Florida prepares for influx of manatees suffering from red tide
Andrew Wulfeck – March 8, 2023
Video:Dozen manatees returned to the wild in Florida https://s.yimg.com/rx/martini/builds/54607967/executor.html
TAMPA – A massive bloom of harmful algae that has been intensifying off the west coast of Florida is now believed to be impacting the manatee population at a crucial time when biologists were cautiously optimistic that the species was on the path of rounding the corner from record die-offs.
The red tide was initially observed in the days after Hurricane Ian impacted areas around Fort Myers and has grown throughout the winter.
The Florida Fish and Wild Conservation Commission reports that levels of the organism, Karenia brevis, have reached concentrations of over 100,000 cells per liter – an amount that is ten times higher than the minimum level needed to impact wildlife and humans significantly.
Florida red tide count 3/8/2023
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it knows at least three recent cases of manatees being transported to SeaWorld’s recovery center in Orlando from West Florida.
“Those are fairly easy to care for once they are rescued. However, they do take up a bit of the rehab capacity because even though we can get the neurotoxin out of their system fairly quickly in just a matter of a few days, they may take up an entire pool while that’s happening,” said Terri Calleson, the Florida manatee recovery lead for the USFWS.
Several rescue centers around the state were already operating with the potential to quickly increase capacity due to an ongoing Unusual Mortality Event along the state’s east coast due to an increase in malnourished sea cows needing treatment over the past two years.
Over the last several months, additive-containing pools have mainly gone unused due to the apparent tailing of amounts of ill animals, but biologists stand at the ready in case figures start to rise again.
“We can’t put them back to the wild until the red tide cell counts subside for an extended period of time. So that’s going to strap us a little bit on rehab capacity, and we’re going to make some moves to try to address it,” said Calleson.
So far this year, the FWC reports 140 manatees have died – a figure below the pace of the last two record years.
The agency estimates there are only around 7,500 manatees left in Sunshine State, and if boaters see an animal in distress, they should inform the agency about the sighting by calling 888-404-3922.
Burning eyes, dead fish; red tide flares up on Florida coast
March 11, 2023
Red tide is observed near Pinellas County beaches off Redington Beach, Fla., during a flight with SouthWings volunteers on Friday, March 10, 2023. Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)A health alert sign warns visitors to Sand Key Park of the presence of Red Tide in the surrounding water on Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Pinellas County, Fla. Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)Red tide is observed at Clearwater Beach, Fla., during a flight with SouthWings volunteers on Friday, March 10, 2023. Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)Dead fish lay at the high tide line on Clearwater Beach on Thursday, March 9, 2023, in Pinellas County, Fla. Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)Red tide is observed at Clearwater Beach, Fla., during a flight with SouthWings volunteers on Friday, March 10, 2023. Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) — Residents are complaining about burning eyes and breathing problems. Dead fish have washed up on beaches. A beachside festival has been canceled, even though it wasn’t scheduled for another month.
Florida’s southwest coast experienced a flare-up of the toxic red tide algae this week, setting off concerns that it could continue to stick around for a while. The current bloom started in October.
The annual BeachFest in Indian Rocks Beach, Florida, sponsored by a homeowners’ association, was canceled after it determined, with help from the city and the Pinellas County Health Department, that red tide likely would continue through the middle of next month when the festival was scheduled.
“Red Tide is currently present on the beach and is forecasted to remain in the area in the weeks to come,” the Indian Rocks Beach Homeowners Association said in a letter to the public. “It is unfortunate that it had to be canceled but it is the best decision in the interest of public health.”
Nearly two tons of debris, mainly dead fish, were cleared from Pinellas County beaches and brought to the landfill, county spokesperson Tony Fabrizio told the Tampa Bay Times. About 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) of fish have been cleared from beaches in St. Pete Beach since the start of the month, Mandy Edmunds, a parks supervisor with the city, told the newspaper.
Red tide, a toxic algae bloom that occurs naturally in the Gulf of Mexico, is worsened by the presence of nutrients such as nitrogen in the water. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission warns people to not swim in or around red tide waters over the possibility of skin irritation, rashes and burning and sore eyes. People with asthma or lung disease should avoid beaches affected by the toxic algae.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on Friday reported that it had found red tide in 157 samples along Florida’s Gulf Coast, with the strongest concentrations along Pinellas and Sarasota counties.
More Retiree Health Plans Move Away From Traditional Medicare
Mark Miller – March 11, 2023
President Joe Biden delivers remarks on Social Security and healthcare costs at University of Tampa, Fla. on Feb. 9, 2023. (Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times)
Bob Bentkowski, a retired New York City firefighter, has a rare, painful disease that caused his kidneys to swell almost to the size of basketballs. He needed a transplant, and in the fall of 2021, he found a donor after waiting for years — but he was unsure whether Medicare would cover his surgery.
New York City has long provided its retired employees with comprehensive health benefits that pay for most of their Medicare costs. But with his transplant approaching, the city, and a coalition of its labor unions, had thrown Bentkowski a curveball. Aiming to save $600 million annually, they were negotiating to shift 250,000 retirees out of traditional fee-for-service Medicare into a privately operated Medicare Advantage plan.
“I was panicking about what might happen if I moved over to this new plan, since I was only a month away from the surgery,” Bentkowski said. But after hours on the phone with the insurance company, he was told that it couldn’t give him an answer until he enrolled. “They just give you the runaround. How am I going to join the plan when I don’t know what it will cover?”
Ultimately, Bentkowski’s surgery was covered under traditional Medicare. The city’s plans for Medicare Advantage became bogged down in litigation and political battles, with the opposition led by a group of New York City retirees who organized to fight not only the city but their own unions. Their battle has continued into this year, with a group representing city workers voting Thursday to approve the latest Advantage proposal.
The fight in New York City is a highly visible example of a nationwide shift in the way some retirees receive health insurance benefits from former employers, both in the public and private sector. It pits the drive to control health care costs against retired workers’ pocketbook and health concerns.
Many employers have dropped these benefits over the past several decades, and those that still offer them are shifting retirees into Medicare Advantage plans at a rapid pace.
Half of large employers offering benefits to Medicare-age retirees have contracts with Medicare Advantage plans, nearly double the share in 2017, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And roughly 44% don’t give retirees a choice to use traditional Medicare within their programs. Most cited lower cost as the key reason.
The growth is part of a bigger story about Medicare Advantage expansion. Advantage is an alternative to traditional Medicare offered by insurance companies, and it uses managed-care techniques to control costs. Nearly half of Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in Advantage plans last year, more than double the rate in 2007. And enrollment is projected to cross the 50% threshold as soon as this year, according to the foundation.
