Politics and American Democracy – Page 190

Wonking Out: Inequality, Mortality, Medicare and Social Security

The New York Times – Opinion

Wonking Out: Inequality, Mortality, Medicare and Social Security

Paul Krugman – November 4, 2022

My Thursday column is about the assault on Medicare and Social Security that is almost certain to follow if Republicans prevail on Tuesday. If the G.O.P. wins control of Congress, we can expect it to hold the economy hostage, most obviously by weaponizing the debt ceiling, in an attempt to force big cuts in Medicare and Social Security.

This isn’t an outlandish scenario. It already happened once. In 2011, after taking control of the House, Republicans sought to extort major cuts in the social safety net from the Obama administration — and they almost succeeded. In fact, President Barack Obama agreed to a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility, from 65 to 67. The deal fell through only because Republicans were unwilling to accept even modest tax increases as their part of the bargain.

This time around, the demands are likely to be even bigger. A report from the Republican Study Committee, which probably gives a good idea of where the G.O.P. will go, calls for upping the retirement age and the age of Medicare eligibility to 70.

The report justifies such a rise by pointing to the long-term increase in the number of years Americans can expect to live after age 65, which it calls a “miracle.”

What the report doesn’t note are two probably related caveats for this miracle. First, the increase in seniors’ life expectancy has actually been much smaller here than in other wealthy nations. Second, progress has been very uneven within America, with much bigger gains for groups with high socioeconomic status — precisely the people who need Medicare and Social Security the least — than for the less fortunate.

Let’s talk first about America’s lagging performance.

In the 2000s, as Democrats were nerving themselves up for another push on health care reform — a push that culminated in the Affordable Care Act — I would frequently encounter people who asserted, not having checked the numbers, that the United States had the world’s highest life expectancy. Not by a long shot. I don’t know how many people still believe that, but my sense is that relatively few Americans are aware just how badly we’ve fallen behind.

Much of America’s shortfall in life expectancy reflects factors that apply only or mainly to the nonelderly: high infant mortality, high rates of shootings and deaths in traffic accidents. Even among seniors, however, we have lagged ever further. Here’s a comparison of life expectancy at age 65 in the United States and France since 1980.

How’s that life, liberty, etc. thing going?Credit…O.E.C.D.

What explains older Americans’ tendency to die younger than their counterparts abroad? It’s not, for the most part, their inability to pay for health care in their later years. For now, at least, all Americans 65 or older are covered by Medicare, a universal, single-payer system, although it doesn’t cover everything, and many seniors still have trouble paying for medical necessities.

So what’s the problem? Inadequate health care earlier in life surely takes a toll, but more broadly, our high mortality probably reflects our society’s extreme inequality — not just in income but also in status, perceived economic opportunity and more. Americans on the losing side of high inequality have trouble affording health care and adequate nutrition; they are also, all too often, demoralized by their position, leading to deaths of despair and unhealthy lifestyles that take a toll over time.

That Republican report calling for Medicare and Social Security cuts mentions “inequality” just twice — both times in footnotes citing articles claiming that government antipoverty programs make poverty worse. That’s only to be expected: Conservatives tend to bristle at any mention of inequality and class, often denouncing anyone who even raises the issue as Marxist.

Yet progress in raising life expectancy has been extremely unequal among income groups. Here are widely cited estimates from Dana P. Goldman and Peter R. Orszag of likely life expectancy at 65 for American men born in 1928, 1960 and 1990, broken out by wage quartile — that is, which quarter of the wage distribution they were in while working. (The numbers for women are similar.)

Prosper and live long, or don’t and don’t.Credit…Goldman and Orszag

Life expectancy has been rising much more for relatively affluent Americans than for the less well off.

It’s not necessarily income per se that is driving these disparities. To some extent, it could reflect other factors that are correlated with income, especially education. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, who famously pointed out the rise of deaths of despair, have shown that mortality for adults — surely including adults over 65 — has been rising for Americans without a college degree but not for those with one.

And there’s also a strong regional element. Woolf and Schoomaker show that overall life expectancy, probably reflected among seniors, too, has diverged between lagging heartland states and coastal states, part of a trend of rising regional disparities as the knowledge economy has favored large metropolitan areas with highly educated work forces.

Here are estimates of life expectancy at birth — again, most likely closely correlated with life expectancy at 65 — for some selected states:

What’s the matter with Oklahoma?Credit…Woolf and Schoomaker

The numbers in parentheses are each state’s rank in 1959, 1990 and 2016. The rise of New York is striking; so is the relative decline of Oklahoma and Kansas, both of which had higher life expectancy than New York as recently as 1990.

How does all this bear on Republican proposals to raise the retirement and Medicare eligibility ages? Because seniors’ life expectancy varies so much by class, an increase in the age of eligibility for major programs will take a much bigger bite out of retirement for Americans with low socioeconomic status, and correspondingly fewer years to collect benefits, than it will on those higher on the ladder.

And because disparities have been rising over time, the disproportionality of that effect has been rising, too.

Look back at the figure on life expectancies by quartile. According to these estimates, American men in the bottom quartile born in 1960 can expect to live only 1.9 more years after 65 than their counterparts born in 1928. That’s slightly less than the increase in the retirement age that has already taken place. And even men in that quartile born in 1990 are expected to have only 3.5 years more time after 65 than those born in 1928; meanwhile, Republicans are proposing a rise in the retirement age to 70, a five-year total increase, and an equal rise in the Medicare age.

One way to think about all of this, which is only a slight caricature, is that Republicans are telling janitors in Oklahoma that they can’t get benefits in their 60s — even though their life expectancy hasn’t gone up by much — because lawyers in New York are living longer.

It’s quite a position to take, and it would surely provoke a huge backlash — if voters knew about it, which most of them seem not to.

Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.

This Is What Happens When Republicans Tear Off Their Masks

The New York Times

This Is What Happens When Republicans Tear Off Their Masks

Opinion – Jamelle Bouie – November 4, 2022

Two men wearing masks on Jan. 6. — In costume for Jan. 6.Credit…Mark Peterson/Redux for The New York Times

Even by the degraded standards of 2022, it has been shocking to watch Republican politicians and conservative media personalities respond to the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi — Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband — with lies, conspiracymongering and gleeful disregard for the victim.

Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, made light of the assault — which left the 82-year-old Pelosi hospitalized with serious injuries — while campaigning for Yesli Vega, the Republican running to unseat Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic representative in Virginia’s Seventh District.

