’s.

Still, COP27 is not expected to produce significant changes in the global emissions trajectory, as the biggest emitters, such as the United States and China, have not lowered their planned emissions in this decade. But on Monday, in what climate change activists consider a sign of potential progress, President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that the two countries will put aside their differences over tense issues such as the fate of Taiwan and try to work together on climate change.

Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers

The New York Times

Farmland Values Hit Record Highs, Pricing Out Farmers

Linda Qiu – November 13, 2022

Farmland outside of Clark, S.D., on Oct. 26, 2022. (Tim Gruber/The New York Times)

Joel Gindo thought he could finally own and operate the farm of his dreams when a neighbor put up 160 acres of cropland for sale in Brookings County, South Dakota, two years ago. Five thousand or six thousand dollars an acre should do the trick, Gindo estimated.

But at auction, Gindo watched helplessly as the price continued to climb until it hit $11,000 an acre, double what he had budgeted for.

“I just couldn’t compete with how much people are paying, with people paying 10 grand,” he said. “And for someone like me who doesn’t have an inheritance somewhere sitting around, a lump sum of money sitting around, everything has to be financed.”

What is happening in South Dakota is playing out in farming communities across the nation as the value of farmland soars, hitting record highs this year and often pricing out small or beginning farmers. In the state, farmland values surged by 18.7% from 2021 to 2022, one of the highest increases in the country, according to the most recent figures from the Agriculture Department. Nationwide, values increased by 12.4% and reached $3,800 an acre, the highest on record since 1970, with cropland at $5,050 an acre and pastureland at $1,650 an acre.

A series of economic forces — high prices for commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat; a robust housing market; low interest rates until recently; and a slew of government subsidies — have converged to create a “perfect storm” for farmland values, said Jason Henderson, a dean at the College of Agriculture at Purdue University and a former official at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Missouri.

As a result, small farmers like Gindo are now going up against deep-pocketed investors, including private equity firms and real estate developers, prompting some experts to warn of far-reaching consequences for the farming sector.

Young farmers named finding affordable land for purchase the top challenge in 2022 in a September survey by the National Young Farmers Coalition, a nonprofit group.

Already, the supply of land is limited. About 40% of farmland in the United States is rented, most of it owned by landlords who are not actively involved in farming. And the amount of land available for purchase is extremely scant, with less than 1% of farmland sold on the open market annually.

The booming housing market, among a number of factors, has bolstered the value of farmland, particularly in areas close to growing city centers.

“What we have seen over the past year or two was, when housing starts to go up with new building construction, that puts pressure on farmland, especially on those urban fringes,” Henderson said. “And that leads to a cascading ripple effect into land values even farther and farther away.”

Government subsidies to farmers have also soared in recent years, amounting to nearly 39% of net farm income in 2020. On top of traditional programs like crop insurance payments, the Agriculture Department distributed $23 billion to farmers hurt by President Donald Trump’s trade war from 2018 to 2020 and $45.3 billion in pandemic-related assistance in 2020 and 2021. (The government’s contribution to farm income decreased to 20% in 2021 and is forecast to be about 8% in 2022.)

Those payments, or even the very promise of additional assistance, increase farmland values as they create a safety net and signal that agricultural land is a safe bet, research shows.

“There’s an expectation in the market that the government’s going to play a role when farm incomes drop, so that definitely affects investment behavior,” said Jennifer Ifft, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University.

Eager investors are increasingly turning to farmland in the face of volatility in the stock and real estate markets. Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire, is the biggest private farmland owner in the country and recently won approval to buy 2,100 acres in North Dakota for $13.5 million.

The number of private equity funds seeking to buy stakes in farmland has ticked higher, said Tim Koch, a vice president at an agricultural financial cooperative in the Midwest, Farm Credit Services of America. Pension funds also consider farmland a stable investment, Ifft said.

Farmers, too, have witnessed an influx of outside interest. Nathaniel Bankhead, who runs a farm and garden consulting business in Chattanooga, Tennessee, has banded with a group of other agricultural workers to save up to $500,000 to buy about 60 acres of land. For months, the collective has been repeatedly outbid by real estate developers, investors looking to diversify their portfolios and urban transplants with “delusional agrarian dreams,” he said.

“Places that I have looked at as potential farmland are being bought up in cash before I can even go through the process that a working-class person has to do to access land,” he said. “And the ironic thing is, those are my clients — like I get hired by them to do as a hobby what I’m trying to do as a livelihood. So it’s tough to watch.”

Bankhead characterized the current landscape as a form of “digital feudalism” for aspiring working farmers. Wealthy landowners drive up land prices, contract with agricultural designers like himself to enact their vision and then hire a caretaker to work the land — pricing out those very employees from becoming owners themselves.