Retirees who are shifted into Medicare Advantage plans may not fully understand the major differences from traditional Medicare. These include the requirement to use physicians and hospitals in their plan’s narrower network, and reduced access to care in some instances. A federal investigation concluded last year that tens of thousands of people in Medicare Advantage plans were denied necessary care that should be covered.
The shift will also mean higher costs for taxpayers and all Medicare beneficiaries, some experts say. Payments by the federal government to Advantage plans average 102% of its spending on the fee-for-service traditional program, and that contributes to higher overall Medicare spending. This occurs in part because a bonus system awards extra dollars to plans that achieve high quality ratings from Medicare.
Advantage plans have also been found to submit to Medicare inflated bills that over-diagnose their patients. According to federal audits, the practice of “upcoding” crossed the line into fraud. Excess payments totaled $12 billion in 2020, according to the independent Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress.
The higher costs add financial pressure to Medicare’s hospital insurance (Part A) trust fund, as well as the taxpayers, beneficiaries and state-run Medicaid programs that fund the Part B program. The Part A trust fund is forecast to run dry in 2028, leaving revenue sufficient to meet 90% of the program’s obligations.
“On the one hand, Medicare Advantage allows employers to continue to offer retiree health benefits and potentially broaden benefits, and may lower their financial liability for retiree health,” said Tricia Neuman, senior vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “It also has the possibility of increasing Medicare spending.”
Insurers argue that Medicare Advantage group plans are simply one choice available to retirees. “Medicare rules require that retirees always have the option to opt out of enrollment in a group Medicare Advantage plan in favor of other forms of coverage that may be available,” said Heather Soule, a spokesperson for UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest providers of Advantage plans.
But for many retirees, joining an Advantage plan can be a difficult decision to reverse. Traditional Medicare should be paired with supplemental coverage — often a Medigap policy — to protect against potentially high out-of-pocket costs. But the best time to buy a Medigap policy is during the six months after you sign up for Part B (outpatient services), when insurers cannot reject you, or charge a higher premium, because of preexisting conditions. After that time, you can be rejected or charged more in most states.
What’s more, when employers make this transition, retirees often face a choice: Join an Advantage plan or lose the benefit.
“It really takes away choice,” said Marilyn Moon, an economist and a former trustee of both Social Security and Medicare. “The whole idea of Medicare Advantage was supposed to be to give people more choice, not less.”
Seeking Cost Savings
Medicare Advantage offers employers an opportunity to reduce costs substantially. They and unions traditionally have provided a retiree health benefit that fills the gaps in traditional Medicare by paying for deductibles and co-pays, and by providing other benefits. When an employer contracts with a Medicare Advantage insurer, retirees get all of their benefits, including their Medicare-covered benefits, from this Medicare Advantage plan.
In New York City, labor unions representing retirees have been working with the city on its planned shift to Advantage. They promoted the projected savings and their ability to use their bargaining clout to negotiate for far more generous features than those in plans available for individual purchase.
“When we looked at this, we saw that we could design our own plan that would get the same benefits and even more for our retirees,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teachers union. “One of our greatest assets is the ability to use our buying power to get that done and, more importantly, to set up an accountability system and a contract where we’re holding the provider to every single word in our contract.”
As the plan was originally envisioned in 2018, retirees who wanted to stay on traditional Medicare could do so if they paid an estimated $191 per month to cover its higher cost to the city. But a grassroots group founded in 2021, the NYC Organization of Public Service Retirees, sued over the plan, taking its battle to the City Council and organizing through Facebook, YouTube and email.
On Thursday, the Municipal Labor Committee, which represents the city’s 102 unions, approved the latest plan to offer only Medicare Advantage starting in September.
In a statement Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams said the new arrangement “improves upon retirees’ current plans,” and includes a lower deductible, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, and new benefits. “We also heard the concerns of retirees and worked to significantly limit the number of procedures subject to prior authorization under this plan,” Adams said. “This Medicare Advantage Plan is in the best interests of retirees and taxpayers.”
The retiree group says it is considering its next steps, possibly including new litigation. “Labor should never support privatizing public health care or stripping retirees of vested earned benefits,” the group’s founder, Marianne Pizzitola, a retired city Fire Department emergency medical services employee, said in a statement.
“This is a daily anxiety the city and the Municipal Labor Committee are putting us through,” she added in an interview.
Bentkowski felt that anxiety in 2021 as he tried to learn whether an Advantage plan would cover his kidney transplant. He was among the first firefighters to respond at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and a lung-related disability that developed afterward forced him to retire at age 45. He qualifies for Medicare now, at 53, because he receives Social Security Disability Insurance.
“The Medicare Advantage plan might be good for some people,” Bentkowski said. “But you just can’t squeeze everyone into one plan and say it’s going to work.”
The protection of labor agreements and the municipal code has given opponents of the New York City plan leverage to fight the Medicare Advantage transition. In the corporate sector, retiree benefits are offered at employers’ discretion — but that hasn’t stopped some retirees from trying to fight these transitions.
IBM introduced two new Medicare Advantage plans this year for its large retired workforce, replacing a plan that paid for supplemental Medigap coverage along with prescription drugs, dental and vision.
IBM retirees were given the option to stick with the old benefit — but they would lose access to balances in their health reimbursement arrangements, an employer-funded plan that reimburses certain medical expenses and insurance premiums. In most cases, employers retain the right to change this type of benefit, says Trevis Parson, chief actuary for individual marketplace business at the benefits consulting firm Willis Towers Watson.
“Most plan sponsors include language in their plan documents explicitly reserving rights to amend the plan,” he said. Some retirees were outraged by that tactic, and by the announcement of the planned transition with relatively short notice in September.
“They sprung it on us — either take Medicare Advantage or forfeit your balance,” said Steve Bergeron, who retired from IBM in 2009 after 29 years.
In a statement, IBM said that for 2023, two Medicare Advantage PPO options have “enhanced design elements above and beyond what participants were previously able to obtain with individual policies.”
Like many group plans, the new IBM offering features copays and annual deductibles much lower than those found in individual plans, and wider networks of providers. But it’s not clear how long those features will remain.
“There’s no guarantee of anything from IBM,” Bergeron said. “What if these terms were just to get people to sign up?”
Neuman of Kaiser Family Foundation shares that concern. “The question is, what happens over the longer term for retirees, perhaps five or 10 years from now, when the circumstances may change and it may be more difficult to maintain the favorable terms of a negotiated contract?” she asked.
