Category: Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr

Stories of injustice and justice

Just Go Away! (Trump)

DC Report

Just Go Away!

Terry H. Schwadron                       

Trump Sues 3 High Tech Firms

ABC News screengrab
The Former Grifter-in-Chief Won’t Disappear Like a Respectable Ex-President Should

It’s no good trying to ignore Donald Trump.

He keeps popping up in the news. The stories reflect more his insults and influence-bending than actual guidance for the country, more about legal problems than help on getting people vaccinated, say, and more about his fund-raising even as he continues to pump money from those efforts into his private businesses.

Trump may have proved right about one thing. Love or hate aside, we have trouble quitting him.

So, even as efforts continue to reconcile unethical deeds over time and pundits seek to find signs of declining reign over willing Republicans, with $100 million in the bank Trump continues to be the would-be next candidate for president.

Trump keeps coming on, twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.

Some see as bad signs for Trump an election loss in Texas of his designated candidate and the pending Joe Biden victory of winning bipartisan support for an infrastructure bill that Trump never could get passed.

“The weakness Trump showed this week is real, but it isn’t new. His power over the GOP has always been limited: As president he often found himself balked on policy by congressional Republicans, and his impressive endorsement record reflects a lot of cautious winner-picking, not aggressive movement-building,” says New York Times columnist Ross Douthat.

Even as New York prosecutors are cornering Trump on fraud charges, even as new disclosures show more outrageous attempts to use the Justice Department for his personal political ends, as new orders show he must share his taxes with Congress, Trump keeps coming. He continues twisting truth or actual events for convenience and letting even friends and allies fall by the wayside on his way to the never-ending spotlight.

Again and Again

He is the new Old Faithful.

Among the week’s Trump tally:

  • Undermining Election Results: “Just Say the Election Was Corrupt and Leave the Rest to Me and the Republican. congressmen,” Trump told Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen in January, according to notes of the near-daily conversations with Trump disclosed by The Times. Though they had found no instances of widespread fraud, so that Trump and his allies in Congress could use the assertion to try to overturn the election results, Trump told him, though this weekend, Trump insisted that “overturn” means “guaranteeing election integrity.” Whatever translation from truth you want to accept, Trump crossed another big line trying to bully the Justice Department in violation of every ethical, governmental, maybe even legal interpretation available. To anyone but Team Trump, bad news.
  • Surrendering Tax Filings. The Justice Department said the Treasury Department must turn over Trump’s tax returns to congressional investigators on the House Ways and Means Committee as part of its review of the Internal Revenue Service’s presidential audit program. The Trump administration stymied the request for years and the committee sued to obtain the documents. Still, it was an unusual victory, however it turns out, for Truth in Government, since present Attorney General Merrick Garland continues to surprise all with how reluctant he is proving to be in demanding that Trump officials own up to legal abuses of the last administration.

“I am not going to look backward,” Garland has said, in interviews that are deeply unsatisfying to Democrats, government watchdogs and anyone who wants catharsis after four years of Trump’s insistence on his ‘absolute right to do what I want to do with the Justice Department,’ as he put it to The New York Times in 2017,” notes The Washington Post Magazine.

“Those voices are calling for investigations of the politicization of the department under Trump, a public reckoning of the damage done, the spectacle of heads rolling. They speak of ‘truth commissions’ and ‘de-Trumpification.’ That is how you restore confidence in the institution, they say.”

  • A subpoena to the Jan. 6 investigation is looming, says The Post, among others, for Trump to give an accounting of his role in amassing, inciting and failing to stop the rioting at the U.S. Capitol. It’s a tricky thing to require Trump’s testimony, if the committee can sidestep executive privilege claims without having to go to court, because it gives Trump the ultimate platform for repeating his election rigging nonsense. But it also represents testimony under oath, and that is something Trump never wants to do, any more than his acolytes among Republican members of Congress. The number of open questions about Trump’s role continues to increase.
  • Meanwhile, Big Steal rolls along, amid widening reports that the Arizona re-count or re-creation of Election Day in Mariposa County is a sham, with even Republican sponsors in that state fleeing before final creative writing reports are being produced in secret. The continuing theme is that unless Cyber Ninjas makes it all up, there was little to sustain a turnaround in vote counts. Still, the efforts to do similar audits are moving to Michigan, where Republicans seem quite torn about it, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where Trump troops are going door to door asking people how they voted, as if that is somehow OK. But daily, we’re hearing about Republican punishments for anyone veering from the Trump fraud line.
  • Following the Money. Yes, Federal Election Commission reports confirm that Trump’s fund-raising efforts have topped $100 million for the last six months, though the Trump spending reports have gotten less attention. Money from the several Political Action Committees for Trump are sending payments to Trump properties for meetings and housing, reports The Post, with one PAC paying Trump $68,000 during the same time period. Since Trump entered the presidential race in June 2015, he has used his political campaigns and associated committees to pump more than $19 million into his own businesses, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign-finance records. The Post also reported that it could not find evidence that Trump donated his last six months of salary, as pledged, nor his ample pension. The perception of Trump as a grifter also continues unabated.
Not Leaving