“Speaker Pelosi’s husband, they had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere,” Youngkin said, in what appeared to be a straightforward condemnation of the attack until he added, to the cheers of the crowd, that “we’re going to send her back to be with him in California.”

“That’s what we’re going to go do,” he continued. “That’s what we’re going to go do.”

Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor of Arizona, used the attack on Pelosi — who underwent surgery to repair a skull fracture after he was struck on the head with a hammer by his assailant — as fodder for a joke.

“Nancy Pelosi, well, she’s got protection when she’s in D.C. — apparently her house doesn’t have a lot of protection.” According to Kate Sullivan, a CNN reporter, the joke landed: “The crowd burst into laughter, and the interviewer was laughing so hard, he covered his face with his notes.”

The crucial midterm elections

Republicans seem to be surging heading into November, with Democrats struggling to break through, as voters turn their focus from abortion to crime and inflation. Even if the polls are as off, as pollsters fear, all signs seem to be pointing toward a strong showing for the G.O.P.

For months now, Times Opinion has been covering how we got here. Chloe Maxmin and Canyon Woodward argued that Democrats abandoned rural America. Alec MacGillis traced how the party ignored the economic decline of the Midwest. And Michelle Cottle described the innovative Republican ground game in South Texas.

Opinion has also been identifying the candidates who could define the future of their party. Sam Adler-Bell captured the bleak nationalism of Blake Masters, the Arizona Republican challenging Senator Mark Kelly. Christopher Caldwell described the transformation of J.D. Vance, the venture capitalist from Ohio who went from Trump critic to proud member of the MAGA faithful. Michelle Goldberg traveled to Washington state to profile Joe Kent, a burgeoning star on the right.

And throughout this election cycle, Opinion has held discussions with groups of experts – hosted by Frank Bruni, Ross Douthat and others – that have followed the season’s twists and turns, from reviewing the primary landscape to a Democratic backlash against the Dobbs decision which gave way to a Republican surge in the fall. And we paused to consider the mysteries of polls and the politically homeless along the way.

In a now-deleted post on Instagram, where he has more than six million followers, Donald Trump Jr. shared a photograph of a hammer and a pair of men’s underwear with the caption “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

Not to be outdone, Representative Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican poised to chair a congressional subcommittee if his party wins the House, echoed a conservative conspiracy theory about the attack when he tweeted a picture of Nancy Pelosi with the comment “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy was the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fund-raiser.”

The American political landscape has never been a particularly virtuous place, but nonetheless an important part of our politics has been the pretense that our leaders care about appearances, even as they fight to gain and hold power by any means necessary. Abraham Lincoln was both a bare-knuckled partisan brawler and a sagacious, broad-spirited political leader. So were many of our most revered and respected presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt and beyond.

From the beginning, Americans saw virtue — whether real or feigned, sincere or performed — as a key ingredient in the practice of republican self-government. Yes, the American system was built on the insight that institutions shape behavior and structure incentives. And yes, the main players at the Philadelphia convention tried to build a government that would harness self-interest and vice rather than rely on the better angels of our nature. But they still devoted a good deal of thought and attention to the role of virtue in their new order.

James Madison hoped that “the people will have virtue and intelligence to select men of virtue and wisdom” to lead their republic. And if not? If there was “no virtue among us,” then Americans were in a “wretched situation.” The reason, he explained, was that there were “no theoretical checks” that could render the nation secure in the absence of virtue: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”

James Wilson, who helped produce the first draft of the Constitution and served as one of the first six justices on the Supreme Court, did not think that republican government could survive among a citizenry that could not or would not sacrifice its personal interest for the public good. “By the will and by the interest of the community, every private will and every private interest must be bound and overruled. Unless this maxim be established and observed; it is impossible that civil government could be formed or supported.”

Writing in a somewhat different vein, John Dickinson, who served as a delegate from Delaware to the constitutional convention, asked skeptics of the Constitution to ask how, exactly, a virtuous people would undermine their government. “Will a virtuous and sensible people choose villains or fools for their officers? Or, if they should choose men of wisdom and integrity, will these lose both or either, by taking their seats? If they should, will not their places be quickly supplied by another choice? Is the like derangement again, and again, and again to be expected? Can any man believe, that such astonishing phenomena are to be looked for?”

In all of this, the framers and founding fathers were interpreting the classical republican theorists, who emphasized, in one way or another, the vital importance of civic virtue. The Americans’ vision of virtue was different from that of many of their interlocutors — “Virtue became less the harsh and martial self-sacrifice of antiquity,” the historian Gordon Wood notes, “and more the modern willingness to get along with others for the sake of peace and prosperity” — but it was still critical to the maintenance and preservation of republican liberty.

As George Washington said in his first inaugural address, “There is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity.”

I used to scoff at much of this, thoroughly convinced that institutions mattered more than virtue. It was more important, in my view, to provide the right incentives than it was to try to cultivate values of honesty, decency, forbearance and public spiritedness.

But the example of the past seven years, from Donald Trump’s infamous ride down the escalator in June of 2015 to the present, has pushed me in the opposite direction. Institutions matter, but so does virtue, especially among the nation’s leaders. Even if it is insincere, the performance of virtue helps inculcate those values in the public at large. It says, in essence, that this is how we behave, even as we fight for power and political influence.

When politicians and other political leaders refuse to play this game — when they drop the pretense of virtue and embrace a politics of cruelty and malice, in which nothing matters but the will to power — voters act accordingly. Some may recoil, but just as many will embrace the chance to live vicariously through leaders who celebrate vice and hold virtue in contempt.

In a 1941 essay on socialism and British democracy, George Orwell observed, “An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face.” In Britain, he wrote, “such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different because of them.”

“Even hypocrisy,” Orwell continued, “is a powerful safeguard.”

It is no small thing to have a public and political culture in which people feel the need to perform virtue, even if they don’t actually practice it. The mask alters the expression of the face; the performance becomes real.

And when would-be leaders and the people who follow them no longer want to wear the mask? When they no longer want to perform virtue in any sense or in any form? Then the face underneath can turn out to be very ugly indeed.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Makes Alarming Promise About Ukraine If GOP Wins Congress

HuffPost

Marjorie Taylor Greene Makes Alarming Promise About Ukraine If GOP Wins Congress

Lee Moran – November 4, 2022

Far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Thursday vowed to nix American funding for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion if the GOP retakes Congress in next week’s midterm elections.