Bergeron has been organizing retirees on social media to fight the change and with an online petition calling on IBM to drop the plan. He has also tried to recruit lawyers to sue the company, but most have advised that the case is not strong, since the retiree benefit is discretionary.
After holding out against the change, Bergeron reluctantly joined one of the Advantage plans, not wanting to forfeit the $27,000 balance in his health reimbursement arrangement.
“I never dreamed I would join, but I did,” he said. “I waited until the last minute, and signed up on the last day that I could. I really was fighting it in my brain.”
A Virginia bakery gave BLM activists free coffee. Then came the backlash.
Tim Carman, The Washington Post – March 10, 2023
Brian Noyes and Josephine Gilbert agreed to sit down on March 1 and talk it out. Noyes, founder of the celebrated Red Truck Bakery, and Gilbert, the leader of a loose coalition that demonstrates under the banner of All Lives Matter, wanted to reach an accord before events spun out of control in the usually restful town of Warrenton, Va.
The issue was coffee – and the weekly demonstrations on Courthouse Square in downtown Warrenton, where two groups have been trying to poke and prod the conscience of the city.
Since June 2020, not long after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, a handful of organizations have hosted a Black Lives Matter Vigil For Action on Saturday mornings when, for 45 minutes, dozens of people quietly hold up signs to remind locals about racial injustice and institutional racism. The demonstrations eventually led to counterprotests across the street, aimed at shutting down the vigils that All Lives Matter activists see as destructive to this conservative community in Fauquier County, a traditional Republican stronghold.
Red Truck got dragged into this drama on the last Saturday in February when a relatively new member of the ALM group entered the bakery, camera phone in hand. Jennifer Blevins Ragle asked a young employee why the shop was giving out free coffee to participants at the BLM vigil, but not others on the square. She implied Red Truck was discriminating against ALM.
“I just don’t understand giving free coffee to some people, but not others. I mean, that makes your store very political,” Ragle said to the 17-year-old employee behind the counter. “I’ll make sure it gets to the paper and everything else.”
Ragle’s video was posted on a YouTube channel called Singing Patriot, where it gained little traction. But it was also posted on a TikTok account, named crossstitch1954, where it has racked up more than 21,000 views and generated more than 800 comments, many of them calling for boycotts of Red Truck. Or worse.
“Hope this place burns to the ground,” wrote one commenter. “Close the place down! Let those black lives keep the place open. All the other lives don’t matter,” wrote another. “Someone please put a pallet of bricks in front of that store so we can protest against Red Truck Bakery,” added a third.
Negative reviews started appearing on Red Truck’s Yelp and Google pages, sometimes from people far from the streets of Warrenton. The bakery began receiving harassing phone calls, too. “Threats of damage and injury,” Noyes told The Washington Post.
One caller said, simply, “we are watching you,” Noyes said. “Picture a young girl answering the phone at a small bakery and hearing that.”
On Feb. 27, Noyes issued an apology and an explanation to try to defuse the situation. The owner wrote that he is not in the Warrenton store often – Red Truck’s headquarters are in Marshall, Va. – and that when he first encountered the BLM vigil in 2021, he saw no counterprotesters on the square. He treated the vigil participants to water and cranberry muffins. Noyes then told his staff that BLM members might occasionally wander in for water or coffee, which would be on the house.
“It started as an innocent and spur-of-the-moment neighborly gesture, but no good deed goes unpunished, I guess,” Noyes wrote. “I don’t remember an All Lives Matter group being there back then, but if they had ever asked me about this, I certainly would have given them the same consideration.”
Before Noyes posted the statement on his social channels, he sent it to Gilbert, as a courtesy. She acknowledged that she received it ahead of time and “thought it was fine,” she told The Washington Post. They then agreed to meet for coffee at Red Truck. They had a favor to ask of each other.
After exchanging pleasantries, Gilbert asked Noyes if he would talk to the BLM demonstrators. She hoped Noyes would use his influence in the community – earned by hosting fundraisers and events, garnering national acclaim for his baked goods, even getting a shout-out from President Barack Obama – to convince the BLM group to stop their weekly gatherings.
Gilbert had already petitioned others to stop the vigils. She had addressed the Warrenton Town Council. She had expressed her concerns to the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors. She had even talked to the city’s chief of police and mayor. “I appreciate you figuring out a way to stop this indoctrination,” Gilbert told the town council on Sept. 14, 2021.
Gilbert clarified her “indoctrination” comment for The Post.
“When I say ‘indoctrination,’ what I mean by that is, normalizing this type of protest for kids that come by every Saturday morning with their parents to the farmers market,” she said. “They’re not going to change my mind or any of the people who are standing with me. They are normalizing behavior that is not right. Warrenton is not racist.”
Like the public officials in Warrenton, Noyes rejected Gilbert’s proposal. Noyes told her that he has no control over BLM demonstrators. “That’s their right to be out there, just like it’s your right,” he said to her.
Once rebuffed, Gilbert started to raise her voice. Noyes called her loud and animated. Gilbert said she’s from Sicily. “As I get passionate about this and get excited, my voice automatically goes up,” she told The Post. She said she apologized to Noyes on the spot after raising her voice.
The meeting did the exact opposite of what Noyes had hoped. He left it feeling “discouraged and realizing that there’s no way to work with these people.” His employees were worried, too, after hearing the conversation turn intense.
Noyes decided right then he would shut down Red Truck in Warrenton for the weekend, including the Saturday when demonstrators would gather again on Courthouse Square. He said he would pay the staff for those two days. (The closure would stretch into Monday and not just in Warrenton; he also closed the Marshall shop that day as he worked to hire security to ease his staff’s fears.) Noyes even moved his signature red truck, a 1954 Ford F-100 that he bought from Tommy Hilfiger, out of an abundance of caution.
Noyes thought the closures would calm things down – and demonstrators were calm that weekend – but Gilbert thought the closings were “ridiculous.”
“Why didn’t he just shut down for the two hours that we were going to be there” on the square, Gilbert said. “This is just a game that Mr. Noyes is playing. He’s a smart man, but like I told him when I left, I’m smart too. I’m not stupid. I’m not rolling over.”
Even as the conversation turned noisy, Noyes reminded Gilbert that he still had a request. He wanted her to ask Ragle to take down the video. Not only was it stirring things up, it was putting a minor in the public eye, which was troubling to the girl’s parents and to Red Truck’s staff. Gilbert said she wouldn’t contact Ragle, that Noyes would have to do it. She said she didn’t believe in taking down the video. She wanted people to see it, as further evidence of how BLM demonstrators have divided the town, she said.