“They kind of lock that person to this new flavor of serfdom where it’s, you might be decently paid, you’ve got access to it, but it will never be yours,” he said.

Unable to afford land in her native Florida, Tasha Trujillo recently moved her flower farm to South Carolina. Trujillo had grown cut flowers and kept bees on a parcel of her brother-in-law’s 5-acre plant nursery in Redland, a historically agricultural region in the Miami area, about 20 miles south of downtown.

When she sought to expand her farm and buy her own land, she quickly found that prices were out of reach, with real estate developers driving up land values and pushing out agriculture producers.

A 5-acre property in the Redlands now costs $500,000 to $700,000, Trujillo said. “So I essentially didn’t have a choice but to leave Miami and Florida as a whole.”

“Farming is a very stressful profession,” she added. “When you throw in land insecurity, it makes it 20 times worse. So there were many, many times where I thought, oh, my God, I’m not going to be able to do this. This isn’t feasible.”

As small and beginning farmers are shut out — the latest agricultural census said that the average age of farmers inched up to 57.5 — the prohibitively high land values may have ripple effects on the sector at large.

Brian Philpot, CEO of AgAmerica, an agricultural lending institution, said his firm’s average loan size had increased as farms consolidated, squeezing out family farms. This, he argued, could lead to a farm crisis.

“Do we have the skills and the next generation of people to farm it? And two, if the answer is going to be, we’re going to have passive owners own this land and lease it out, is that very sustainable?” he said.

Henderson also warned that current farmers may face increased financial risk as they seek to leverage their high farmland values, essentially betting the farm to expand it.

“They’ll buy more land, but they’ll use debt to do it,” he said. “They’ll stretch themselves out.”

Economists and lenders said farmland values appear to have plateaued in recent months, as the Federal Reserve raised interest rates and the cost of fertilizer and diesel soared. But with high commodity prices forecast for next year, some believe values will remain high.

A native of Tanzania who moved to South Dakota about a decade ago, Gindo bought 7 acres of land to raise livestock in 2019 and currently rents an additional 40 acres to grow corn and soybeans — all the while working full time as a comptroller to make ends meet.

For now, he has cooled off his search for a farm of his own even as he dreams of passing on that land to his son. The more immediate concern, he said, was whether his landlord would raise his rent. So far, the landlord has refrained because Gindo helps him out around the farm.

“He really doesn’t have to lend me his land,” Gindo said. “He can make double that with someone else.”

In Florida, Trujillo said, the owner of the land where her brother-in-law’s nursery sits has spoken of selling the plot while prices remain high, so he too has begun looking for his own property.

“That’s a big fear for a lot of these farmers and nursery owners who are renting land, because you just never know when the owner’s just going to say, ‘You know what, this year, I’m selling, and you’ve got to go,’” she said.

In Tennessee, Bankhead said he considered giving up on owning a farm “multiple times a day” as friends who have been longtime farmers leave the profession.

But so far, he remains committed to staying in the field and doing “the work of trying to keep land in families’ hands and showing there’s more to do with this land than to sell it to real estate developers,” he said. “But the pain of not having my own garden and not being able to have my animals where I live, it never stings any less.”

As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies

Reuters

As world population hits 8 billion, China frets over too few babies

November 13, 2022

FILE PHOTO: People walk and ride vehicles along a street, amid the coronavirus disease pandemic, in Shanghai

BEIJING/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Chinese software developer Tang Huajun loves playing with his two-year-old in their apartment on the outskirts of Beijing but he said he is unlikely to have another child.

Such decisions by countless people like Tang will determine the course not only of China’s population but that of the world, which the United Nations says is projected to reach 8 billion on Tuesday.

Tang, 39, said many of his married friends have only one child and, like him, they are not planning any more. Younger people aren’t even interested in getting married let alone having babies, he said.

The high cost of childcare is a major deterrent to having children in China, with many families in an increasingly mobile society unable to rely for help on grandparents who might live far away.

“Another reason is that many of us get married very late and its hard to get pregnant,” Tang said. “I think getting married late will definitely have an impact on births.”

China was for decades preoccupied with the prospect of runaway population growth and imposed a strict one-child policy from 1980 to 2015 to keep numbers in check.

But now the United Nations expects China’s population will start shrinking from next year, when India will likely become the world’s most populous country.

China’s fertility rate of 1.16 in 2021 was below the 2.1 OECD standard for a stable population and among the lowest in the world.