“The only border they care about is Ukraine, not America’s southern border,” Greene said of Democrats at a rally in Iowa. “Under Republicans, not another penny will go to Ukraine. Our country comes first. They don’t care about our border or our people.”

Greene’s pledge was met with cheers from the audience.

Outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) slammed Greene’s comment as being “exactly” what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants.

“If we’d had Republicans like this in the 1980s, we would have lost the Cold War,” Cheney wrote on Twitter.

The GOP is currently split over whether to continue financially assisting Ukraine against the invasion, which Putin launched in February. The U.S. has so far donated more than $67 billion to the Ukrainian cause.

But this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested U.S. pursestrings for the defense will be significantly tightened if his party wins control of the House and Senate.

“I think people are gonna be sitting in a recession and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “They just won’t do it.”

Wisconsin Republicans Stand on the Verge of Total, Veto-Proof Power

The New York Times

Wisconsin Republicans Stand on the Verge of Total, Veto-Proof Power

Reid J. Epstein – November 4, 2022

Gov. Tony Evers campaigns at the Blue Wave Inn in Ashland, Wis., on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2022. (Tim Gruber/The New York Times)

FRANKS FIELD, Wis. — The three counties in Wisconsin’s far northwest corner make up one of the last patches of rural America that have remained loyal to Democrats through the Obama and Trump years.

But after voting Democratic in every presidential election since 1976, and consistently sending the party’s candidates to the state Legislature for even longer, the area could now defect to the Republican Party. The ramifications would ripple far beyond the shores of Lake Superior.

If Wisconsin Democrats lose several low-budget state legislative contests here on Tuesday — which appears increasingly likely because of new and even more gerrymandered political maps — it may not matter who wins the $114 million tossup contest for governor between Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Tim Michels, a Republican. Those northern seats would put Republicans in reach of veto-proof supermajorities that would render a Democratic governor functionally irrelevant.

Even though Wisconsin remains a 50-50 state in statewide elections, Democrats would be on the verge of obsolescence.

“The erosion of our democratic institutions that Republicans are looking to take down should be frightening to anyone,” said John Adams, a Democratic candidate for the state Assembly from Washburn, on the Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior. “When you start losing whole offices in government, I don’t know where they’re going to stop.”

This rural corner of Wisconsin — Douglas, Bayfield and Ashland counties — has become pivotal because it has three Democratic-held seats that Republicans appear likely to capture; two in the Assembly and one in the state Senate. Statewide, the party needs to flip just five Assembly districts and one in the Senate to take the two-thirds majorities required to override a governor’s veto.

That outcome — “terrifying,” as Melissa Agard, a Democratic state senator and the leader of the party’s campaign arm in the chamber, described it — would clear a runway for Republican state legislators to follow through on their promises to eliminate the state’s bipartisan elections commission and take direct control of voting procedures and the certification of elections.

Wisconsin is not the only state facing the prospect of a Democratic governor and veto-proof Republican majorities in its legislature.

North Carolina Republicans, who also drew a gerrymandered legislative map, need to flip just three seats in the state House and two in the state Senate to be able to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. Gov. Laura Kelly of Kansas, a Democrat in a tight contest for reelection, already faces veto-proof Republican majorities, as do the Democratic governors of deep-red Kentucky and Louisiana.

Wisconsin Republicans, who have had a viselike grip on the Legislature since enacting the nation’s most aggressive gerrymander after their 2010 sweep of the state’s elections, make no apologies for pressing their advantage to its limits. Michels, the party’s nominee for governor, told supporters this week, “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor.”

Former Rep. Reid Ribble, a Republican who served northeastern Wisconsin, said, “There’s a lot of complaining about gerrymandered House or state Assembly seats, and there’s some truth to that.”

But he added: “At the end of the day, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a district in rural Wisconsin that would elect a Democrat right now.”

Republican control of the Wisconsin Legislature is so entrenched that party officials now use it as a campaign tactic. Craig Rosand, the GOP chairman in Douglas County, said that because Democrats had so little influence at the state Capitol, voters who want a say in their government should elect Republicans.

“The majority caucus always determines what passes,” he said. “Having a representative that’s part of the majority gets them in the room where the decisions are made.”

Of Wisconsin’s 33 state Senate seats, 17 are on the ballot on Tuesday, including two Democratic-held districts that President Donald Trump carried in 2020. The picture is similarly bleak for Democrats in the state Assembly, where President Joe Biden, who won the state by about 20,000 votes, carried just 35 of 99 districts.

“When you can win a majority of voters and have close to a third of the seats, it’s not true democracy,” said Greta Neubauer, the Democratic leader in the State Assembly. “We are very much at risk of people deciding that it’s not worthwhile for them to continue to engage because they see how rigged the system is against the people of the state in favor of Republican politicians.”

As former President Barack Obama campaigned for Wisconsin Democrats on Saturday in Milwaukee, he addressed the implications of Republican supermajorities in the Legislature.

“If they pick up a few more seats in both chambers, they’ll be able to force through extreme, unpopular laws on everything from guns to education to abortion,” Obama said. “And there won’t be anything Democrats can do about it.”

The Republican leaders in the Wisconsin Legislature say they will bring back all 146 bills Evers has vetoed during his four years in office — measures on elections, school funding, pandemic mitigation efforts, policing, abortion and the state’s gun laws — if they win a supermajority or if Michels is elected. Evers warned of “hand-to-hand combat” to find moderate Republican legislators to sustain vetoes if he is reelected with a GOP supermajority.

“Katy, bar the door,” Evers said Thursday during an interview on his campaign bus in Ashland. “They’re going to shove all this stuff down our throat and it’s going to happen quickly and before anybody can pay attention. It could be bad.”

Evers predicted that Democrats would be able to narrowly sustain veto power in the Assembly. The state Senate, he said, is “tougher.”

In northwest Wisconsin, the three incumbent Democratic legislators decided against running for reelection under new, more Republican-friendly maps. Under the old maps, Biden carried each of the districts, which are home to large numbers of unionized workers in paper mills, mines and shipyards. Under the new lines Republicans adopted last year, Trump would have won them all.

Kelly Westlund, a Democrat running for the state Senate here, spent Wednesday morning going up and down the long driveways of rural homes 15 miles south of Superior. It was grueling door-to-door outreach that illustrated the difficulty of introducing herself to voters as a new candidate in a new district that includes three media markets.