What’s more, Gilbert didn’t think Red Truck’s free coffee policy was an honest mistake or a misunderstanding, as Noyes alleges. “He got caught,” she said. “He told me he didn’t want to take sides, but he did take sides and now he got busted. And he doesn’t want the community to know he took sides.” (Noyes, incidentally, has halted the free coffee program.)
Both Red Truck employees and the minor’s mother attempted to track down Ragle, but Noyes wasn’t sure they ever made contact. Ragle’s video remains up on both YouTube and TikTok.
Ragle’s behavior has given Red Truck staff cause for concern, Noyes said. She refused to turn off her video camera, as requested by an employee, and as she exited the bakery, she bumped into a man at the front door. Ragle later contacted police and said the man, apparently a BLM demonstrator, was blocking her exit. “Our investigation revealed that that did not happen,” said Timothy Carter, Warrenton’s police chief. “It was probably just a big misunderstanding.”
Ragle has also posted more videos, including one where she appears to be on the opposite side of the street, yelling at BLM demonstrators. Another video scrolls through a recent article in the Fauquier Times, with added captions that suggest it was Noyes, not Gilbert, who raised his voice during their meeting. (Noyes denied the charge.) “Bryan [sic] Noyes,” the caption continues, “backs BLM period!!!” Cage the Elephant’s song, “Hypocrite,” plays in the background.
According to public records and one newspaper story, Ragle has had criminal charges filed against her. She was charged with violating a restraining order in 2013 and trespassing in 2014. The charges in both cases were dismissed. In 2016, the Culpeper County Sheriff’s Office arrested Ragle for assault and battery, according to the Culpeper Times. The Post could not immediately find out how the case was resolved.
The Post left a pair of voice mails to a number connected with Ragle in public records. A woman who called back did not identify herself and hung up after learning she was talking to a Post reporter. A short time later, Ragle posted another video featuring a screenshot of a 2014 news story about Red Truck. Ragle superimposed a caption over the story: “Prior Washington Post writer, sending out his goons to cover his backing of BLM.” (Noyes is a former art director for The Post.)
Ragle’s TikTok video has changed the dynamic in Warrenton, said Noyes and Carter, the police chief. It has taken an issue that was rooted in the community and spread it beyond the city’s borders. “This video on TikTok is just living a life of its own,” Noyes said. “It’s just bringing in so much… anger from people who don’t even know the store. It’s just reason for them to rally.”
The police chief harbors similar concerns: that someone from outside might “take action kind of in the fog of what’s going on,” Carter said. “I’m not really concerned about either one of our groups, but what I’m concerned about – what we’re always concerned about – is someone coming in and just using it as a platform to do something else.”
This weekend will be the first one, post TikTok video, when Red Truck is open and the demonstrators are back on the square. No one in Warrenton – not Noyes, not Carter, not BLM organizer Scott Christian – is sure what to expect. The dueling demonstrations have been generally peaceful, especially in recent weeks, said Carter and Christian, though the BLM leader has lately seen signs among ALM protesters about freeing the prisoners who were convicted of their actions during the Jan. 6 riots.
Gilbert said ALM has “no intention” of singling out Red Truck this weekend. “Our beef is actually with the town for not stopping what’s going on across the street,” she said.
Del. Michael J. Webert (R-Fauquier) released a statement on Thursday that said it was time for the community to put this incident behind them. The coffee, he noted, was given out in good faith. “We are a close-knit community that has no need to be angry or mistrust one another,” Webert said. “Let’s remember that we all have a stake in making our community the best it can be, and act like the neighbors we are.”
For his part, Noyes is debating just how neighborly to be on Saturday. He’s contemplating whether to bring muffins to people on both sides of the square, a kind of Red Truck peace offering. But he also wants to see how things unfold. He doesn’t want to make a wrong move. He’s already paid a price, both emotionally and financially. He figures he has lost between $15,000 to $20,000 because of the bakery closures. He’s paying out another $1,000 a day for security.
As California gets drenched, officials opening Oroville Dam spillway for first time in 4 years
Michael McGough – March 10, 2023
California water officials opened the main spillway at the Oroville Dam on Friday afternoon, doing so for flood control purposes for the first time since 2019.
Ted Craddock, deputy director of the State Water Project, said the water elevation at Lake Oroville has risen by close to 180 feet since Dec. 1 after a parade of storms this winter, now standing at about 840 feet — 60 feet shy of its maximum.
State water officials began to increase releases from Lake Oroville, which is operated by the state Department of Water Resources, on Wednesday for flood control purposes, Craddock said during a virtual news briefing ahead of the successful spillway opening at noon.
The dam was the center of a 2017 crisis. Torrential rainfall that February damaged the Oroville Dam’s main spillway. When rerouted water threatened failure on the dam’s emergency spillway, more than 180,000 residents downstream of the dam in Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties were ordered to evacuate.
Extensive repairs followed, and state water officials let water flow down the newly rebuilt spillway for the first time on April 2, 2019.
“As part of the reconstruction effort, we installed instrumentation throughout the structure,” Craddock said. “So we can monitor the pressure, drainage and also movement of the spillway as well.”
Spillway flow Friday began at 15,000 cubic feet per second, which Craddock called a “relatively small release.” The spillway is capable of releasing up to 270,000 cubic feet per second.
“As we look further into the upcoming storms, it’s possible we will be making adjustments to our releases,” he said. Releases during the rebuilt spillway’s only prior use, in 2019, peaked at 25,000 cubic feet per second.
Craddock said that due to near-record level snowpack in the Sierra this winter, water officials are confident that snowmelt will help to replenish Lake Oroville following flood releases and the end of the rainy season.
Water releases are also underway at the Folsom Dam, which is operated by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Water flows down the new spillway at Oroville Dam on Tuesday, April 2, 2019 in Oroville.
What is the Oroville Dam?
The Oroville Dam opened in 1968 and is the tallest dam in the U.S. at 770 feet. Located just northeast of Oroville city limits, water from the dam’s main spillway flows into the Feather River.
The main spillway failed catastrophically in February 2017, when a large and cratering fracture formed amid weeks of heavy rain, leading operators to curtail water flow onto the emergency spillway.
The wreckage of the main spillway at Oroville Dam in February 2017 left tons of concrete and other debris piled up in the Feather River below. The state plans to open the rebuilt spillway Tuesday.