Still, none of the fictionalizing seems to halt seeing Trump presenting himself as if he actually still is president, any more than persistent legal and business problems. His supporters remain most comfortable blaming others for any negative news and keep faith with their idea of an iconoclastic bull in the china shop of intellectualism.

Former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows reported this week without explanation that Trump’s “Cabinet” of advisers were meeting with him at the Trump Bedminster, N.J. golf resort, as if it were a shadow presidency interested in anything other than promoting Trump.

The MAGA rallies are back, if a tad more subdued, the insult machine is alive and well, cranking out criticism for a lengthening list of enemies and the hints of an announced re-play of the election mix with the constant reporting about whether Pillow Talk Guy has identified another day in which magically Trump ousts Biden as a legitimate election winner.

I’d be happy never to see Trump again in any form, but we’re not even close.

Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York. As an editor, Terry created new approaches in newsrooms, built technological tools and digital media. He pursued efforts to recruit and train minority journalists and in scholarship programs. A resident of Harlem, he volunteers in community storytelling, arts in education programs, tutoring and is an active freelance trombone player

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

Starving cows. Fallow farms. The Arizona drought is among the worst in the country

Jaweed Kaleem                          
Casa Grande, Arizona-July 21, 2021- Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. The family hopes the profit from the corn (feed) will help pay the taxes and water dues they own on their own land Caywood Farms. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angels Times)
Nancy Caywood stands beside the corn that her son Travis Hartman farms using leased land that has water rights. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

The cotton’s gone.
The alfalfa barely exists.

“Can you even call this a farm?” asked Nancy Caywood, standing on a rural stretch of land her Texas grandfather settled nearly a century ago, drawn by cheap prices and feats of engineering that brought water from afar to irrigate central Arizona’s arid soil.

The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought.
The canals that used to bring water to the fields of Caywood Farms have gone dry due to the drought. In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing a years-long drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

On the family’s 247 acres an hour south of Phoenix, Caywood grew up tending to cotton and alfalfa, two water-intensive crops that fed off melted mountain snows flowing from a reservoir 120 miles away. She grew up understanding the rhythms of the desert and how fields can blossom despite a rugged, sand-swept terrain where sunlight is a given but water is precious.

Now more than ever. Looking out at her farmland recently, Caywood held back tears.

The eastern Arizona reservoir that provided much of her water was drying up, leaving empty the canals and ditches that surround her property. Bigger-than-usual summer rains did not prove ample to rescue dead fields. The drought was at her door.

Across the U.S. West, shifting climate patterns are wreaking havoc. An early start to fire season is scorching rural Oregon and parts of Northern California. Record temperatures have led to deaths of hundreds of residents of Seattle and Portland, Ore. Lake Mead, the massive Colorado River reservoir outside Las Vegas, is at its lowest point since its 1935 federal construction, threatening water supplies to Arizona, Southern California, Nevada and Mexico.

Saguaros, which are native to the desert, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions.
Saguaros, which can naturally withstand drought better than non-native plants, are still susceptible to damage under extreme conditions. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

In Arizona, 99% of the land is undergoing years-long drought that has accelerated. Large swaths of the region are now in extreme distress and the picture may well get worse, with less reliable mountain snowfall to feed streams and a morphing monsoon season that has only proved a temporary reprieve and even led to flooding. The state, where more than a third of all water can trace itself up the Colorado River to Lake Mead, will also be forced to make do with less beginning next year because of the lake’s dwindling supply.

“Arizona is pretty much an irrigated state and we’ve managed our water resources generally well,” said Stephanie Smallhouse, a fifth-generation cattle rancher on the far outskirts of Tucson who is the president of the Arizona Farm Bureau. “But it’s near impossible to manage yourself out of a drought.”