“You don’t find a whole lot of folks here that are super jazzed about Joe Biden,” Westlund said. “But you do find people that understand there’s a lot at stake.”

Her pitch included warnings about what would happen if Republicans flip her seat and claim a supermajority. Few of the voters she met knew much about the candidates for the Legislature — but they did express strong feelings about the national parties.

“The Democrats have to own up to a certain amount of things that are going on now,” said John Tesarek, a retired commercial floor installer who would not commit to voting for Westlund. “I’m not totally certain I’m hearing them own up to much.”

The picture wasn’t much different during early voting at the city clerk’s office in Superior.

Ann Marie Allen, a hospital janitor, said she had voted for Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, the Democrat challenging Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican. But she said she had also backed Westlund’s Republican opponent, Romaine Quinn, because she liked that he had his toddler son in his commercials. Quinn has spent eight times as much on TV ads as Westlund has.

“There was no smut in his ads,” Allen said. “You know how they cut down on other people? There wasn’t that much of that.”

Chad Frantz, a plumber, said he had voted a straight Republican ticket.

“I’ve been watching the Democrats bash every Republican,” he said. “They’ve been trying to make out every guy that’s a Republican running for a position into a male chauvinist pig.”

Mayor Jim Paine of Superior, a Democrat, said Republicans were capitalizing on “fissures” in local Democratic politics between union workers and environmentalists.

“Labor and the environment are both very important, but it’s leading to very real challenges,” Paine said. “They’re breaking up. That’s why you see more Republicans getting elected.”

The Republicans likely to head to Madison are far different from their Democratic predecessors.

Nick Milroy, a moderate Democrat, won seven terms in the Assembly and ran unopposed for a decade until he was reelected in 2020 by just 139 votes. His old district was Democratic in presidential years; Trump carried the new one by two percentage points.

The Republican who would replace him is Angie Sapik, a marketing executive. During the Capitol riot in 2021, Sapik tweeted, “It’s about time Republicans stood up for their rights,” “Rage on, Patriots!” and “Come on, Mike Pence!”

In a brief phone call, Sapik agreed to an interview, then ended the call and did not respond to subsequent messages.

Her Democratic opponent is Laura Gapske, a Superior school board member who said she had to call the police after receiving threatening calls when advertising that promoted Sapik’s candidacy included her cellphone number.

Democrats here described an uphill battle against better-funded Republican opponents, with the political atmosphere colored by inflation, concerns about faraway crime and an unpopular president.

They also spoke of the difficulty of spreading their message in what is effectively a news desert.

Adams, the Assembly candidate, is running in a district Trump would have carried by four points. Last week, Adams — an organic farmer who previously worked at small-town newspapers in Minnesota and Montana — drove two hours each way to Rhinelander to be interviewed by a local TV station.

“Because we live in a low-media environment up here, too many of us are getting our cable news and not enough are getting our local news,” he said. “If Fox News is telling the story of Democrats, then we lose.”

U.N. report warns of climate change ‘adaption gap’ that threatens the developing world

Yahoo! News

U.N. report warns of climate change ‘adaption gap’ that threatens the developing world

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 3, 2022

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres — Secretary-General António Guterres addresses the 77th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Sept. 20. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

The measures being undertaken by world governments to adapt to climate change are not keeping up with increasingly severe damage caused by rising temperatures and should be dramatically increased, a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has found.

“Today’s UNEP Adaptation Gap report makes clear that the world is failing to protect people from the here-and-now impacts of the climate crisis,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement referencing the report. “Those on the frontlines of the climate crisis are at the back of the line for support.”

“Climate change is landing blow after blow upon humanity, as we saw time and again throughout 2022,” the report states. Many of the world’s poorest countries are being hardest hit by the changing climate. One-third of Pakistan was submerged in floods in late July, causing $10 billion in estimated damages. In East Africa, a drought intensified by global warming is contributing to widespread food insecurity and a potential famine affecting the lives of millions of people. Hurricanes made more powerful by warmer ocean waters have swept across developing island nations from the Philippines to the Dominican Republic.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

“We’re nowhere near where we need to be in solving and addressing the climate crisis, and with each passing day of inaction, we’re getting further and further away from being on a pathway to limit global warming to 1.5 [degrees Celsius] and prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis,” said a senior U.N. official during a background press briefing on Wednesday. “And with every fraction of warming, climate disasters are getting worse and they’re wrecking lives and livelihoods and decimating economies like never before.”

Many countries have begun planning adaptation measures, such as moving residents from vulnerable areas and fortifying infrastructure. But the richer nations that are primarily responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change have not provided enough money to pay for them.

“More than eight out of ten countries have at least one national adaptation planning instrument,” the report’s press release states. “However, financing to turn these plans into action isn’t following. International adaptation finance flows to developing countries are 5-10 times below estimated needs and the gap continues to widen.”

A refugee camp in Sehwan, Pakistan. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

The report comes on the eve of the COP27, the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Guterres argued that developed nations should respond with new commitments to fund climate adaptation in developing countries at the conference.

In the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, a precursor to the 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact, developed countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 for climate change assistance to developing countries. Half of that money was slated to be used for adaption measures, while the other half would go toward helping developing countries reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions. However, that funding has lagged, especially on adaptation. In 2020, $83 billion went to developing countries, of which only $29 billion was for adaptation projects. That $29 billion, however, represented an increase of 4% from 2019.

“Last year, developed countries agreed to double support for adaptation to $40 billion a year by 2025,” Guterres said. “At COP27, they must present a credible road map with clear milestones on how this will be delivered — preferably as grants, not loans.”

The cost of dealing with climate change continues spiraling upwards. The UNEP report estimates that adaptation needs will reach between $160 billion and $340 billion by 2030 and $315 billion to $565 billion by 2050.

A woman removes rubble from her destroyed house in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona, in El Seibo, Dominican Republic, Sept. 20. (Ricardo Rojas/Reuters)

The report argues that adaptation actions thus far have been too focused on the short-term and are insufficient in their ability to provide adequate protection from conditions like higher temperatures and higher sea levels later in this century. Future projects must be planned in a more comprehensive and inclusive way, the report warns, and must offer some general recommendations for democratizing and improving the process.

Richer countries have their own climate change adaptation needs, as can be seen from the effects of heat waves, drought and the resulting wildfires in Europe and the United States this summer.