The emergency spillway is a concrete lip along a hillside. When water began to spill over the lip, the hillside began to erode, and dam officials feared the emergency spillway would fail and release a “wall of water” downstream. Emergency authorities on Feb. 13, 2017, ordered some 188,000 residents of the Feather River Basin to evacuate.
Dam operators then ramped up water releases on the main spillway, easing lake levels and pressure on the emergency spillway. The emergency spillway held, and evacuation orders were reduced to warnings the following day.
The Department of Water Resources says repairs and improvements made during 2017 and 2018 have brought the dam up to “state-of-the-art” standards, Craddock said Friday.
To keep the emergency spillway from crumbling, DWR dramatically ramped up water releases on the battered main spillway, bringing lake levels down and effectively ending the crisis. Water continued pounding the main spillway for days afterward, carving a giant crevice
No one hates ordinary people like the Republicans and their media enablers do.
By Tom Nichols – March 9, 2023
A political display is posted on the outside of the Fox News headquarters in New York in July 2020. (Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty)
Fox News will likely never face any real consequences for the biggest scandal in the history of American media. But will Republican voters finally understand who really looks down on them?
Loathing and Indifference
It’s time to talk about elitism.
Last month, I wrote that the revelations about Fox News in the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit showed that Fox personalities, for all their populist bloviation, are actually titanic elitists. This is not the elitism of those who think they are smarter or more capable than others—I’ll get to that in a moment—but a new and gruesome elitism of the American right, a kind of hatred and disgust on the part of right-wing media and political leaders for the people they claim to love and defend. Greed and cynicism and moral poverty can explain only so much of what we’ve learned about Fox; what the Dominion filings show is a staggering, dehumanizing version of elitism among people who have made a living by presenting themselves as the only truth-tellers who can be trusted by ordinary Americans.
I am, to say the least, no stranger to the charge of elitism. When I wrote a book in 2018 titled The Death of Expertise, a study of how people have become so narcissistic and so addled by cable and the internet that they believe themselves to be smarter than doctors and diplomats, I was regularly tagged as an “elitist.” And the truth is: I am an elitist, insofar as I believe that some people are better at things than others.
But even beyond talent and ability, I do in fact firmly believe that some opinions, political views, personal actions, and life choices are better than others. As I wrote in my book at the time:
Americans now believe that having equal rights in a political system also means that each person’s opinion about anything must be accepted as equal to anyone else’s. This is the credo of a fair number of people despite being obvious nonsense. It is a flat assertion of actual equality that is always illogical, sometimes funny, and often dangerous.
If that makes me an elitist, so be it.
In this, elitism is the opposite of populism, whose adherents believe that virtue and competence reside in the common wisdom of a nebulous coalition called “the people.” This pernicious and romantic myth is often a danger to liberal democracies and constitutional orders that are founded, first and foremost, on the inherent rights of individuals rather than whatever raw majorities think is right at any given time.
The American right, however, now uses elitist to mean “people who think they’re better than me because they live and work and play differently than I do.”They rage that people—myself included—look down upon them. And again, truth be told, I do look down on Trump voters, not because I am an elitist but because I am an American citizen and I believe that they, as my fellow citizens, have made political choices that have inflicted the greatest harm on our system of government since the Civil War. I refuse to treat their views as just part of the normal left-right axis of American politics.
(As an aside, note that the insecure whining about being “looked down upon” is wildly asymmetrical: Trump voters have no trouble looking down on their opponents as traitors, perverts, and, as Donald Trump himself once put it, “human scum.” But they react to criticism with a kind of deep hurt, as if others must accommodate their emotional well-being. Many of these same people gleefully adopted “Fuck your feelings” as a rallying cry but never expected that it was a slogan that worked both ways.)
In 2016, I believed that good people were making a mistake. In 2023, I cannot dismiss their choices as mere mistakes. Instead, I accept and respect the human agency that has led Trump supporters to their current choices. Indeed, I insist on recognizing that agency: I have never agreed with the people who dismiss Trump voters as robotic simpletons who were mesmerized by Russian memes. I believe that today’s Trump supporters are people who are making a conscious, knowing, and morally flawed choice to continue supporting a sociopath and a party chock-full of seditionists.
I have argued with some of these people. Sometimes, I have mocked them. Mostly, I have refused to engage them. But whatever my feelings are about the abominable choices of Trump supporters, here is the one thing I have never done that Fox’s hosts did for years: I have never patronized any of the people I disagree with.
Unlike people such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham, I have never told anyone—including you, readers of The Atlantic—anything I don’t believe. What we’re seeing at Fox, however, is lying on a grand scale, done with a snide loathing for the audience and a cool indifference to the damage being done to the nation. Fox, and the Republican Party it serves, for years has relentlessly patronized its audience, cooing to viewers about how right they are not to trust anyone else, banging the desk about the corruption of American institutions, and shouting into the camera about how the liars and betrayers must pay.
Fox’s stars did all of this while privately communicating with one another and rolling their eyes with contempt, admitting without a shred of shame that they were lying through their teeth. From Rupert Murdoch on down, top Fox personalities have admitted that they fed the rubes all of this red, rotting meat to keep them out of the way of the Fox limos headed to Long Island and Connecticut.
You can see this same kind of contemptuous elitism in Republicans such as Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Elise Stefanik. They couldn’t care less about the voters—those hoopleheads back home who have to be placated with idiotic speeches against trans people and “critical race theory.” These politicians were bred to be leaders, you see, and having to gouge some votes out of the hayseeds back home requires a bit of performance art now and then, a small price to pay so that the sons and daughters of Harvard and Yale, Princeton and Stanford, can live in the imperial capital and rule as is their due and their right.
Some years ago, I was at a meeting of one of the committees of the National Academy of Sciences. The conferees asked me how scientists—there were Nobel Laureates in the room—could defend the cause of knowledge. Stand your ground, I told them. Never hesitate to tell people they’re wrong. One panel member shook his head: “Tom, people don’t like to be condescended to.” I said, “I agree, but what they hate even more is to be patronized.”
I believed it then, but we’re now testing that hypothesis on a national scale. I hope I wasn’t wrong.
In race to arm Ukraine, U.S. faces cracks in its manufacturing might
Missy Ryan, The Washington Post – March 9, 2023
Correction: A previous version of this article mischaracterized why Scranton, Pa., is known as “Steamtown.” The name is derived from the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel the city’s industrial rise, not the early pioneering or electric power. The article has been updated.