The anguish of the coronavirus pandemic and China’s strict measures to stamp it out may also have had a profound impact on the desire of many people to have children, demographers say.

New births in China are set to fall to record lows this year, demographers say, dropping below 10 million from last year’s 10.6 million – which was already 11.5% lower than in 2020.

Beijing last year began allowing couples to have up to three children and the government has said it is working towards achieving an “appropriate” birth rate.

OLD PEOPLE, NEW PROBLEMS

For planners, a shrinking population poses a whole new set of problems.

“We expect the aging population to increase very rapidly. This is a very important situation facing China, different to 20 years ago,” said Shen Jianfa, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The proportion of the population over the age of 65 is now about 13% but is set to rise sharply. A declining labour force faces an increasing burden of looking after the rising numbers of old folk.

“It will be very high for some years,” Shen said of the proportion of elderly in the population. “That’s why the country has to prepare for the coming aging.”

Alarmed by the prospect of an ageing society, China has been trying to encourage couples to have more children with tax breaks and cash handouts, as well as more generous maternity leave, medical insurance and housing subsidies.

But demographers say the measures are not enough. They cite high education costs, low wages and notoriously long working hours, along with frustration over COVID curbs and the overall state of the economy.

A key factor is job prospects for young people, said Stuart Gietel Basten, professor at Hong Kong’s University of Science and Technology.

“Why would you have more babies when the people you have cannot even get jobs?”

(Reporting by Thomas Suen and Farah Master; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Vote like your life depends on it, because it does!

The Tarbabys Blog

John Hanno – November 7, 2022

To American’s who still believe in Democracy and in the Democratic institutions that have sustained our Republic as a beacon for the world to admire and emulate, this is not the election to take a pass on.

To all the true Republicans who have been drummed out of your party or have fled the MAGA insanity, please take a stand for representative government.

To all eligible voters who are turned off by the toxic state of our political system, refusing to vote will only make that worse. Sometimes, even a small number of votes in close elections can make a critical difference.

To those who believe they’re not political or aren’t the least bit interested in our political systems, believe that every moment of your family’s existence is impacted by politics, both good and bad. And your vote could make our two party Democratic system much better, and more responsive and accountable.

Erstwhile Republican’s Rep. Liz Cheney, Rep Adam Kinzinger and others have been sounding the autocratic alarm bells even before trump and his MAGAnian conspirators commandeered the Grand Old Party and turned it into the wholly owned trump cult militia, that swarmed, assaulted, terrorized, pummeled and even killed Capitol police officers on January 6,2021, in a futile but consequential attempt to overthrow our Democratic government.

And where would we be if they had succeeded?

The hundreds of state laws republicon legislatures already authored and implemented to restrict voting rights and Democratic representative government would have already become the law of the land.

A women’s right to chose what happens to her body and reproductive rights would have been turned back to the 19th century, in all of America; with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Children as young as ten years old would have been forced to carry another child to birth.

The progress made by workers to improve labor’s rights and increase their diminishing wage value would have been overturned.

Progress made on fighting global warming and the remarkable improvements in alternative energy, would be pushed to the back burners of history.

trump and his republicon party sycophant’s march towards personal wealth enrichment would again be front and center of any legislation or executive orders. His gold tipped sharpie would again be busy rewarding the trump family criminal enterprises and the republicon’s most generous donors.

The separation of church and state would be but a distant memory; and they would proclaim White Christian dogma and the bible as governing principles. Many other parts of our constitution would be in jeopardy, all but the Second Amendment.

I could go on all day, pointing out the chaos created the last time trump held power, but I’ll conclude with reminding voters about the scores of criminal types in trump’s administration, who were forced to resign, were fired, went to prison, were indicted, pardoned or ended up in the right wing media.

Republican’s stated plans if they take control of congress, is to hold the government budget hostage until they get concessions on cutting, or eliminating altogether, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the safety net assault probably won’t stop there, continued support for programs like food stamps and even military and humanitarian support for Ukraine’s war with Russia are also on the MAGA chopping block.

And the extreme members of a republicon controlled House of Representatives will have as its main goal, a two year long investigation of a long list of their political opponents. Any progress the Democrats and the Biden administration have made addressing America’s critical problems over the last two years, will have to take a back seat to political witch hunts and futile attempts to overturn that progress.

And all this just so they can make permanent, the enormous tax cuts that trump and the republicon’s in congress awarded to their rich benefactors, the last time they held control. America’s colossal wealth disparity between the 1% and all the rest will again be on steroids.

