John Mellencamp slams politicians for not doing more to prevent gun violence: ‘They don’t give a f*** about our children’
Suzy Byrne, Editor Yahoo Entertainment – June 22, 2022
John Mellencamp is slamming lawmakers for not doing more to stop school shootings.
The “Small Town” singer criticized politicians over their response to gun violence, saying they “don’t give a f*** about our children.”
“Only, in America, can 21 people be murdered and a week later be buried and forgotten, with a flimsy little thumbnail, a vague notion of some sort of gun control law laying on the senators’ desks,” the 70-year-old musician and painter wrote on Twitter Tuesday, referring to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting on May 24.
“What kind of people are we who claim that we care about pro-life?” he continued. Just so you know, anyone that’s reading this… politicians don’t give a f*** about you, they don’t give a f*** about me, and they don’t give a f*** about our children.”
He concluded, “So, with that cheery thought in mind, have a happy summer, because it will be just a short time before it happens again.”
Mellencamp’s comments came on Tuesday as the Senate voted to advance a new bipartisan gun control bill. It would enhance background checks and give authorities up to 10 business days to review the juvenile and mental health records of gun purchasers under 21. Funding would also go to help states implement red flag laws as well as to expand mental health resources in communities and schools and boost school safety, among other things.
The Uvalde shooter legally purchased an AR-15-style rifle on May 17 — one day after he turned 18. Three days later, he purchased a second rifle, and in between bought 375 rounds of ammunition. On May 24, he killed19 fourth graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary. The gunman also shot his grandmother in the face.
Mellencamp has long spoken out against gun violence, joining 200 other artists and music execs in 2016 in calling for gun reform in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. Following the Uvalde shooting, he said on MSNBC’s The Beat last week that news outlets should start showing the carnage of school shootings to open the eyes of those resisting reform.
“I don’t know if you’re old enough, but I remember when Vietnam first started, and it was a conversation on the news,” the father of five said. “But then, when they started showing dead teenagers, people did something about it, and the country united. I think that we need to start showing the carnage of these kids who have died in vain… If we don’t show it, then they’re dying in vain, because they’re just going to pass more bulls*** laws like they’re trying to get through now. Show us. Let the country see what a machine gun can do to a kid’s head.”
Pence Says He’s Never Seen a President Lie as Much as … Biden
Ryan Bort – June 20, 2022
Former VP Pence Joins Brian Kemp At Rally On Eve Of Georgia Primary – Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Donald Trump knew his supporters were storming the Capitol last Jan. 6 when he tweeted that Mike Pence lacked “courage,” causing the rioters to “surge,” according to the Jan. 6 committee. The committee also revealed that the Proud Boys, the extremist militia Trump told to “stand back and stand by,” intended to kill Pence during the attack if they had the chance. Some in the crowd chanted for Pence to be hung for his failure to illegally stop the certification of the Electoral College. Upon hearing the news, Trump said Pence “deserved” it.
A violent mob calling for the vice president’s head is one of many terrifying consequences of the Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged, which may be the most outlandish, traitorous fabrication in American history. Pence’s refusal to accept this fabrication when it mattered most all but destroyed his standing in the Republican Party, in addition to almost getting him killed.
Pence on Monday said he’s never seen a president who doles out so many falsehoods as … Joe Biden.
“Have you ever seen a president who refused to accept blame and commits so many falsehoods — I’m being very polite here calling it falsehoods — who on any given day is out there saying stuff that just isn’t true?” Larry Kudlow of Fox Business asked Pence of President Biden. “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
“Never in my lifetime,” Pence replied. “I said today that there has never been a time in my life when a president was more disconnected from the American people.”
Again, Kudlow and Pence are talking about Biden here.
The exchange is astonishing given everything the Jan. 6 committee has revealed over the course of its first three public hearings, the last of which focused on Trump’s pressured campaign to convince Pence to illegally block the certification of the election results. Trump allegedly called Pence a “pussy” as he refused to do so on the morning of the riot.