The history of Arizona is the history of water. Before European colonizers and American settlers moved in, Indigenous people relied on the Gila, Salt and Verde rivers outside Phoenix. The Colorado River flowed on what’s now the state’s western edge, while snowmelt from New Mexico’s Black Mountain Range formed the Gila River that came from the east to meet the Colorado, creating a lifeline for tens of thousands of subsistence farmers in Native American communities.

But as technological advances led to the construction of dams and reservoirs in the early 20th century to divert rivers for new residents — like Caywood’s grandfather — Native land went fallow, leading to sickness and poverty. As cities such as Tucson and Phoenix and farmlands between them grew over the decades, they were aided by another feat in water engineering when construction on the Central Arizona Project launched in 1973. Today, the intricate canal system carries Colorado River water hundreds of miles from Lake Havasu on the California-Arizona border to taps and irrigation ditches across central Arizona.

The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz.
The Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct, fed by the Colorado River, runs through Scottsdale, Ariz. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s a history that informs who wins and loses amid drought. The state has dozens of irrigation districts that tax customers in exchange for regulating water flow from different sources. The map they form can at times resemble gerrymandered congressional districts, with it not unusual for neighboring farms to get water from canals that lead to mountains and reservoirs in opposite directions.

Longevity also goes into the equation.

“Water policy in Arizona is also rooted in the idea that a person who comes and diverts water for a beneficial use should have higher priority than the next one who comes along if there is a risk for shortage,” said Sarah Porter, the director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University.

When it comes to water, one city or farm is not always equal to the other in the state where the $23-billion agriculture industry uses up more than 70% of irrigated water, a large chunk of it on crops the federal government encourages with subsidies, such as cotton. In central Arizona, city dwellers and tribal lands tend to get first dibs on water before farms. Still, nearly everyone is preparing. Cities are raising water prices. The state is locked in a battle with hundreds of lush golf courses over demands that they cut back on water.

Yuma, a major farming region known as the “Salad Bowl” for growing broccoli, lettuce and leafy greens that are shipped across the country each winter, is in many ways spared. It has priority over water from the nearby Colorado River in part because irrigated agriculture has taken place there for more than a century. Vegetables also need significantly less water than crops that are popular inland.

A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County.
A worker moves irrigation tubes on a farm in Pinal County. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s farmers in the center of the state who are most worried as shortages loom. Among the hardest-hit are those in Pinal County, a largely rural patchwork of farms and cattle and dairy ranches nestled between Phoenix and Tucson where family farmers live alongside exurbs that are rapidly expanding as agriculture recedes.

Along Interstate 10, typically green farms have turned brown, skinny cattle are left with little grass to graze and saguaros lie dead. “For sale” signs advertise desperate owners looking to sell their land at discount for solar power panels and housing developments.

“There’s nothing nefarious about how the water is divided,” said Paul Orme, an attorney who represents several irrigation districts in the county. “But because of agreements that have been negotiated and where these farmers have fell in those, you could see up to 30% of farmland in Pinal County no longer irrigated over the next few years.”

For those like Caywood, that time has already come.

Casa Grande, a city of 55,000 founded in 1879 as a mining town that’s named after a structure built by the ancient Hohokam people, is one of those places at the center of the water crisis. Home to dozens of alfalfa, cotton, wheat and corn farms and as well as dairy and beef ranches, it’s long been sustained by a mix of rains, aquifers and canals drawing on the Colorado River, among other reserves.

Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field.
Caywood stands in what used to be an alfalfa field. It went fallow after her family lost access to irrigated water from the San Carlos reservoir because its water levels were too low. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

The Caywood farm has a different source. When Caywood’s grandfather, Lewis Storey, established it in 1930, he agreed to pay for water from canals connected to the San Carlos reservoir 130 miles away. Storey thought the reservoir, formed on the Gila River, would be plentiful for generations with its 19,500 acre-feet supply. An acre-foot covers the amount of water that could seep a foot deep across a football field.

The family had long used that water to grow cotton that made up towels and sheets found in big-box stores. The seeds went separately for cattle feed. Alfalfa was cut and baled for ranches across the Southwest.

This summer, the San Carlos reservoir hit zero acre-feet.