SCRANTON, Pa. – A sharp hissing sound fills the factory as red-hot artillery shells are plunged into scalding oil.
Richard Hansen, a Navy veteran who oversees this government-owned munitions facility, explains how the 1,500-degree liquid locks in place chemical properties that ensure when the shells are fired – perhaps on a battlefield in Ukraine – they detonate in the deadly manner intended.
“That’s what we do,” Hansen said. “We build things to kill people.”
The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, one of a network of facilities involved in producing the U.S. Army’s 155-mm artillery round, is ground zero for the Biden administration’s scramble to accelerate the supply of weapons that Ukraine needs if its military is to prevail in the war with Russia.
The Pentagon’s plan for scaling up production of the shells over the next two years marks a breakthrough in the effort to quench Ukraine’s thirst for weapons. But the conflict has laid bare deep-seated problems that the United States must surmount to effectively manufacture the arms required not just to aid its allies but also for America’s self-defense should conflict erupt with Russia, China or another major power.
Despite boasting the world’s largest military budget – more than $800 billion a year – and its most sophisticated defense industry, the United States has long struggled to efficiently develop and produce the weapons that have enabled U.S. forces to outpace their peers technologically. Those challenges take on new importance as conventional conflict returns to Europe and Washington contemplates the possibility of its own great-power fight.
Even as public support for the vast sums of aid being given to Ukraine grows softer and more divisive, the conflict has sparked a broader conversation about the need to shatter what military leaders describe as the “brittleness” of the U.S. defense industry and devise new means to quickly scale up output of weapons at moments of crisis. Some observers are worried the Pentagon is not doing enough to replenish the billions of dollars in armaments that have left American stocks.
Research conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows the current output of American factories may be insufficient to prevent the depletion of stockpiles of key items the United States is providing Ukraine. Even at accelerated production rates, it is likely to take at least five years to recover the inventory of Javelin antitank missiles, Stinger surface-to-air missiles and other in-demand items.
Earlier research done by the Washington think tank illustrates a more pervasive problem: The slow pace of U.S. production means it would take as long as 15 years at peacetime production levels, and more than eight years at a wartime tempo, to replace the stocks of major weapons systems such as guided missiles, piloted aircraft and armed drones if they were destroyed in battle or donated to allies.
“It is a wake-up call,” Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in an interview, referring to the production problems the war has exposed. “We have to have an industrial base that can respond very quickly.”
A year into the Ukraine fight, American military aid has reached a staggering $30 billion, funding everything from night-vision goggles to Abrams tanks. Much of the weaponry was drawn from Pentagon stocks. Other systems must be produced in U.S. factories.
U.S. and NATO officials have touted the powerful effect of foreign arms on the battlefield, where they have enabled Ukrainian troops to hold Kremlin forces at bay and, in places like the southern city of Kherson, reverse Russian gains. But the armament effort also has rattled officials in the United States and Europe, depleting the military stockpiles of donor nations and revealing the gaps in their productive power.
As the front lines have hardened during the frigid winter months, the ground war has become a bloody, artillery-heavy fight, with Ukrainian forces firing an average of 7,700 artillery shells a day, according to the Ukrainian military, greatly outpacing the U.S. prewar production rate of 14,000 155-mm rounds a month. In the first eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukrainian forces burned through 13 years worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles and five years of Javelin missiles, according to Raytheon, which produces both weapons.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has predicted the munitions squeeze may require a further boost in Pentagon spending, potentially ending the era in which ammunition functioned as a military “bill payer,” a part of the defense budget from which officials can trim to fund more expensive items like tanks or planes.
“What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions,” Colin Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy, told lawmakers last week, pointing to the effort to accelerate output of artillery shells, guided rockets and other items. “Those are going to matter a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, because even if the conflict in Ukraine dies down, and nobody can predict whether that will happen, Ukraine is going to need a military that can defend the territory it has clawed back,” he said.
The problem is not limited to ammunition, nor to items being provided to Ukraine. According to Mark Cancian, a retired Marine officer and defense expert with CSIS, the pace of production at U.S. factories means it would take over 10 years to replace the U.S. fleet of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, and almost 20 years to replace the stock of advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles. It would be a minimum of 44 years before the Pentagon could replace its fleet of aircraft carriers.
In Europe, the problems are equally grave. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in February that the wait time for large-caliber weapons has more than tripled, meaning items ordered now will not be delivered for over two years. In Germany, amid plans for a dramatic military expansion, its ammunition supply is believed to be sufficient for two days of fighting. In one war game, British stocks lasted eight days.
To address those problems, European Union leaders are exploring ways to accelerate manufacturing, possibly by using advance-purchase agreements modeled on the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine. In Ukraine, the ammunition crunch is existential. In places like Bakhmut, where Ukrainian troops are locked in a grisly battle with Russian mercenary and military fighters, defending forces say they must ration artillery ammunition because they receive far less than they need.
Fortunately for Kyiv, Russia, with its defense industry under severe sanctions, has a similar problem. According to Kyrylo Budanov, the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, the Kremlin has been forced to reduce the pace of air attacks due to dwindling stocks of key munitions, including the Kalibr and Kh-101 cruise missiles. Producing enough missiles for one major strike, he said recently, now takes up to two months.
The Pentagon’s own analysis of the U.S. defense sector reveals an industry poorly equipped to match the productive prowess of World War II, when U.S. factories churned out planes and weapons that powered the Allied militaries to victory over the Axis powers. Its problems trace in part to the consolidation that occurred after the Cold War, as military spending fell and the number of uniformed personnel shrank by a third.
In a world where no major state-on-state conflict was expected, the federal government welcomed a wave of mergers and acquisitions that dramatically shrank the sector. At one point, 1,000 civilian defense jobs disappeared every day. In the 1990s, the United States had 51 major air and defense contractors. Today, there are five. The number of airplane manufacturers has fallen from eight to three. Meanwhile, 90 percent of missiles now come from three sources.
The Pentagon used to design weapons programs so there would be at least two manufacturing sources, but over time it began to view that excess capacity as wasteful. Officials sought ways to maintain the competition in part by piggybacking off the commercial sector, but it did not always work. “We quit buying more than we needed,” said David Berteau, a former Pentagon acquisition official who heads the Professional Services Council, an industry group. “We quit paying for more than we needed.”
It was easier to overlook production problems during the two decades of counterinsurgent war that followed the 9/11 attacks, when U.S. forces battled lightly armed militants in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. That is quickly changing with the demands posed by the large-scale conventional conflict underway now.