Pence’s refusal to acknowledge that he did the bidding of the most pathological liar anyone could have ever imagined would occupy the Oval Office may be astonishing, but it isn’t really that surprising, considering he clearly has designs on a future in Republican politics. If he’s going to win over the GOP before then — not to mention the Trump supporters who literally want to kill him — he’s going to have to paint Biden as the devil incarnate at every turn. If that means going easy on the man who said he deserved to be executed, so be it. It’s a small price to pay for having absolutely no chance at winning two years from now.
Jan. 6 panel member: Trump meant to ‘accelerate the violence’ against Pence
Monique Beals – June 19, 2022
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) on Sunday said that former President Trump intended to “accelerate the violence” against his vice president, Mike Pence, during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
“You know, when he sent out the tweet attacking his vice president, he already knew that the violence was underway,” Lofgren said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” of Trump, who tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary” just after the attack began.
“The only conclusion you can reach is that he intended to accelerate that violence against the former vice president,” she continued.
Lofgren, who is a member of the House committee investigating the attack, went on to explain the lasting impact of the Jan. 6 attack in terms of lawmakers’ and the general public’s safety.
“We’re in a very rough time in America right now,” she said. “All of us elected officials but also just Americans and their neighbors need to stand up for the rule of law and against political violence. It’s not what America is about.”
Her comments come after Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) last week said Trump was aware of the violence at the Capitol when he tweeted about Pence.
“[Trump] knew that there was violence and he still tweeted the vice president ‘didn’t have the courage to do what was necessary,’” Aguilar said.
During the attack, Pence was overseeing the certification of the election results in the Senate, and some rioters at the scene chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” based on the belief that the vice president was unwilling to overturn Trump’s election defeat.
Pence was later evacuated from the building after the rioters breached the Capitol.
The most recent committee hearing on Thursday focused on the pressure campaign put on Pence by Trump and his allies to reject certifying the 2020 Electoral College votes on Jan. 6, which the vice president determined he did not have the legal authority to do.
One Surprising Theory Why the Philippines Has Very Few Mass Shootings—Despite Easy Access to Lots of Guns
Chad de Guzman / Manila – June 15, 2022
Shop assistants pose with various handgu
Shop assistants pose with various handguns at the Defense and Sporting Arms show at a shopping mall in Manila on July 16, 2009. Credit – TED ALJIBE/AFP via Getty Images
Mass shootings are a result of a confluence of factors, but at the heart of the problem are guns—of which the Philippines has plenty. Firearms are sold openly in malls, and almost anyone can carry them, even priests and accountants.
Fixers can reportedly take care of formalities standing in the way of gun ownership, such as drug and psychological tests, and there are estimated to be some four million firearms in the nation of 110 million people. Hundreds of thousands of weapons are illegally owned. Poverty, corruption, crime, and outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal war on drugs have left deep social scars.
No consensus has been reached in the Philippines over what sets a mass shooting apart from other gun deaths, but indiscriminate slayings are uncommon. When eight people died and 11 were injured after a drunk gunman began firing wildly in the southern province of Cavite back in 2013, the tragedy was notable for its sheer rarity.
To be clear, homicides involving firearms are a fact of life in the Philippines. Hitmen can be hired for as little as $300. In fact, the Philippines is one of the deadliest places in Asia when it comes to firearm homicides. The country saw over 1,200 intentional killings using firearms in 2019. This meant guns killed one in every 100,000 people in the Southeast Asian country—one of the highest rates in Asia. (In 2020, the comparable figure for the U.S. is four.)
Elections can be particularly bloody times, with lethal attacks on poll officers and political rivals. One of the country’s worst killings, the 2009 Maguindanao massacre of 58 people, took place during a gubernatorial election. But it was a political atrocity. Shootings not related to politics or crime are uncommon—and there has been nothing as extreme as Columbine, Sandy Hook, or Uvalde.
“I think it’s just a matter of time,” says Gerry Caño, Dean of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Cagayan de Oro College. “I think our authorities and the public safety practitioners are just waiting for that time to happen, considering that Philippine culture is greatly influenced by the West, particularly the United States.”