“If you want to eat ice cream, you need people like us growing the feed,” Caywood said recently as she sat in the small, wooden shed on the property where she keeps a digital slideshow of the once-lively green and white fields to show kids who still come by on field trips. All that survived now were old mesquite and cottonwood trees on the edges of the land.

“We’re wiped clean,” Caywood said. “You can’t grow.”

Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz.
Cattle go up for sale at Marana Stockyards in Marana, Ariz. “If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line,” said Clay Buck Parsons, who runs the auction house with his father, Clay Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards.
Emaciated cattle are often sold at Marana Stockyards, which has seen an increase in sales amid the decreased feed availability that the drought has caused. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

An hour south of the the Caywood property at the Pinal County line, the ranchers who show up each week at Marana Stockyards are feeling the trickle-down effects of the drought. The Parsons family has auctioned cattle here for 25 years. Business is picking up.

Dozens of men in cowboy hats and leather boots arrive each Wednesday to watch their bulls, cows and calves sold off. Clay Buck Parsons, a third-generation rancher and auctioneer, ushers cattle into holding pens outside the red barnyard-like building while Parsons’ dad mans a computer as locals in the stands make bids and buyers log in online.

“We’ve sold 12,000 more head this year already than last year,” said Parsons, 29. Most go to Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma.

“You can’t feed the animals without grass,” he said, looking out at dozens of black Angus mother cows whose shoulders and ribs jutted out from grazing on dying fields.

“If you can’t grow grass, you buy it. But the hay is too expensive because there’s less water to grow it and less water expected down the line. So the ranchers are cutting down on their herd to maintain smaller numbers where they can still make a profit.”

Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son.
Clay Parsons owns Marana Stockyards, which he runs with his son, Clay Buck Parsons. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys and resells cows at Marana Stockyards.
Rancher Mike Mercer, left, regularly buys underweight cows at Marana Stockyards. He feeds them for a few months before reselling them for profit. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

Buck said it costs up to $4 a day per cow for hay, four times more than grazing on grass. The cost of raising beef can be several thousand times more than some vegetables, such as lettuce. But ranchers here said family history — and profits — had until recently seemed worth holding on to.

One of the regulars to come that day was Mike Mercer. At 54, he has been ranching since his teens. For many years, his land in Mammoth, a village of 1,650, provided for 700 mother cows. Now, he can’t have more than 100 at a time as grass disappears.

“You can’t run cattle. It’s just — everything’s gone,” Mercer said. “A lot of guys are switching into copper mining or welding or trucking.”

These days, Mercer buys skinny, sickly cows, feeds them for a few months on hay in a covered feedlot, and resells them at a profit. On that day, he sold 88 to buyers in Texas and Oklahoma.

The Parsons family's auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year.
The Parsons family’s auction house has sold 12,000 more cows this year than last year. Many ranchers can no longer afford to feed their cattle because of the drought. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

A Christian who believes God is responsible for the drought, he prayed for a change.

“You just keep saying we can’t have another year this bad and then we have another year even worse…. Leave it in God’s hands. Because I don’t know what else to do. You pray for rain. Oh, God, yeah. Pray for rain.”

Caywood, a former farming teacher at the University of California Agricultural and Natural Resources Division in El Centro, Calif., also questions those who say climate change is to blame for her struggles.

“I don’t believe in it. I believe things are cyclical. But I can’t believe that it’s happening so quickly,” said Caywood, who has a master’s degree in agricultural education.

Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, age 14.
Nancy Caywood, left, and her grandson Thomas Hartman, 14, stand at the office of Caywood Farms. Hartman is learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

Her son, Travis, built a home on the farm where he lives with two sons. She is thankful that he has continued in the family tradition. But she is more thankful that he is also a firefighter and EMT, a job that provides a stable income. Her `14-year-old grandkids Thomas and Cameron are learning to farm, raising steer and chickens. She has encouraged them but also told them to consider backup plans.

In the good years, the farm would easily make tens of thousands of dollars in profits, more than enough to cover $22,000 in annual property taxes. This year, Caywood, who had hoped to retire, may dip into savings to cover the bill.

Recently, her son leased two 80-acre plots in different irrigation districts that have access to canal water from the Colorado River. Just a few miles from Caywood Farms, corn stalks reach 5 feet into the air. They’ll be chopped up for dairy cow feed.

The family didn’t want more farming land but found it necessary to cover the taxes on its dying historic property.

Except there’s one problem.