Industry experts say inconsistent, unpredictable military demand and short-term contracts dictated by appropriations cycles have further discouraged corporate investment in extra capacity. And because there is no commercial market for items like surface-to-air missiles or precision bombs, companies with specialized production cannot rely on civilian demand to keep them afloat.
Officials note that production lags also are due to the fact that military equipment today is inherently more complicated to build than it was during World War II, when Ford could produce a plane an hour. Now weaponry often requires microelectronics and parts from dozens or hundreds of facilities. Lockheed Martin’s F-35 stealth fighter, for one, contains 300,000 parts sourced from 1,700 suppliers.
Doug Bush, the Army’s chief weapons buyer, characterized the government’s decision to keep facilities like the one in Scranton in operation despite a decades-long absence of such sizable demand as a bet that paid off. “It was a public policy choice. An expensive one,” he said. “But they were kept as an insurance policy for this exact circumstance.”
The Army now plans to boost its monthly capacity for producing 155-mm shells from about 14,000 now to 30,000 this spring, and eventually to 90,000. The military also is spending $80 million to bring a second source online for the Javelin missile’s rocket motor, a key component, and plans to double production to around 4,000 a year.
The Army recently signed a $1.2 billion contract for Raytheon to build six more units of national advanced surface-to-air defense systems, which are being used in the war in Ukraine to defend against Russian missile and drone attacks, but they will not be ready for another two years.
Researchers note, however, that of the $45 billion Congress has appropriated for producing new weapons for Ukraine and replacing donated U.S. stocks, the Pentagon as of February had placed contracts for only around $7 billion, raising questions about whether it is moving fast enough.
Industry officials, lawmakers and Pentagon leaders agree that building a greater ability to quickly expand production of needed weapons will require both time and new investment. “You have to bring all of those different streams of increased production together at the right time,” Bush said. “And so that would be one challenge, and that is just, you know, sequencing a large scale industrial ramp up like this.”
While support for defense spending is typically strong on Capitol Hill, backing for arming Ukraine has slipped, especially among Republicans. One recent poll showed that 40 percent of Republicans now believe the United States is giving too much aid to Ukraine, up from 9 percent last spring.
And it is not clear how much more military spending, which already represents more than 3 percent of gross domestic product, Americans will countenance in an era of inflation and economic strain, no matter the rationale.
At a recent hearing, Rep. Lisa C. McClain (R-Mich.), told Pentagon officials that voters in her district were worried about getting mired in a “never-ending war” in Ukraine. “They believe that we are spending money and resources on a fight overseas, rather than getting our own fiscal house in order,” she said.
At the Scranton munitions plant, which is operated by General Dynamics, long steel billets undergo a multiday transformation from burning-hot shafts of metal to finished artillery shells ready to be trucked to a plant in Iowa, where they are filled with explosives and dispatched for training or battle. It can be two to three months from when shells leave Scranton until they are ready to be used.
The city surrounding the plant tells the story of broader industrial decline that is another important element in the production scramble today. As its coal and steel industries drew flocks of immigrant workers in the 19th century, Scranton became an important rail hub and was dubbed “Steamtown” for the steam-powered locomotives that helped fuel its rise.
But the city’s population declined along with the coal industry after World War II. Today, the previously booming city center shows the mixed results of economic revitalization efforts: shuttered store fronts, a handful of brewpubs, and an art house movie theater.
President Biden has identified Scranton, his hometown, as a symbol of the erosion of American manufacturing power, vowing to make a reversal of that trend a signature of his administration. “When jobs move overseas, factories at home close down. Once-thriving cities and towns became shadows of what they used to be, and they lost a sense of their self-worth along the way,” he said in late January.
Since its apex in 1979, more than 7 million jobs have disappeared from the American manufacturing sector, over a third of its workforce. The defense sector has also shed a third of its workforce.
While General Dynamics said the historic Scranton plant remains an attractive employer, in part because of its competitive wages, finding the right workers for its facilities is not easy in an economy with low unemployment and a dearth of traditional manufacturing skills like metalworking. “It’s still a challenge,” said Todd Smith, the company’s general manager for northeast Pennsylvania.
Biden has touted new investments in rail and other infrastructure that U.S. officials hope can anchor a new era of American productivity. “Where the hell is it written that . . . America can’t lead the world again in manufacturing?” he demanded.
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said she hopes for added jobs at the Scranton plant, which now employs about 300 people, and other defense manufacturers in the area. “It’s union work. It’s stable work. It’s work that you can build a career and support a family on,” she said. “So any of those types of jobs are critical for us.”
It is not clear how much the Scranton facility, which already runs 24/7 during the week along with some weekend hours, can expand its manufacturing output. Plant officials said the pace of production has not accelerated since the Ukraine war began, and they are not aware of plans to ramp up operations.
While the hoped-for production transformation may not happen fast enough for Ukraine, as Kyiv braces for a massive springtime assault by Kremlin forces, the next conventional conflict could be far larger and more deadly.
The Ukraine scramble “has also given us some ideas of what we need to look at when it comes to Taiwan and China, because we have seen the need to surge,” said Kea Matory, director of legislative policy at the National Defense Industrial Association. “So this is a good learning opportunity for us.”
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Dan Lamothe in Washington and Kamila Hrabchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.
The algae, which is known formally as the single-cell Karenia brevis, has concentrated near Tampa and neighboring communities.
Scientists have found the algae at rates ranging from 10,000 cells per liter to more than 1 million cells per liter – levels that result in fish kills and breathing difficulties in exposed humans, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The agency said red tide becomes harmful to people at 10,000 cells per liter.
Red tides produce a toxin called brevetoxin that can make humans ill if they breathe the toxin in through sea spray or get wet with contaminated water.
The illness can cause a range of symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including:
Coughing and sneezing
Shortness of breath
Eye, skin, and throat irritation
Asthma attacks
The FWC it had received multiple reports of dead fish respiratory irritation at communities through the Southwest Florida. One community, Indian Rocks Beach, decided to cancel a beach festival slated for next month amid red tide concerns.
Red tides are a naturally occurring phenomenon that have been observed in the Gulf of Mexico since the 1800s. Nascent studies have connected nutrient-laden runoff from farms and developments to increased levels of red tide along the coast.They begin to form on the coast beginning in the fall, and typically clear up by Spring.
Josh Hawley thinks you’re too stupid to realize Tucker Carlson is lying to you | Opinion
The Kansas City Star Editorial Board – March 8, 2023
Facebook/HawleyMO
Fox News lies to its viewers. Josh Hawley is fine with that.