For now, though, powerful social factors continue to have a restraining effect on indiscriminate violence. Philippine academic Raymund Narag, a criminology associate professor at Southern Illinois University and a former prisoner himself, says mass shootings in his native country are in part deterred by hiyâ, a Tagalog word meaning shame or embarrassment. Avoidance of hiyâ, and sparing one’s family and community from it, is often described as a core Philippine value.
“It reflects on you, and reflects on your family,” Narag says. “When I was jailed, our entire clan felt humiliated.”
Visitors view displayed firearms during the Tactical, Survival and Arms Expo in Pasay City, the Philippines, Nov.15, 2019.Rouelle Umali/Xinhua via Getty
Gun culture in the Philippines
While the right to bear arms isn’t enshrined in the nation’s constitution, as it is in the United States, there is no denying the Philippine love of guns.
When the U.S. colonized the Philippines in the early 1900s, private citizens were allowed to own high-powered guns for “lawful purposes” and hunting. After Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972, owners were limited to one low-powered rifle and a pistol or revolver—and both had to be licensed. But in 2000, President Joseph Estrada lifted these limits and allowed citizens to possess as many guns as they wanted, of any type and caliber.
A 2013 law set down qualifications for owning guns and carrying them in public. Licensed gun owners had to be 21 years old and take a firearm safety seminar, among other requirements. Depending on their license, most owners could possess up to 15 handguns, rifles and shotguns (collectors are allowed more than 15). Licenses were issued for as long as 10 years.
Before he was president, Estrada was a gun-wielding hero in action movies—a genre beloved of Filipinos for playing up machismo and depicting shootouts as legitimate forms of defense in a crime-riddled country. The action movie craze certainly helped Filipinos embrace gun culture.
In some of the country’s poorest communities, guns became a common sight among warring gangs, who sourced low-priced firearms from illegal sellers. Shooting clubs opened for those with more money and an interest in shooting for sport. Many affluent Filipinos took up gun collecting, while the wealthiest citizens began enthusiastically arming their bodyguards.
But despite the glorification of firearms, when gun violence takes place, the victims are rarely random bystanders in movie theaters or shopping malls. Almost a quarter of the Philippine population falls below the poverty line and “the money or the reward seems to be the best motivating factor” in many homicide cases involving firearms, Caño says.
In January, a provincial hitman admitted to committing his crime in exchange for $500 to help his child, who was suffering from meningitis. In April, another gunman confessed to killing a mechanic for $400.
Displaced children playing with wooden toy guns inside a temporary shelter area in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, on August 22, 2018, in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, southern Philippines.Jes Aznar/Getty Images
How hiyâ plays a role in social control
Narag says the strong ties of Philippine kinship mean troubled individuals are more likely to be identified before they become mass shooters. He contrasts that with the situation in the U.S., where he presently lives and teaches.
“Here, if you have problems, you have to go to a health professional,” he tells TIME. “You’ll divulge everything there. You don’t talk to your neighbors—sometimes you don’t talk to your own parents—because [there isn’t] an engaged culture where one’s problem is everyone’s problem.”
Jose Antonio Clemente, a professor of social psychology at the University of the Philippines, says community is everything. “At an early age, we are trained to give importance to our families and our relationships,” he says. “Maybe at some point we’re also taught to value our community, since there are a lot of communities that are very close-knit because of the high population density.”
National police do have mass shooting protocols in place. Authorities have also suggested an increased police presence on college campuses to deter insurgent groups from recruiting students. But it seems that ingrained values in the Philippines are restraining people from using guns indiscriminately.
Whether that is enough is up for debate. For now, however, hiyâ means you cannot “just start shooting people,” Narag says. “Because if that happens, you know the community won’t support you.”
Hellfire: The Uvalde Shooter Owned a Device That Makes AR-15s Even More Deadly
Tim Dickinson – June 15, 2022
US-TEXAS-GUNS-NRA – Credit: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images
“Unleashing ‘Hell-Fire.’”
It pictures a gunman, wearing a skull mask with blacked out eyes, who unloads an AR-15 that is sending spent cartridges flying from its ejection port. The ad copy reads: “All you do is squeeze the trigger and shoot at rates up to 900 rpm” — or rounds per minute.