Because of the drought, Arizona will have 18% less water from the Colorado River next year. Farms like Caywood’s son’s will be hit hardest because of rules governing how water is divided in the state.

"We have no cotton. It's gone. It's dead. The alfalfa barely exists," Caywood said.
“We have no cotton. It’s gone. It’s dead. The alfalfa barely exists,” Caywood said. She may be forced to use her savings to cover taxes on the farm, which isn’t making money anymore. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

 

“It seems there’s really no way out of drought,” Caywood said the other week, browsing old photos of her parents and son standing by cotton bales.

Sometimes, she felt as though it wasn’t just a farm but a family and way of life slipping away. Her father, Tommy, died in January at 98. Her 94-year-old mother, Sammie, was in and out of the hospital.

All around her, farms were disappearing. Next door, the Wuertzes sold much of theirs for solar panels. Down the street, an abandoned construction project stood where alfalfa once grew. Caywood had gotten offers from buyers too. She rejected them.

She looked at the barren fields where her grandfather taught her how to examine the changing color of a cotton blossom to tell where the plant was in its life span. She thought back to when water flowed freely in the dried-up irrigation canals where she would sneak away to swim as a kid.

Days like those seemed long gone. She prayed for them to come back again.

Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug

Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug

Hamilton Nolan                       
<span>Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock</span>
Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

 

If you have cultivated an Edgar Allen Poe-like appreciation for the macabre, there is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to ignore. We can chuckle knowing that the monster is going to come for our designated protectors. We stop chuckling knowing that it’s coming for all of us next.

Related: Wildfire fighters advance against biggest US blaze amid dire warnings

It is easy to imagine that a real live existential threat to our way of life would prompt any society to assume war footing and marshal everything it has to fight for survival. Unfortunately, this response only takes hold in actual war situations, where the threat is “other people that we can shoot and kill in glorious fashion”. When the threat comes not from enemy people, but from our own nature, we find it much harder to rise to the occasion. Where is the glory in recognizing the folly of our own greed and profligacy? Leaders are not elected on such things. We want leaders who will give us more, leading us ever onwards, upwards and into the grave.

The latest demonstration of this comes from the G20, that coalition that is as good a proxy as any for the combined will of the world’s richest countries. The latest G20 meeting wrapped up last week without firm commitments on phasing out coal power, or on what steps nations will promise to take to try to hold global warming to 1.5C. This goal is both necessary and, perhaps, unlikely – a report by scientists found that China, Russia, Brazil and Australia are all pursuing policies that could lead to a cataclysmic five degrees of warming.

The G20 is a perfect model of our collective failure to build institutions capable of coping with deep, long-term, existential problems that cannot be solved by building more weapons. On the one hand, the head of the United Nations says that there is no way for the world to meet its 1.5C warming goal without the leadership of the G20; on the other hand, a recent analysis found that G20 members have, in the past five years, paid $3.3tn in subsidies for fossil fuel production and consumption. The same group that claims to be bailing out humanity’s sinking ship with one hand is busily setting it aflame with the other hand. It is not good to be too pessimistic on climate change, because we must maintain the belief that we can win this battle if we are to have any hope at all. That said, it sure does seem like we’re screwed.

As overwhelming and omnipresent as the climate crisis is, it is not the core issue. The core issue is capitalism. Capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of economic growth is what caused climate change, and capitalism’s inability to reckon with externalities – the economic term for a cost that falls onto third parties – is what is preventing us from solving climate change. Indeed, climate change itself is the ultimate negative externality: fossil-fuel companies and assorted polluting corporations and their investors get all the benefits, and the rest of the world pays the price. Now the entire globe finds itself trapped in the gruesome logic of capitalism, where it is perfectly rational for the rich to continue doing something that is destroying the earth, as long as the profits they reap will allow them to insulate themselves from the consequences.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left

Congratulations, free market evangelists: this is the system you have built. It doesn’t work. I don’t want to lean too heavily on the touchy-feely, Gaia-esque interpretation of global warming as the inevitable wounds of an omniscient Mother Earth, but you must admit that viewing humanity and its pollution as a malicious virus set to be eradicated by nature is now a fairly compelling metaphor. Homo sapiens rose above the lesser animals thanks to our ability to wield logic and reason, yet we have somehow gotten ourselves to a place where the knowledge of what is driving all these wildfires and floods is not enough to enable us to do anything meaningful to stop it. The keystone experience of global capitalism is to gape at a drought-fueled fire as it consumes your home, and then go buy a bigger SUV to console yourself.