But the warmer countries south of the U.S. and Europe — sometimes referred to as “the Global South” — are suffering more extreme consequences of climate change. They also tend to be the poorest and least equipped to handle disasters.

“As the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] confirmed earlier this year, if you’re living in one of the global hot spots of the climate crisis — namely Africa, South Asia, Central or South America or on a small island developing state — you’re 15 times more likely to die from a climate impact,” said the U.N. official.

Embracing one of the report’s recommendations, Guterres announced the creation of an “Adaptation Pipeline Accelerator” — a project of the U.N. and related agencies like the Green Climate Fund that will help funders and developing nations partner on adaptation programs.

“This will be a central litmus test for success at COP27,” Guterres warned. “The world must step up and protect people and communities from the immediate and ever-growing risks of the climate emergency. We have no time to lose.”

Forget the polls. This election is far from over for Democrats.

USA Today

Forget the polls. This election is far from over for Democrats.

Donna Brazile – November 3, 2022

As campaign manager for former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, I spent the final days of the election desperately trying to increase voter turnout in key counties in battleground states and recruiting more canvassers to help us get out the vote. While our media strategists had completed their work and the final tracking polls came in, it was my job to reach people where they live, work, play or pray.

With only days left in the 2022 midterm political cycle, any campaign manager worth his or her reputation is now experiencing “crunch time.” Volunteers have what they need: canvass lists of infrequent voters, phone numbers, scripted text messages and posters to put up around key precincts cross their communities. Now is the time for candidates to focus on their closing messages to voters.

There’s no question with so many polls – tracking polls, individual candidate polling, aggregate polling – that some voters are likely to start tuning out rather than getting ahead of the crowd by voting early or filling out their ballots and returning them before the deadline.

But no matter where candidates stand in the most recent poll, it’s not over. It’s never done until the voting has ended and the counting gets underway.

No one really knows what Election Day will bring

Despite many predictions that Republicans will capture control of the U.S. House and are in contention to win a Senate majority, no one knows for sure what will happen. The same goes for predictions in races for governor and other state and local contests.

Remember 2016? Almost no pollsters and pundits predicted Donald Trump would defeat Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. In fact, an analysis by The New York Times updated on its website at 10:20 p.m. ET on Nov. 8, 2016 – election night, when polls in the eastern half of the country were closed – boldly stated: “Hillary Clinton has an 85% chance to win.”

A voter gets a sticker after delivering her vote-by-mail ballot to a drop box in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Oct. 24, 2022.

There are many other examples of polls and political forecasts coming up short.

A danger of the intense media focus on polls is that simply reporting poll results can discourage people from voting, altering the outcome of elections. Hearing their favored candidate has a sizable lead or trails badly in a race inevitably convinces some voters that their vote doesn’t matter.

We’re addicted to midterm election polls: And it’s not doing us any good.

Key variables in every election poll involve who is polled and the expected size of voter turnout. To be accurate, the small group of people polled must mirror the makeup of the far larger number of people who actually vote. And, of course, views people hold when polled may change by the time they vote.

While the national news media understandably focuses on candidate positions on national issues in their coverage, many voters look to candidate positions on state and local issues when deciding whom to support, particularly when it comes to candidates for governor and other state offices. Candidates need to keep that in mind. They need to increase their visibility and make one last plea to voters to help them.

Although nothing is certain, a wave election – where one party picks up a large number of offices – seems unlikely this year because Democrats and Republicans are both showing strength in different states and congressional districts. Wave elections aren’t a series of landslides, but a series of close races that primarily break for the same party.

Voter turnout is traditionally lower in midterm elections than in presidential election years. But that may not be the case this year, if strong early voter turnout in Georgia and other states is any indicator. Large turnouts usually benefit Democrats. But Republicans know how to get out their vote, including infrequent voters in rural areas and many independent voters who might not be inclined to vote for either major party.

That’s the wild card in 2022: Voter turnout and voter choices could come down to which candidate reached out to them, not by advertising on TV or their favorite digital platform but by visiting their neighborhood, speaking their language and understanding their concerns.

Final 96 hours are critical

The question now is how many young voters, independent voters and nonaligned voters will decide not to stay home but to take a chance to vote for the candidate they believe speaks to their concerns. This is why the final 96 hours are vital as a few undecided voters will decide to vote.

Gen Z could swing election – if they vote: As Gen Z, we’re told we will ‘fix everything.’ Voting in the midterms is the first step.

I believe in democracy, so I hope as many Americans as possible vote in coming days, even if they vote for candidates I might oppose. To keep our democracy healthy, we need voters to vote. We need to respect the right of every eligible citizen to cast their ballot without intimidation or threats of violence.

We also need candidates and voters alike to accept the election results. I’ll accept the November election results even if Republicans come out on top, just as I did in 2000 when I was campaign manager for Vice President Gore and joined him in accepting his narrow presidential election defeat by George W. Bush. Trump is the only presidential candidate in American history to refuse to accept his election loss.

Are politics to blame for our polarization?: Red and blue America don’t trust each other. And that’s driving us dangerously apart.

So, it’s not over. We need to remember that polls don’t decide elections; voters do.

Following election news is important, but actually participating in elections is far more important. As the old saying goes, politics isn’t a spectator sport. Get out of the stands and get onto the political playing field.

Donna Brazile is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors, an ABC News contributor and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She previously served as interim chair of the Democratic National Committee and of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute, and managed the Gore campaign in 2000.

If Democrats lose Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, they’ve got a huge Kyrsten Sinema problem

AZ Central – The Arizona Republic

If Democrats lose Arizona’s U.S. Senate race, they’ve got a huge Kyrsten Sinema problem

Phil Boas, Arizona Republic – November 2, 2022

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema leads a council of water experts meeting in her office in Phoenix on Oct. 17, 2022. They were discussing how to spend federal drought relief funds available for keeping Colorado River water in Lake Mead.

No one knows who will win the U.S. Senate race in Arizona.

The latest Fox News poll conducted Oct. 26-30 has Mark Kelly up by 2 points and within the margin of error. A toss-up.

Republican Blake Masters has closed a large gap in the past month. A similar poll taken in October showed him down 6 points to Kelly.

If the unexpected happens and the Republican wins this race, it will set up a fascinating dynamic in the post-election:

What to do about Kyrsten Sinema.

If Kelly loses, would Democrats risk another seat?