The sales pitch is for a hellfire trigger device, a gun accessory that allows a semi-automatic rifle to fire at rates similar to machine gun. Although the physics behind the device are nearly identical to that of a bump-stock — now illegal under federal law — hellfires remain cheap and easy to acquire. Including, evidently, by a teenager bent on mass murder.
The gunman in the Uvalde massacre had purchased a hellfire device, which was recovered from one of the classrooms where the massacre took place, according to investigative documents reviewed by the New York Times. Federal authorities reportedly don’t believe the device was used in the attack. But had it been deployed, the carnage at Robb Elementary School — where 19 children and two teachers were murdered — might have been, unimaginably, worse.
Even in the trigger-happy US of A, machine guns are supposed to be illegal. A central fixture of federal firearms law since the days of Al Capone’s 1930s is that fully-automatic weapons are too powerful to be in civilian hands. Yes, modern consumers can buy high-powered weapons, like AR-15-style rifles, that are nearly identical to guns used in the U.S. military, but these guns fire only one round with each trigger pull.
But in the poorly regulated market of fire-arms accessories, a small but dedicated band of companies have pushed the legal envelope. They’ve engineered and marketed devices that circumvent the limitations of semi-automatic weapons, turning rifles into bullet hoses that can fire hundreds of rounds per minute.
After a 2017 massacre in Las Vegas, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms — better known as ATF — outlawed one class of these accessories, known as bump stocks, by classifying them as machine guns. But they didn’t touch hellfire triggers.
That differential treatment has no logic, insists Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center. When it comes to hellfires and similar “trigger activators,” he says, “ATF has been very, very lenient in its interpretation of federal law.”
Screenshot of an ad for a Hellfire style device – Credit: Youtube
Youtube
“Bump firing without the stock”
A hellfire device and a bump-stock both rely on the same physics to mimic fully automatic fire. They absorb the energy from the recoil of a single gunshot, then rebound the weapon slightly forward, activating the trigger against a shooter’s otherwise stationary finger — again and again and again and again and again.
With a bump-stock, this rebound is generated in the butt of the rifle pressed against the shooter’s shoulder. A hellfire device attaches to the pistol grip and rebounds, instead, against the shooter’s palm.
ATF itself recognized the similarity of the devices, explicitly comparing them in 2013 correspondence with a congressman, back when both devices were deemed legal. Gun enthusiasts today praise the hellfire as offering “bump firing without the stock.” (ATF did not answer questions from Rolling Stone about why the devices are treated differently.)
From San Francisco to Waco
Hellfires are not new. In fact, the trigger devices have dark history. In a 1993 mass shooting in a San Francisco high rise, the gunman used hellfire triggers, attached to a pair of assault pistols with 50-round magazines; he killed eight, wounded six, and then took his own life. Hellfire triggers were also believed to have been in use at David Koresh’s militarized Waco, Texas, cult compound.
These days, the trigger devices are cheap, and marketed with disturbing slogans and imagery. It’s not immediately clear what device the Uvalde shooter purchased. But there are many models available online. At one retailer, just $29.95 can get you the “Classic” hellfire “made infamous by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians in Waco,” according to the sales pitch.
The “Gen II” model offers “recoil assist technology” to enable “one handed operation,” and will set you back $59.95. A new “Stealth” model, meanwhile, is for sale at just $39.95, and can be installed “invisibly within your grip on any AR15 style rifle” and be “activated or deactivated in seconds.”
Banning Bump-Stocks
It was the Trump administration, surprisingly, that banned bump-stocks — after they were used to catastrophic effect in a 2017 Las Vegas shooting. In that attack, a gunman fired bump-stock-equipped AR-15s from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. The spray of more than 1,000 rounds killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 at a concert festival below.