Old news? Maybe. Certainly, we’ve known of both Fox’s mendacity and the Missouri Republican senator’s cynicism for a long time. But fresh developments have revealed yet again how deep the rot goes.
Monday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson offered a ludicrous alternative take on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — that deadly attack on American democracy in the name of defying the will of the voters in order to keep Donald Trump in the White House. Using a feeble smattering of clips eked out of 40,000 hours of unseen Capitol surveillance video furnished to him by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Carlson made a ridiculously weak case that it wasn’t actually a rebellion against the lawful and constitutional transfer of power to Joe Biden — instead, it was simply “mostly peaceful chaos,” generated by sightseers and tourists.
“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson said. It was a bald-faced attempt to rewrite history, to tell Americans that what they witnessed on Jan. 6 wasn’t real. “Gaslighting” is an overused term, but it describes Carlson’s efforts perfectly.
The good news is that many Republicans who typically defer to Fox News pushed back on Carlson’s falsehoods. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina used a barnyard epithet to describe the absurdity. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell aligned himself with a letter from the Capitol Police chief, who accused Carlson of “cherry-picking” his video clips to show calmer moments amid the insurrectionist storm.
These leaders showed it’s more than possible to be a member of the GOP and still respect the truth of what happened on Jan. 6.
Unless you’re Josh Hawley. He embraced Carlson’s version of the insurrection. “Sunshine is always the right answer,” he tweeted Tuesday, openly and directly mocking McConnell’s rightful denunciation of the Fox idiocy.
Please. It’s not “sunshine” to furnish government videos only to one favored propagandist, as McCarthy did to Carlson. Real transparency would’ve meant making the footage widely available to all the news outlets that asked for it.
But it’s no surprise McCarthy gave the videos to Fox. Over the last few weeks, filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against the network have revealed that Fox hosts were happy to air Trump’s false and discredited claims even though senior figures — all the way up to owner Rupert Murdoch and prime-time host Sean Hannity — knew at the time they were patently false. Instead, Hannity and Carlson actively undermined Fox’s few real journalists, even calling for the firing of one reporter who debunked Trump’s lies.
Why? Because they were afraid of losing conservative viewers to even further-right-wing alternatives such as Newsmax. “Weak ratings make good journalists do bad things,” Fox News exec Bill Sammon wrote in a December 2020 email. He might believe that. We don’t.
Fox host on Trump: ‘I hate him passionately’
Believing one thing and telling viewers another is a regular practice at Fox, clearly. Carlson is a fierce defender of Trump when he’s on the air. Behind the scenes? “I hate him passionately,” Carlson said of Trump, in a text revealed by the Dominion lawsuit. “What he’s good at is destroying things.” His viewers never heard that view.
That is the guy McCarthy put in charge of shedding “sunshine” on Jan. 6.
We don’t know Hawley’s real feelings about Trump. But we suspect that — like those up and down the ranks at Fox News — the senator knew better than to believe the former president’s lies, yet still embraced them out of expediency and fear. That’s likely why he led the ludicrous and doomed Senate effort to deny Biden’s rightful election.
Fox executives worried about losing viewers. Hawley had donors and voters to think about.
Now? There’s the matter of his reputation. Carlson on Monday said the famous video showing Hawley fleeing from the insurrectionists was “edited deceptively” by the Jan. 6 committee because, in fact, several other senators were also running away. We’re not sure how that makes Hawley look better, but the senator must take comfort in having an embarrassing moment ever-so-slightly whitewashed.
The problem is that Carlson’s insurrection denialism won’t wash. More than two dozen of Hawley’s Missouri constituents — including, most recently, a member of the Missouri National Guard — have been arrested or charged for their participation in the insurrection. Across the border, another nine Kansans have also been accused of involvement.
Anybody who cares to know what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, understands it was the bloody, violent and irredeemable affair we all saw unfolding in real time with our own eyes.
The folks at Fox News know it, no matter what Tucker Carlson says on his show. And Josh Hawley knows it too.
What will Miami look like with more sea rise? This high-tech car helps us picture it
Alex Harris – March 8, 2023
Hurricane Ian’s destructive storm surge last fall shocked many Floridians, even some who’d weathered severe hurricanes before. In some places, the waters were so high that survivors had to scramble to the second story or their roof for safety.
Experts say it’s tough for people to visualize what those record-breaking levels of surge would look like until they arrive.
But FloodVision, a new tool from nonprofit climate advocacy group Climate Central, could change that, with help from a high-tech car they’ve nicknamed the “flood rover.”
The vehicle isn’t anything special (it’s actually a rental), but the cameras and sensors strapped onto it are. They form a mobile scanning system that acts a lot like a souped-up Google Maps car, except the finished product is a simulation of a future flooded street.
Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central, calls it a “visual, visceral, powerful” way to explain the risks of hurricanes — and rising seas — to communities most at risk.
“We know the images are more powerful than any map we can make, or any graphic we can show you,” he said.
Strauss’ team has already done some scanning in Miami, Miami Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, and they debuted the car and the new system at the Aspen Ideas: Climate conference in Miami Beach this week.
This is a simulation of what a Miami street could look like in 2070 with no interventions to slow down sea level rise. It was produced with FloodVision, a new technology from Climate Central.
In one example in Miami, researchers at Climate Central captured a picture of a neighborhood with the car cameras, then superimposed the two or so feet of sea rise the region is projected to see by 2070 under NOAA’s intermediate high standard.
The result: enough water to come halfway up a tree and soak through the doors of parked cars. It’s a familiar sight to residents of flood-prone neighborhoods like Brickell, which can reach the same levels of flooding after an intense rainstorm.
Strauss plans to use the technology to simulate images of what sea rise or intense storm surge could look like to educate communities about the risks they face from climate change. One potential hurdle is that the technology does not account for protections that local governments may have already installed, like elevated roads or higher sea walls and stronger stormwater pumps.
Without that, the picture of what could likely happen is skewed in places like Miami Beach, which has spent millions installing new protections against rising seas. But despite the growing body of scientific evidence showing the need for coastal cities to adapt to sea level rise, the execution of these projects has been controversial in the places that need them most.
Strauss hopes that his team’s work can be used to help cut through the noise and visually show residents the benefit of investing in flood protection.
“It’s expensive to build flood protections, and it’s also disruptive,” he said. “This technology can be used, essentially, to show what you’re preventing.”