This is admittedly getting way ahead of things. Kelly, the Democrat, is far outraising Masters to the tune of $75.5 million to $9.9 million as of Sept. 30.

Kelly has been flooding the airwaves and the internet with clever ads in which he plays a working-class guy in a red ballcap festooned not with “Make America Great Again” but the next closest thing, an American flag.

In the background is a big rig splashed with Old Glory.

In the campaign: Can Obama’s visit deliver independents to Mark Kelly?

If Kelly playing a Republican in his ads does not win over enough cross-over Republicans or independents, Arizona Democrats will have a serious dilemma.

Can they still afford to hate Kyrsten Sinema?

Because if the incumbent Kelly goes down, once an improbable outcome, it likely means a red tsunami struck America and the state of Arizona, and more Republicans will be taking their seats and control in Congress and at the Arizona Capitol.

It will mean that Kyrsten Sinema, better than her Democratic cohorts, read the horizon and understood what was coming.

It will demonstrate with stunning clarity that Sinema was farsighted holding fast to the legislative filibuster now that Democrats have become the minority in the U.S. Senate.

And if Democrats continue their hate-fest against Arizona’s senior senator, it could mean they risk losing two U.S. Senate seats in Arizona in two years – as quickly as they gained them.

The party has no love left for Kyrsten Sinema

Will Arizona Democrats who censured Sinema in January for “her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy” be willing to bury the hatchet to ensure they hold on to their remaining U.S. Senate seat?

That’s hard to imagine.

One poll has shown that 54% of likely Arizona Democratic primary voters have a “very unfavorable” view of Sinema.

Left-wing vitriol aimed at Sinema is a gusher on the internet. She is probably the most detested politician in the country today.

Would Democrats risk running a more liberal candidate such as U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego in the 2024 Senate primary to knock her out? Would they risk that knowing that the country and state had swung right in the 2020 election?

These are fascinating questions to ponder.

But my guess is we know the answer. The marriage is over. Democrats have decided their differences with Sinema are unreconcilable.

Arizona Democrats reflect the temper of Democrats nationally, and they’re in no mood to compromise.

Will they move left and lose or go with a winner?

With the slimmest of governing majorities, U.S. congressional and Senate Democrats tried to push an industrial-strength progressive agenda with huge spending on the rest of the country. That would have worked had they gotten Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., to eliminate the legislative filibuster.

But Sinema and Manchin resisted – to their political damnation.

If Kelly goes down, Arizona Democrats are more likely to self-remove themselves from an Arizona Senate seat than go with a sure winner in Sinema.

It takes a blue dog Democrat to win a Senate seat in Arizona, but Arizona Democrats may not be able to tolerate a blue dog long enough to hold it.

Kelly is not a blue dog.

He has shown some independence when he criticized the White House reversal on Title 42, the public health order that kept some controls on immigration. He showed it again when he opposed a White House pick for wage administrator for the Labor Department.

But he also hid in the shadows for two years as Sinema fought filibuster battles, and he later supported its specific removal to pass voting rights legislation.

All of this makes the present-day race more intriguing.

Which brings us back to Masters and politics today

Mark Kelly is up against Blake Masters, who strikes me as the biggest bull—-er in Arizona politics. I’ve just never believed that Mr. smooth-talking Stanford grad and Big Tech executive is the Trump Republican he plays on TV.

He’s not that stupid.

I’m guessing that in his private moments, Masters understands the toxic downside to Donald Trump. Just a hunch.

His general election conversion to more centrist views further persuades me. Fanatics don’t compromise.

Which makes for quite a spectacle in the 2022 race for U.S. Senate in Arizona.

You have two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, both playing MAGA guys on TV to win over Arizona voters.

There’s a word for Arizona politics today.

Not “left.”

Not “right.”

Just “whacked.”

Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic.

Big agriculture warns farming must change or risk ‘destroying the planet’

The Guardian

Big agriculture warns farming must change or risk ‘destroying the planet’

Dominic Rushe – November 2, 2022

<span>Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP</span> — Photograph: Jeff McIntosh/AP

Food companies and governments must come together immediately to change the world’s agricultural practices or risk “destroying the planet”, according to the sponsors of a report by some of the largest food and farming businesses released on Thursday.

The report, from a taskforce within the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), a network of global CEOs focused on climate issues established by King Charles III, is being released days before the start of the United Nation’s Cop27 climate summit in Egypt.

Many of the world’s largest food and agricultural businesses have championed sustainable agricultural practices in recent years. Regenerative farming practices, which prioritize cutting greenhouse gas emissions, soil health and water conservation, now cover 15% of croplands.- ADVERTISEMENT -https://s.yimg.com/rq/darla/4-10-1/html/r-sf-flx.html

But the pace of change has been “far too slow”, the report finds, and must triple by 2030 for the world to have any chance of keeping temperature rises under 1.5C, a level that if breached, scientists argue, will unleash even more devastating climate change on the planet.

The report is signed by Bayer, Mars, McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Mondēlez, Olam, PepsiCo, Waitrose and others. They represent a potent political and corporate force, affecting the food supply chain around the world. They are also, according to critics, some of those most responsible for climate mismanagement with one calling the report “smoke and mirrors” and unlikely to address the real crisis.

Food production is responsible for a third of all planet-heating gases emitted by human activity and a number of the signatories have been accused of environmental misdeeds and “greenwashing”. Activist Greta Thunberg is boycotting Cop this year having called the global summit a PR stunt “for leaders and people in power to get attention”.

“We are at a critical tipping point where something must be done,” said the taskforce chair and outgoing Mars CEO, Grant Reid. “The interconnection between human health and planetary health is more evident than ever before.” Big food companies and agriculture must play a big part in changing that, said Reid. “It won’t be easy but we have got to make it work,” he said.

Agriculture is the world’s largest industry. Pasture and cropland occupy around 50% of the planet’s habitable land and uses about 70% of fresh water supplies. The climate crisis is challenging the industry across the world but the group’s call for change comes as the industry – which employs 1 billion people – is facing supply chain issues in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and soaring inflation. It also comes amid mounting skepticism about promises to change from companies that have contributed to climate change.

These current issues must not detract from the need for change, the report argues. “With the inflationary environment and widespread supply chain disruption, it would be easy to reduce our focus on the longer-term challenge of scaling regenerative farming. But we believe it’s vital we maintain a sense of urgency. We must take action now to avoid more acute crises in the future,” its authors write.