Without the need of new legislation, the ATF issued a rule in 2019 outlawing bump stocks. The devices, the regulation states, “convert an otherwise semiautomatic firearm into a machinegun” by harnessing “the recoil energy… [to] continue firing without additional physical manipulation of the trigger by the shooter.” (The regulation has, at least so far, held up in court)
Despite operating on the same principle, hellfire triggers remain street legal — putting machine gun firepower in the hands of untrained amateurs. The rate of fire enabled by these devices is so high, in fact, that the more expensive hellfire models actually offer features to slow down the firing cycle “to save ammo!”
Hellfire triggers can be finicky to master — which may be why the young Uvalde shooter ultimately didn’t deploy his. And it’s impossible to know whether automatic fire would have led to even more devastation at Robb Elementary School. (The shooter was left unimpeded for more than an hour by dithering local police; the gunman was not pressed for time.)
Marketing Lethality
The “most important” takeaway from the hellfire purchase is what it reflects about “the mindset of the shooter,” argues Sugarmann. “He had done everything he could, in his mind, to find the most lethal combination of weaponry and accessories when he planned the attack.”
Such lethality is — not coincidentally — the top selling point of a the modern firearms industry, which pitches its customers on military-grade precision and firepower. That includes the maker the Uvalde shooter’s rifle, Daniel Defense, whose Georgia headquarters are located at “101 Warfighter Way.”
The Uvalde shooter simply found, in the hellfire, a low-cost accessory that promised to unlock his weapon’s full military pedigree, by mimicking the automatic fire reserved for soldiers.
Sugarmann insists the ATF has the authority to send a warning to the industry by targeting hellfire makers, who are small operators and operate at the margins of the industry. “They’re the bottom feeders,” he says. “If you took action against one of them, it would send a message throughout the industry that ATF has regulatory role that it can use to the to protect public safety.”
The Violence Policy Center founder insists that the agency “could move against them, the way that they moved against bump-stocks.” But at least so far, Sugarmann laments, “the agency has chosen not to.”
Indeed, the text of ATF’s own bump-stock regulation notes that public commenters argued the broad language could be read to encompass “Hellfire trigger mechanisms” and similar devices. The agency’s response? Simply that it “disagrees that other firearms or devices… will be reclassified as machineguns under this rule.”
‘Moment of reckoning:’ Federal official warns of Colorado River water supply cuts
Ben Adler, Senior Editor – June 15, 2022
The Colorado River’s reservoirs have diminished to the point that significant cuts to the water supplied to the seven states that rely on it will be necessary next year, a federal official warned Tuesday.
Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee maintaining “critical levels” at the largest reservoirs in the United States — Lake Mead and Lake Powell — will require large reductions in water deliveries.
“A warmer, drier West is what we are seeing today,” she said at a hearing. “And the challenges we are seeing today are unlike anything we have seen in our history.”
The relatively arid desert Southwest is viewed at 33,000 feet on May 19 near Moab, Utah. The Colorado River, flowing from Colorado’s Rocky Mountain through Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California is dependent on winter snowfall in the Rockies. (George Rose/Getty Images)
Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, California, and Nevada all receive water from the Colorado River and next year will see a decrease of between 2 million and 4 million acre-feet of water due to the ongoing drought that has gripped most of the Western U.S. (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land in one-foot-deep water.) Current allotments of water from the Colorado range from 300,000 acre-feet for Nevada to 4.4 million acre-feet for California.
“What has been a slow-motion train wreck for 20 years is accelerating, and the moment of reckoning is near,” John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told the Senate hearing. “We are 150 feet from 25 million Americans losing access to the Colorado River, and the rate of decline is accelerating.”
The West has been suffering through an acute drought since 2020, part of a megadrought that began in 2000. The last 20 years have been the driest two decades in the last 1,200 years. This year is so far the driest on record in California. Scientists attribute these conditions to climate change, which causes more water evaporation due to warmer temperatures.
“As a climate scientist, I’ve watched how climate change is making drought conditions increasingly worse — particularly in the western and central U.S.,” wrote Imtiaz Rangwala, research scientist in climate at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, in May. “The last two years have been more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 Celsius) warmer than normal in these regions. Large swaths of the Southwest have been even hotter, with temperatures more than 3 F (1.7 C) higher.”