This year, the G20 is patting itself on the back for “[recognizing] carbon pricing as a potential tool to address climate change for the first time in an official communique”. This would have been encouraging 30 years ago, when we should have established a carbon tax after it became clear that carbon emissions cause tangible damage to the environment. In 2021, this sort of diplomatic marginalia is the equivalent of a child on the Titanic proudly showing his parents his completed homework, just as the ship slips beneath the waves.

Of course we need a price on carbon. Of course we need extremely strict emissions regulations, massive green energy investments, and a maniacal focus on sustainability fierce enough to radically change a society that is built to promote unlimited consumption. But, to be honest, there is little indication that we will get those things any time soon. The path we are on, still, is not one that leads to a happy ending. Rather, it is one that leads to the last billionaire standing on dry land blasting off in his private rocket as the rest of us drown in rising seas.

Capitalism is a machine made to squeeze every last cent out of this planet until there is nothing left. We can either fool ourselves about that until it kills us, or we can change it.

  • Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York

Trump’s lies win him the top Republican fundraiser spot

Trump’s lies win him the top Republican fundraiser spot

Trump continues to excel at his career-long tradition of making money off lying to people.
Zeeshan Aleem, MSNBC Opinion Columnist      August 3, 2021
Photo illustration: Donald Trump surrounded by piles of money.

Trump’s next chapter: the art of making a ton of money by lying to your supporters. Anjali Nair / MSNBC; Getty Images

According to filings made public over the weekend, former President Donald Trump is the most successful fundraiser in his party this year, having closed out the first six months of 2021 with over $100 million in his war chest.

Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one.

For a politician out of office and banned from mainstream social media, that’s an astonishing amount. But perhaps even more remarkable than the sheer amount is the reminder that Trump is once again excelling at his career-long tradition of making money off of lying to people.

Unfortunately, the former president’s latest bid to use deception for profit is a uniquely dangerous one. The more money he makes from convincing people that the election was rigged, the more power he has to pressure the Republican Party to embrace and replicate that lie. With more cash, he can intervene more aggressively in next year’s campaigns and lobby more effectively for the political priorities he cares about most. Ultimately, he has the capacity to reshape the party to conform with his latest heist.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s aides exaggerated how much he raised from January to June — some of the money came from transfers from other accounts that raised money last year — but still, he dwarfed the amount raised by any other politician in his party, the closest of whom was Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (he raised $7.8 million online). Trump even pulled in more cash than “each of the three main fund-raising arms of the Republican Party itself,” according to The New York Times.

In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories about irregularities in the voting process.

There are plenty of reasons Trump’s massive haul is striking. It shows how enthusiastically he’s flouting the modern post-presidential tradition of stepping away from politics after leaving the White House. It also illustrates how he remains exceptionally popular within the party despite having left the White House mired in scandal and after having incited a ragtag insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and botched the American response to the coronavirus pandemic. But his unique and brazen use of outright deception to pull it off remains perhaps the most impressive one of all.

Trump’s premier fundraising tool is to hammer home the lie that the election was rigged against him. As The New York Times notes, Trump’s fundraising numbers correspond with his direct engagement with the public, such as through speeches and his ill-fated blog. And those interactions have been centered, to the point of obsession, on the idea that the election was stolen from him.

In his handful of campaign-style public appearances since he left the White House, Trump has showered adulating supporters with conspiracy theories  about irregularities in the voting process and impressed upon them the notion that he would have beaten President Joe Biden if some shadowy network of outsiders hadn’t intervened on Biden’s behalf.

A plurality of Trump’s messages on his blog and elsewhere were focused on lies about the election. He also regularly sends out fundraising emails based on false claims of “new evidence” of voter fraud, giving his supporters the illusion that their donations are helping fund some kind of long-term investigative operation.

Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021: “On behalf of the millions of men and women who share my outrage and want me to continue to fight for the truth, I am grateful for your support,” he said in his statement about his fundraising this year.

Trump himself is open about the centrality of the “big lie” to his political focus for all of 2021.

And embedded within this fraud is another potential fraud. In 2020, the Trump campaign deployed a scheme of using donation forms that used distracting visuals and fine print to opt donors in to recurring donations unwittingly. Consumer advocates condemned the fundraising scheme, and the campaign eventually refunded tens of millions of dollars in response to fraud complaints, but monthly donations and fraud complaints continued into 2021 and may account for some of the money he’s raised this year.