For those who emphatically believe MAGA World is synonymous with freedom, believe me: “Freedom is just another word for, nothing left to lose”

If you paid close attention to the videos of Russian citizens protesting Putin’s “Special Operation” in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, you couldn’t help but notice there wasn’t one single assault weapon or high capacity magazine in sight, and no hunting rifle, handgun or even a pea shooter. Why? Because it’s against putin’s laws to have those weapons in public, if at all. And what we call our First Amendment Rights to say anything that comes to mind, forget it in Putin’s Russia or trump’s America. I remember one courageous Russian women holding up a blank sign, apparently afraid to call Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a war, for fear of the consequential 15 year prison term, yet still wanting to register her displeasure. Unfortunately it didn’t succeed, within 2 or 3 minutes, 4 or 5 security troops dressed in black whisked her, and her blank protest sign, off and into a police van headed for the gulag.

It’s no secret that trump and many congressional republicons admire and support war criminal Vladimir Putin and his invasion and genocide against the Democratic people of Ukraine. They admire strongmen fascists and autocrats like putin and trump and denigrate Joe Biden as weak. Apparently raining down missiles and rockets on innocent civilians, on schools and medical facilities, on apartments, libraries, and shopping centers, killing and maiming children, women, and disabled old folks is manly, but also isn’t a bridge too far for this new MAGAnian cult, as long as the reward is omnipotent power and wealth. Mass graves are just necessary collateral damage.

For those who believe the republicon’s are better on the economy or will do a better job fixing inflation, I’ll repost this November 4th, David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz article from the Daily Beast.

Republicans Are Bad for the Economy. Here’s Why.

According to a wave of recent polls, the economy is the dominant issue on the minds of Americans going into next week’s elections.

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.

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.

There’s No Democrat Equivalent to GOP Election Deniers’ Scumbaggery

What about now? Biden and the current Democratic Congress have created more jobs than the past three Republican administrations combined.

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.

Dems Do Big F*cking Deals, the GOP Does Fake Big Dick Energy

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.

Putin’s Last Hope to Win in Ukraine Is a GOP Victory in November

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.

David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz conclude their case with: 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.

—–

John Hanno: And if you’re still inclined to reverse the remarkable progress made by the Biden administration and the Democrat’s thin margin in congress over the last 2 years, and also willing to turn over your children’s and grandchildren’s future to these wannabe Putin like autocrats, think about this latest bit of news:

The world’s richest person and Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, implored his more than 110 million followers on Monday to support Republicans in Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, saying that Republican control of Congress would act as a balance against Democrats and the Biden administration. Could it be because of the Biden administration and Democrats proposals to tax billionaires and give more tax incentives to union-made electric vehicles. Musk’s Tesla does not have any unions at its U.S. factories. Apparently the world’s richest person doesn’t have enough billions of dollars to pay income taxes, pay prevailing union wages or to live comfortably. That should tell you exactly where this MAGA cult is headed.

Democracy and the big lie are on the ballot today. trump has endorsed those more than 250 election deniers running to thwart one person one vote, free and fair elections. Overwhelm these Democracy deniers with a monumental blue wave.

Like I said, vote November 8th like your and your families lives depends on it, because it surely does.

John Hanno, The Tarbabys Blog

A Core Question at COP27: Who Will Pay for Climate Change?

The New York Times

A Core Question at COP27: Who Will Pay for Climate Change?

Elena Shao – November 7, 2022

French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech at the COP27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Monday, Nov. 7, 2022. Nearly 50 heads of states or governments on Monday will take the stage in the first day of “high-level” international climate talks in Egypt with more to come in the following days. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

When world leaders gather in Sharm el Sheikh this week for the annual United Nations climate summit, the debate over who bears financial responsibility for climate change will be center stage.

Poor nations, which have contributed the least to climate change but are among the most vulnerable to its effects today, are seeking more financial commitments from rich countries, many of which have grown their economies by burning fossil fuels.

The consequences of global warming are already unfolding, with developing countries often on the front lines of the devastation.

Pakistan experienced catastrophic floods this summer, which scientists said were made worse by climate change.

One-third of the country was left under water, leaving 1,700 people dead and causing at least $40 billion in economic losses.

Extreme flooding also submerged parts of Nigeria this month, and elsewhere in Africa, record drought has brought millions to the brink of starvation.

At this year’s climate conference, known as COP27, developing countries are expected to press wealthy nations — historically the world’s biggest emitters — to fulfill earlier promises of financial support and push them ever further.

Current Commitments Falling Short

More than a decade ago, the world’s rich, industrialized countries — including the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain and Japan — committed to giving $100 billion a year by 2020 (and through 2025) to poor nations for climate adaptation and mitigation projects.

But wealthy countries have failed to meet that goal.