A thick white ring shows the dramatic decline of water levels at Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, which has reached its lowest water levels on record since it was created by damming the Colorado River in the 1930s, as growing demand for water and climate change shrink the Colorado River and endanger a water source millions of Americans depend on, near Boulder City, Nevada, April 16. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)
Western states have already been undertaking emergency measures to deal with the water scarcity. Seven months ago, California, Arizona and Nevada signed an agreement to take less water from Lake Mead, and six weeks ago the Department of Interior announced it is withholding some water from Lake Powell. Otherwise, DOI feared, the reservoir could drop so low that Glen Canyon Dam would not be able to generate electricity.
Last year, for the first time ever, the federal government declared a shortage on the river, which led to reductions in water deliveries to Arizona and Nevada. Some farmers in Arizona have had to leave some fields unplanted as a result.
Local governments and water utilities have been imposing restrictions on water usage. On June 1, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California instituted limits on outdoor watering; typically it will be restricted to one or two days per week. But the water shortage persists.
“Despite those efforts and a previous deal among the states to share in the shortages, the two reservoirs stand at or near record-low levels,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “Lake Mead near Las Vegas has dropped to 28% of its full capacity, while Lake Powell on the Utah-Arizona border is now just 27% full.”
A formerly sunken boat rests on a now-dry section of lakebed at the drought-stricken Lake Mead on May 10, 2022 in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Nevada. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Touton told the Senate committee that her agency is negotiating with the seven states that depend on the Colorado River to develop a plan for apportioning the water supply reductions in the next two months. In all, nearly 40 million people rely on water from the river.
Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., attributed the gathering crisis to a lack of coordinated action to mitigate climate change.
“It’s frankly a direct result of the lack of action on climate that we have seen for more than 20 years,” Heinrich said.
The Western and Southwestern states are particularly parched — nearly three-quarters of the Western region is in a state of severe to exceptional drought.
“There are a lot of downstream effects when it comes to a drought like this,” Andrew Hoell, a co-lead on the NOAA Drought Task Force, told Yahoo Finance.
Hoell explained that drought isn’t just a matter of precipitation but can be exacerbated by the evaporative effects of higher temperatures and inadequate snowpack runoff in the winter.
“By the time it’s summertime,” he said, “that vegetation is really dry. And if you get a spark, and you get a series of unfortunate events in that regard, you then have wildfires. So when it comes to drought in the West, there are just a variety and a spectrum of effects that you can feel later on whether it’s water resources and fires and reduced agricultural yields. The effects are numerous.”
NOAA
Depleted water reservoirs and wildfire damage are already taking a toll on residents and businesses. The Hermits Peak Fire, which continues to blaze in New Mexico, has already scorched around 315,830 acres.
Meanwhile, states like California have instituted severe water restrictions, though water consumption has continued to rise. On an even grimmer note, low water levels at Lake Mead have threatened hydropower plants and exposed bodies once submerged in the reservoirs.
While conditions may ease slightly as the region enters its summer monsoon season, the outlook remains dry as the region navigates a historic, multi-decade megadrought.
A number of states including California, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, and tribal nations like the Navajo Nation have all declared drought states of emergency and allocated resources for managing the water crisis.
Nick Messing pull a kayaks down to the waters edge at Wahweap Marina at Lake Powell on April 6, 2022 in Page, Arizona when water levels at Lake Powell were at a historic low. (Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
Population growth
Since 2000, droughts have cost the U.S. around $160.8 billion, according to the NOAA. That figure jumps to $272 billion when accounting for destructive wildfires that are more prone in arid conditions.
With water already becoming more scarce, the increasing population in the West — and therefore demand for water — has inflamed the situation.
An Economic Innovation Group report using county-level population data found that the trend of people moving to water-starved states has only accelerated during the pandemic.
Inland California, the Mountain West, and eastern Texas saw the greatest growth, and overall, 10 of the top 15 counties for population growth were in the Western U.S: Maricopa County, Arizona (Phoenix), was ranked first, followed by Collin County, Texas, and Riverside County, California.