Trump is a seasoned veteran of making money off of deception, fraud and corruption. His career in real estate was marked by illicit business practices, including the refusal to make mandatory disclosures of purchases to the Federal Trade Commission, the failure to pay people and small businesses the money they were owed and discrimination against Black tenants by lying about vacancies. Trump illegally siphoned off money from his charity to help his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump University was a brazen scam. And Trump used the White House to enrich himself and his family.

The trouble with Trump’s latest scam is that it’s not just about accumulating money at other people’s expense. He’s using lies to convince a huge proportion of the American public that they’ve been scammed and giving them more reason to become hostile to the possibility of functioning democracy.

‘A one-man scam Pac’: Trump’s money hustling tricks prompt fresh scrutiny

‘A one-man scam Pac’: Trump’s money hustling tricks prompt fresh scrutiny

Peter Stone in Washington               

<span>Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Brandon Bell/Getty Images

 

Donald Trump’s penchant for turning his political and legal troubles into fundraising schemes has long been recognized, but the former US president’s money hustling tricks seem to have expanded since his defeat by Joe Biden, prompting new scrutiny and criticism from campaign finance watchdogs and legal analysts.

Related: Revealed: the people who signed up to the Magacoin Trump cryptocurrency

Critics note Trump has built an arsenal of political committees and nonprofit groups, staffed with dozens of ex-administration officials and loyalists, which seem aimed at sustaining his political hopes for a comeback, and exacting revenge on Republican congressional critics. These groups have been aggressive in raising money through at times misleading appeals to the party base, which polls show share Trump’s false views he lost the White House due to fraud.

Just days after his defeat last November, Trump launched a new political action committee, dubbed Save America, that together with his campaign and the Republican National Committee quickly raked in tens of millions of dollars through text and email appeals for an “election defense fund”, ostensibly to fight the results with baseless lawsuits alleging fraud.

The fledgling Pac had raised a whopping $31.5m by year’s end, but Save America spent nothing on legal expenses in this same period, according to public records. Run by Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Save America spent only $340,000 on fundraising expenses last year.

In another move, Trump last month announced he was filing class-action lawsuits against Facebook, Google and Twitter, alleging “censorship” due to bans by the platforms after the 6 January Capitol attack that Trump helped stoke. But several legal experts panned the lawsuits as frivolous and a fundraising ploy.

Trump’s new legal stratagem raised red flags, in part because he teamed up with America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a nonprofit group led by ex-White House official Brooke Rollins. At a press briefing with Trump, Rollins told supporters they could “join the lawsuit” by signing up on a website, takeonbigtech.org, a claim belied by details on the website which featured a red button with the words “DONATE to AFPI”.

“Donald Trump is a one-man scam Pac,” said Paul S Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation with Common Cause. “Bait-and-switch is among his favorite fundraising tactics,” Ryan stressed, noting that Trump’s Save America Pac told “supporters he needed money to challenge the result of an election he clearly lost, and then wound up not spending nothing any on litigation last year.

“Now he’s at it again, with frivolous lawsuits filed [in July] against Facebook, Twitter and Google, accompanied by fundraising appeals,” Ryan added. “This time he’s got the unlimited dark money group America First Policy Institute in on the racket.”

Other experts voice strong concerns about Trump’s tactics.

He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts

Adav Noti

“The president deceived his donors. He asked them to give money so he could contest the election results, but then he spent their contributions to pay off unrelated debts,” said Adav Noti, a former associate general counsel at the Federal Election Commission and now chief of staff at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.

Noti added: “That’s dangerously close to fraud. If a regular charity – or an individual who didn’t happen to be president of the United States – had raised tens of millions of dollars through that sort of deception, they would face a serious risk of prosecution.”

Such concerns have not deterred Trump’s fundraising machine from expanding further with the launch of a super Pac, Make America Great Again Action, which can accept unlimited donations. Both the Super Pac and Save America are run by Trump’s former campaign manager, Lewandowski, who did not return calls seeking comment.

The Super Pac has reportedly hosted at least two events for mega donors at Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and in Dallas, but it’s not known how much has been hauled in so far.

Both Pacs are seen as vehicles for Trump to raise more funds to influence 2022 congressional races, where he has vowed to defeat several politicians such as the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach him this year after the Capitol attack.