Sunny George Verghese, chief executive of Olam, one of the world’s largest suppliers of cocoa beans, coffee, cotton and rice, said: “We cannot continue to produce and consume food and feed and fiber in the way we are doing today unless we don’t mind destroying the planet.

“The only way out for us is how we transition to a more resilient food system that will allow us to meet the needs of a growing population without the resource intensity we have today.”

The report studied three food crops, potatoes, rice and wheat, and has made policy recommendations it will present at Cop27.

The taskforce’s members are working to make the short-term economic case for change more attractive to farmers. “It’s just not compelling enough for the average farmer,” said Reid. More widely the report argues industry and government must also work harder to address the knowledge gap and make sure farmers are following best practices. Third, all parties involved in the agriculture industry from farmers to food producers to government, banks and insurers need to align behind encouraging a shift to more sustainable practices.

“It involves change for all the players including the government, private, public companies and others. No one player can do this on their own, this has to be a collaboration of the willing. What needs to happen now is action and delivery,” said Reid.

Over the next six months, the group will assess how they can spread the taskforce’s work with the aim of establishing a common set of metrics for measuring environmental outcomes, establishing a credible system of payments for farmers for environmental outcomes, easing the cost of farmers transitioning to sustainable practices, ensuring government policy rewards farmers for greening their business and encouraging the sourcing of crops from particular areas converting to regenerative farming.

Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at Grain, a non-profit organization that works to support small farmers, said it was increasingly difficult for big agricultural and food companies to ignore climate change. “But I don’t think any of these companies – say a McDonald’s – has any commitment to curtail the sales of highly polluting products. I don’t think PepsiCo is going to say the world doesn’t need Pepsi.”

Kuyek pointed out that Yara, another signatory to the report, is the world’s largest supplier of nitrogen-based fertilizers, “which are responsible for one out of every 40 tonnes of greenhouse gas emitted annually”.

“It’s pretty disingenuous,” said Kuyek. “Small, local food systems still feed most of the people on the planet and the real threat is that the industrial system is expanding at the expense of the truly sustainable system. Corporations are creating a bit of smoke and mirrors here, suggesting they are part of the solution when inevitably they are part of the problem.”

Considering the controversial histories of some of the companies involved in the report, Verghese said he expected criticism and scrutiny. “All companies have to stand up to the scrutiny of being attacked if there is real greenwashing. There is no place to hide,” he said. “As far as Olam is concerned we are very clear on our targets, we have had the confidence to make these targets public. All of us have progressed along the sustainable journey. It is not that we have not made mistakes in the past but as we have become better at this we are willing to be subject to scrutiny.”

Both Reid and Verghese said the scale of the issues the world’s food supply is facing cannot be underplayed but that more governments and companies were becoming convinced of the need for urgent change. “I believe change can be made,” said Verghese. “I am optimistic. The fact that these kinds of coalitions are emerging is very positive. We are all otherwise very strong rivals and competitors. We hate each other’s guts, we don’t come together on anything unless there is a huge crisis. Everyone is recognizing there is a huge crisis. We need to come together.”

He was accused of stealing huge amounts of water over 23 years. Here’s why no one noticed

The Sacramento Bee

He was accused of stealing huge amounts of water over 23 years. Here’s why no one noticed

Dale Kasler, Ryan Sabalow – November 1, 2022

California’s water police struggle to track where water is flowing and whether someone is taking more than they’re supposed to.

A criminal case unfolding in the San Joaquin Valley underscores how the federal government seems to have similar problems.

Prosecutors say they uncovered a massive water theft that went on for 23 years without anyone noticing.

Earlier this year a federal grand jury indicted Dennis Falaschi, the former general manager of the Panoche Water District in the western San Joaquin Valley, on charges of conspiracy, theft of government property and filing false tax returns.

Falaschi’s alleged crime stemmed from the federal government’s operation of the Central Valley Project, the system of reservoirs and canals that dates to President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration.

According to prosecutors, Falaschi engineered a brazen scheme to steal $25 million worth of water from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, operator of the Central Valley Project. More specifically, Falaschi stands accused of having his underlings siphon water from the Delta-Mendota Canal, the main conduit for delivering federal water to farms along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and part of Silicon Valley.

He then billed Panoche customers for this stolen water and used the proceeds to pay “himself and other co-conspirators exorbitant salaries, fringe benefits and personal expense reimbursements,” the indictment says.

How Panoche Water District legal trouble started

Falaschi’s legal troubles began in 2017, when the state controller’s office released an audit showing that the financial controls at Panoche were too lax. Among other things, staffers were allowed to use district credit cards to buy Oakland A’s and Raiders season passes, and tickets to a Katy Perry concert.

A month later, Falaschi left Panoche. Then in 2018 the state attorney general’s office charged him and three other former district employees with embezzling $100,000 from Panoche and illegally burying toxic chemicals on district property. Prosecutors said Falaschi allegedly used the embezzled funds to buy a pair of slot machines and some kitchen appliances, among other things. That case is still pending.

The latest indictment covers a scheme that, according to prosecutors, began in 1992 and wasn’t discovered until April 2015 when a canal maintenance worker saw a whirlpool above the equipment that prosecutors say Falaschi had hidden in the canal to siphon off the water.

The theft lasted long enough to enable Falaschi to grab a total of 130,000 acre-feet of water — enough to fill about 13% of Folsom Lake, prosecutors said.

Last year district officials made a civil settlement over the missing water, agreeing to pay $7.5 million to the federal government and another $1 million to an umbrella agency, the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, which buys water from the feds.

The indictment came months after the civil settlement. The grand jury says Falaschi had several of his employees install a valve mechanism in the canal — submerged below the water line — near the district’s headquarters in Firebaugh.

Falaschi, who now lives in Aptos, could receive up to 24 years in prison if convicted.

He has pleaded innocent to the criminal charges. In a statement, his Fresno lawyer Marc Days blasted the feds for prosecuting Falaschi “over a leak from the government’s rotted pipe which the government failed to repair,” and for relying on the statements of “unreliable and incompetent witnesses motivated by their own self-interest.”

Days said the amount of water the federal government accuses Falaschi of taking pales in comparison to some of the other leaks from the same canal.

He said area farm districts receive “massive amounts of unmetered water,” including one leak that Days alleges siphons off 200 cubic feet a second, an amount that in a year would surpass the water prosecutors allege Falaschi stole over those two decades. The federal government, Days claims, has known about the problems but fails to do anything to prevent them.