A graph showing the projected rise in population in drought-prone areas. (EIG)
“The map of these demographic shifts shows some familiar pre-pandemic trends and some new patterns,” the author stated. “Overall, the Sunbelt and the Mountain West continued to outshine the rest of the country. Remote rural counties in eastern Oregon and northern Idaho experienced robust population growth while every single county in Nevada gained population.”
Another EIG study found that an additional 20 million residents could move to drought-stricken counties by 2040. Water managers are already balancing razor-thin water budgets at current population levels.
“With reservoirs at record low levels throughout the West and the effects of sustained drought conditions increasingly being felt from agriculture to development, one of the most far-reaching questions in the United States over the coming decades is whether growth trends will ultimately collide with nature’s ability to sustain such a large influx of people,” Daniel Newman, the report’s author, wrote.
Fire and water
Doling out water supplies isn’t the only issue residents have to contend with.
Suburban neighborhoods sprawling out into more rural areas are creating a more substantial wild-urban interface at the same time as the wildfire season creeps earlier and longer.
In the last month, two Colorado Springs neighborhoods were evacuated due to fires, as were the owners of coastal California mansions caught in a blaze. For those unfortunate enough to sustain damage from fires, it can leave lasting financial scars in addition to physical and emotional ones.
The damage to a neighborhood is shown after a wind-driven wildfire burned through a canyon and into their neighborhood in Laguna Niguel, California, June 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake
“Most people in the Western United States are very underinsured because they base the amount of insurance coverage on the average cost to rebuild” despite higher property costs in some regions like Lake Tahoe, California, Christina Restaino of the University of Nevada Cooperative Extension said in a webinar.
According to Restaino, the current water crisis “underscores the need to prepare communities for wildfire, because when these large emergency incidents occur what we end up having to do is use a ton of water in an already water-scarce environment to suppress wildfires.”
There are some steps residents in high-risk areas can take to protect themselves, however.
“The No. 1 thing that people can do is to create a 5-foot ember-resistant zone around their house, so you don’t want to have anything combustible within five feet around your house,” she said. “Second-easiest thing, I would say, is to screen all of your vents.”
Of equal importance, “be prepared to evacuate,” Restaino stressed. “If you have medications that you take or important things you cannot leave home without, make sure you have backups of all those in an evacuation go-bag.”
A sign indicating extreme fire danger is pictured at Storrie Lake State Park as the Hermits Peak and Calf Canyon wildfires burn near Las Vegas, New Mexico, May 2, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
While the current period of intense drought may ease in months or years as it has in previous years, rising temperatures due to climate change mean that many will have to get used to living with these risks.
“If I had to guess — and if there is a silver lining here — if we’re to look at the next 10 years, will they necessarily be as bad as the last 10 years in terms of precipitation?” Hoell said. “I would say probably not.”
He added that the primary problem “is the climate has not shown any indication of warming temperatures slowing down. That right there is a problem in and of itself because it changes the amount of snow that you get during the wintertime, changes the amount of snow that then makes its way into reservoirs, thereby replenishing them. So we have these different factors that kind of commingled to bring together this hydrologic situation that is not ideal for us right now.”
The Russian invasion of Ukraine accounts for more than a third of U.S. inflation, forecaster says
Steve Goldstein – June 13, 2022
A soldier maneuvers his tank on June 08, 2022 near Sloviansk, Ukraine. In recent weeks, Russia has concentrated its firepower on Ukraine’s Donbas region, where it has long backed two separatist regions at war with the Ukrainian government since 2014. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions that it triggered is behind more than a third of the 40-year high inflation of 8.6%, according to analysis from a leading forecaster.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, says after decomposing the numbers, the Russian invasion represented 3.5% year-over-year growth, mostly through the direct of higher commodity prices. But, he added on a podcast by the firm that higher diesel prices causes food prices to be higher, and it’s also bleeding into things like airfares.
The COVID-19 pandemic, he said, represented 2% year-over-year growth, mostly through supply chains.
“The bulk of the supply chain constraint component on CPI is new and used vehicles, but it also includes bedding, furniture, children’s apparel, things that are really affected by the supply chains,” added Ryan Sweet, senior director at Moody’s Analytics.