Nations will need to agree on another financing goal of at least $100 billion a year before 2025, so negotiations at this year’s summit will begin shaping that goal. Most estimates have suggested that $100 billion is not nearly enough to help poor countries stave off the worst effects of climate change, let alone shift away from burning oil, gas and coal.

“All of the evidence suggests that we need trillions, not billions,” said Baysa Naran, a manager at Climate Policy Initiative, a research center.

The money has funded mitigation projects, which help developing countries transition away from fossil fuels, like building a zero-emissions transit system in Pakistan. Money has also gone toward adaptation projects, which help countries build resilience against climate risks, like restoring mangrove habitats in Guinea-Bissau to protect from rising seas.

Critics point out that funding has often come in the form of loans rather than grants. That has increased many poor countries’ already unsustainable burden of debt, said Alina Averchenkova, a climate policy fellow at the London School of Economics.

Some countries may also count certain types of projects toward their contributions that others do not, which can lead to inflated figures, said Sarah Colenbrander, director of the climate program at the Overseas Development Institute.

The $100 billion goal was “carefully crafted” to be deliberately vague — a result of highly politicized negotiations at COP15 in Copenhagen, said Preety Bhandari, a senior adviser at the World Resources Institute.

As a result, there’s no requirement that specific countries contribute a certain proportion of the funds. Multiple analyses have calculated that the United States, which contributed less than $3 billion of the $83.3 billion in 2020, is underdelivering by tens of billions of dollars when considering its relative emissions, population size and wealth.

In addition, mitigation projects have generally received twice as much funding as those focused on adaptation, although many experts and representatives from vulnerable nations say that the two should be more balanced. While mitigation addresses the root of the climate problem by curbing emissions, it doesn’t help communities adapt to current or future risks.

An agreement reached at the end of last year’s climate negotiations in Glasgow urged rich countries to “at least double” finance for adaptation by 2025 to $40 billion.

A Separate Fund for ‘Loss and Damage’

More recently, some of the world’s most vulnerable nations have intensified calls for new funds from the world’s wealthiest economies to compensate for damages caused by climate change.

The issue is known in climate negotiations as “loss and damage” and proponents have described it as a form of climate reparations to pay for irreversible losses of income, culture, biodiversity and lives.

Wealthy countries have historically resisted calls for a loss and damage fund, largely out of fear that it could open them up to legal liability. In Glasgow last year, the United States opposed language that would set up such a fund.

This year, as Egypt has vowed to put loss and damage on the formal COP27 agenda, representatives from the United States and European countries have indicated that they might be open to discussing it.

A group of small island states first raised the issue of loss and damage in 1991, pointing to the irreparable destruction they faced from sea level rise. Since then, those countries have attempted to quantify the crushing costs. V20, or the Vulnerable Twenty group composed of finance ministers from 58 nations, estimated that its member states have lost $525 billion, or about one-fifth of their wealth, over the past two decades because of climate change.

“Countries are already paying for climate change now, and the burning question is: Can we let this go on?,” said Sara Jane Ahmed, a financial adviser to V20. “And the answer is: No, we can’t.”

Gates Foundation gives $1.4 billion climate help to smallholder farmers

Reuters

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)

Rate of sea level rise ‘has doubled since 1993’ thanks to climate change, report finds

Yahoo! News

Rate of sea level rise ‘has doubled since 1993’ thanks to climate change, report finds

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – 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 near Pituffik, Greenland. — 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. — 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 Egypt. — 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.”

Republicans Are Bad for the Economy. Here’s Why.

Daily Beast

Republicans Are Bad for the Economy. Here’s Why.

David Rothkopf, Bernard Schwartz – November 4, 2022

Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

According to a wave of recent polls, the economy is the dominant issue on the minds of Americans going into next week’s elections.

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.

What Ron DeSantis’ Silence on Antisemitic Messages Says About the GOP

<div class="inline-image__credit">Drew Angerer/Getty</div> — Drew Angerer/Getty

What about job creation?

There’s No Democrat Equivalent to GOP Election Deniers’ Scumbaggery

What about now? Biden and the current Democratic Congress have created more jobs than the past three Republican administrations combined.

<div class="inline-image__credit">Saul Loeb/Getty</div> — Saul Loeb/Getty

Ok, you might say, but what about inflation?

Dems Do Big F*cking Deals, the GOP Does Fake Big Dick Energy

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.

Putin’s Last Hope to Win in Ukraine Is a GOP Victory in November

History and data make it clear that Democrats are good for the economy—while Republicans, especially the current Republicans in Congress, are not.

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.

Americans among dozens held hostage by Indigenous group in Amazon

CBS News

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 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.