Mary Lee Knecht, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation, declined comment because of the pending case.

Why missing water goes undetected

Falaschi’s successor at Panoche, Ara Azhderian, said it’s no secret that water goes missing throughout the Delta-Mendota system. Evaporation alone takes a significant toll, he said.

In fact, Azhderian said Falaschi’s alleged scheme likely went unnoticed for so long due to the sheer size of the Delta-Mendota Canal and the volume of water it delivers.

Two million acre-feet of water moves through the canal in a typical year, and the canal is nearly 117 miles long.

“When you think about the system and how long it is, how big it is,” he said, “… it was such a small amount in the scheme of things as to be undetectable.”

Others say the problems along the canal — whether through massive leaks or by alleged thefts — highlight just how difficult it is to keep tabs on the state’s most precious resource.

“We really don’t know where our water is going,” said Jeffrey Mount, a water expert at the Public Policy Institute of California. “Where it really breaks down for us now is in this ever-tightening water world where we’re having to deal with less. Major chunks of it, we don’t know where it goes and who’s using how much.”

Endorsement: Please, don’t give your vote to Lauren Boebert

The Denver Post

Endorsement: Please, don’t give your vote to Lauren Boebert

Adam Frisch has no desire to impose liberal policies on the people of his district

The Denver Post Editorial Board – November 1, 2022

Five-year-old Jasper Fidura holds a campaign sign for Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado’s Third Congressional District during a campaign stop at Fort Wooten Veterans Square on October 5, 2022 in Trinidad, Colorado. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post)

We beg voters in western and southern Colorado not to give Rep. Lauren Boebert their vote.

Boebert has not represented the 3rd Congressional District well. Almost exclusively, she has spent her time and efforts contributing to the toxic political environment in this nation.

The good people in this district are not angry and abrasive; they are not hateful and caustic; they do not boast of their own prowess or sling insults as entertainment. The ranchers we know working the Uncompaghre Plateau, the teachers in Durango, the steel mill workers in Pueblo, and the farmers setting down roots in the San Luis Valley keep to themselves, watch their families grow, and pray for better days.

Boebert’s unproductive approach, combined with the efforts of others, has helped erode Congress’ ability to honestly debate public policy that could help people in her district.

Adam Frisch would be a better representative for the people of the 3rd Congressional District. Yes, he is a Democrat from the affluent enclave of Aspen, a ski town that most voters consider a playground for rich out-of-towners. But Frisch, who served on Aspen City Council and whose wife is on the school board, has no desire to impose liberal policies on the people of his district.

He has a pro-oil and gas development position that promotes responsible exploration of oil and gas on public lands while requiring that companies clean up their mess when they leave.

And the oil and gas industry will leave. Mesa County has weathered the boom, bust cycle of the oil and gas industry too many times for its residents not to be wary of promises that drilling and fracking will build a steady economy.

Frisch, a business owner who worked for a time in finance both on Wall Street and internationally, can support oil and gas development in the district while also helping the Western Slope develop a less volatile industry base for companies like Leitner-Poma of America in Grand Junction, Osprey in Cortez, or the many backcountry hunting and fishing guides in Craig.

Boebert, in contrast, is unable or perhaps unwilling to articulate any policy nuance on the extraction of oil and gas owned by taxpayers from our public lands. She has opposed every effort to protect public lands in the district and failed to disclose in a timely manner that her husband made almost $1 million as a consultant for the largest drilling company in the 3rd Congressional District’s Piceance Basin.

Rather than talk about these issues, Boebert slings mud.

Her performance at the Club 20 debate against Frisch was odd, to say the least, and she spent a good chunk of her speaking time talking about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and criticizing the moderator.

In her primary, Boebert called a man born and raised in Montrose County a groomer – a term for a person who sexually abuses children. The remark, directed at Don Coram, a conservative Republican and rancher whose son happens to be gay, is just one example of Boebert’s casual yet crass cruelty, which she puts on display on a daily basis while in Washington, D.C.

Does she feel no remorse for this behavior? She told a joke, more than once, implying that a Muslim member of Congress was a terrorist bomber. She uses the derogatory term “jihad squad” to reference other members of Congress.

This is not what Western Colorado or Southern Colorado stands for.

Frisch’s campaign has taken the high road and not disseminated any of the many unsubstantiated rumors about Boebert that have circulated the community. Nor have we given such rumors credence in editorials.

Boebert took no such high road. Her campaign ran an ad and sent tweets accusing Frisch of giving in to blackmail and having an affair.

Frisch said these accusations are false, and he hopes voters trust him with their vote.

The closest Frisch has gotten to slinging mud in the campaign is accusing Boebert of having ties to a far-right militia group known as the “three percenters.”

Boebert has made no secret of the fact that she embraces the group’s support of her campaign, taking smiling photos with members clad in tactical gear, tweeting encouragement for events and rallies tied to members of the group. She tweeted out “I am the militia,” on June 14, 2020.

The group draws its names from the fable that only 3% of the population of the original colonies fought in the Revolutionary War and the misguided belief that this country is headed for another fight for liberation for which they must prepare to fight – often amassing weapons caches and making bombs.

Members of the group have been implicated in several violent plots – a planned bombing of a mosque in Minnesota, an FBI-foiled bombing attempt of a bank in Oklahoma, and the kidnapping plot of Michigan’s governor. And, of course, the Jan. 6, 2020, attempt to storm the U.S. Capitol and prevent Congress from seating the duly elected next president of the United States.

On Jan. 6, Boebert tweeted out: “Today is 1776.” Was it a reference to the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4 of that year and the hope for a peaceful transfer of power under the laws and requirements of the Constitution written in 1787, or was it a reference to the bloodshed of the Revolutionary War and hope that an attack on the Capitol could bring in a new form of government for this nation? We don’t like that we have serious doubts it was the former.

It is not too much to ask that Boebert distance herself from this group instead of making their calls for violence, including against the U.S. government, mainstream. She has refused to address the issue.

We grieve that this is who represents our great state in Congress – a state known for our moderate positions and our policy-first approach to politics.

Rejecting all Boebert has come to represent – angry rants without offering real solutions — is important for the 3rd Congressional District, Colorado and this great nation. Frisch is a solid candidate who will stand in for the district in an honorable way.