The lack of affordable housing is further responsible for 0.6% year-over-year price growth, according to Moody’s calculations.
He said the American Rescue Plan, the stimulus plan that President Biden signed into law, had a negligible impact.
In all, Zandi says the typical American household is paying $460 per month more to buy the same goods and services that they would have at the same time last year.
Cris DeRitis, deputy chief economist, said the inflation readings may not have peaked. “But as we get past the summer, past the summer driving season, I think then you might to see some of that moderation,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time.”
Blame monopolies for today’s sky-high inflation, Boston Fed researchers say
Ben Winck – May 26, 2022
Grocery shopping in Rosemead, California on April 21, 2022.
Dwindling industrial competition has made the US’s inflation problem even worse, Fed researchers said.
A new paper found that increased concentration led firms to pass a greater share of cost shocks onto consumers.
Weaker competition also amplified the inflation impacts of the labor shortage and rising energy prices.
The decades-long decline of industry competition made today’s inflation crisis much worse than it needed to be, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston said in a new paper.
The US’s industrial concentration problem isn’t anything new. The economy is at least 50% more concentrated now than it was in 2005, according to the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a commonly used measure of industry concentration. That means a smaller group of companies control the lion’s share of their respective sectors.
Companies typically pass higher input costs on to consumer prices. Yet that pass-through “becomes about 25 percentage points greater when there is an increase in concentration similar to the one observed since the beginning of this century,” Fed economists Falk Bräuning, José L. Fillat, and Gustavo Joaquim said. Put simply, dwindling industry competition leads to companies raising prices at a much faster pace.
The pass-through happens through a variety of channels, according to the paper. The rise in concentration over the past two decades has been an “amplifying factor” to cost shocks from supply shortages, energy price spikes, and the labor shortage, the team said.
All three trends have been rife in the US economy over the past several months. Lockdowns in China roiled the global supply chain in 2021, and rising coronavirus case counts in Beijing threaten to repeat that cycle. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine boosted energy prices around the world. And the labor market is the tightest it’s been in decades, with job openings at record highs and companies still struggling to find available workers.
Encouragingly, the above-trend price increases don’t last forever, the economists said. When companies face cost shocks, they tend to pass those on to consumers over the next four quarters before returning to a more typical inflation trend. The fastest inflation typically arrives one quarter after the cost shock, according to the study. The pace of price growth then slows over the next three quarters.
Still, the research details yet another dynamic that’s allowed US inflation to recently hit its highest level since the 1980s. While factors like the labor shortage and rising energy prices are practically guaranteed to lift inflation, companies represent a critical junction between higher input costs and higher prices paid by Americans. The Boston Fed’s research signals that, unless competition rebounds, the economy will be even more susceptible to inflationary shocks in the future.
Mark Meadows Burned Papers After Talk About Tossing Election Results, Ex-Aide Says
Mary Papenfuss – June 12, 2022
Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows destroyed documents after a meeting about overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election, a former aide said Sunday on CNN.
Alyssa Farah Griffin said a source with “first-hand knowledge” provided testimony to the House panel probing the insurrection that Meadows burned papers in his office after meeting with Rep. Scott Perry (R-Penn.) about challenging the election.
“I expect to see that come out in testimony” before the House committee investigating the insurrection, she added.
Another former Meadows aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, said she watched Meadows burn the documents in her account before House select committee investigators, Politico reported last month.
The meeting with Perry occurred an unspecified number of weeks after the election while Trump and supporters were desperately casting around for ways to change the vote, according to Politico.
Hutchinson also told the panel that Meadows was warned of possible violence on Jan. 6, 2021, but it was unclear what action, if any, he took in response.
Griffin may have been referring to Cassidy as her source with first-hand knowledge of the destruction of documents by Meadows. Hutchinson is expected to testify in the ongoing televised hearings held by the House panel.
Perry was pressuring Meadows to take action regarding the election, according to his emails to Meadows released by the House committee.
“Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” he wrote to Meadows late last year in one of the messages.