Campaign filings for the first six months of 2021 reveal that Trump’s political groups led by Save America raised $82m, an unprecedented total for a former president. Save America banked most of the funds while spending some to pay for Trump’s travel and other expenses, instead of challenging election results in states like Arizona, despite Trump’s false claims of fraud there.

Veteran campaign finance analysts say that the bevy of Trump-linked groups launched since his defeat raise new questions about his motives and political intentions.

Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running

Sheila Krumholz

“Trump’s aggressive fundraising, using a variety of committees and surrogates, raises questions about whether his continual hints at running in 2024 is primarily a ploy for donations,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. “Trump may be more interested in fundraising than actually running, especially given how unprecedented his post-loss fundraising is.”

Besides Trump’s fundraising pitches for his new Pacs and nonprofits, some major Republicans groups have collaborated in fundraising appeals since his defeat, and keep piggybacking on his allure to the party base, despite Trump’s repeated falsehoods that the election was stolen.

In the eight weeks post-election, for instance, the RNC, the Trump campaign and Save America reportedly raised about $255m, but spent only a small fraction on lawsuits.

Further, Trump’s cachet with small donors is still exploited by party allies, including the National Republican Senatorial Committee, (NRSC) the fundraising arm for Republican senators.

For instance, the NRSC in July email fundraising pitches touted a free Trump T-shirt for a limited number of donors writing checks from $35 to $5,000 to “protect the America First Majority”.

Similarly, the RNC in a 19 July email alert rolled out a money pitch to become an “official 2021 Trump Life Member” for donors who chipped in $45 or more by midnight.

Charlie Black, a longtime Republican operative, said that Republican committees realize that Trump’s “name has the most popular appeal to the grassroots, so naturally they’re going to try to figure out ways to use his brand where they can to raise more funds”.

But legal analysts caution that Trump’s new fundraising modus operandi are different, and carry clear risks for unwitting donors and US campaign finance laws.

“Our nation’s campaign finance and anti-fraud laws have proven no match for Trump’s schemes,” said Ryan of Common Cause. “So my one piece of advice for Trump supporters, is donor beware!”

Column One: In drought-plagued northern Mexico, tens of thousands of cows are starving to death

Column One: In drought-plagued northern Mexico, tens of thousands of cows are starving to death

Kate Linthicum                              
BUENAVISTA, SONORA - JULY 22: Marco Antonio Gutierrez, 55, of Buenavista, a cattle rancher, poses for a photo next to dead livestock that died of starvation lie on the dry and barren ground on Thursday, July 22, 2021 in Buenavista, Sonora. Gutierrez, who has lost cattle during the drought, has had to take up fishing to help earn income to buy bales of alfalfa to feed his cattle. Many poor ranchers rely on the rain to grow grass to feed their cattle. With no rain because of the drought many ranchers&#39; cattle have died of starvation because there is no money to buy bales of alfalfa to feed livestock. Northern Mexico, Sonora ...drought has affected cattle ranching throughout Mexico and the U.S. but is also going to look at a larger question: In a warming world is there a future for cattle and most connected to the cattle industry. Trickle down effect. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Marco Antonio Gutierrez, a cattle rancher in Buenavista, in Mexico’s Sonora state, stands among the carcasses of livestock who died of starvation. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

In the parched hills of southern Sonora, Marco Antonio Gutierrez paced around a clearing, counting the dead.

There were seven rotting carcasses — jutting ribs and shriveled hides — and two sun-bleached skulls. Nine cows, felled by heat and hunger.

“There’s nothing for them to eat,” said Gutierrez, a wide-brimmed hat shading his downcast eyes. “There used to be big ranches here. Now it’s pure sorrow.”

Two years of extreme drought have turned large stretches of northern Mexico into a boneyard. Between starvation and ranchers forced to prematurely sell or slaughter their livestock, officials say the number of cattle in Sonora has dropped from 1.1 million to about 635,000.

It’s an unimaginable loss for a state that is world-famous for its high-quality cows, and where beef is not just a central part of the diet and economy but also a tradition that binds families together.

This is a place, after all, with a bull on its state flag, and where families gather every Sunday around their charcoal grills. Red meat is considered a birthright: It’s not uncommon for folks here to eat beef three times a day — machaca scrambled with eggs for breakfast, arrachera for lunch and carne asada for dinner.

A man looks on as a bull trots through a fence opening
Rancher Manuel Bustamante Parra with one of his heifers. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Gutierrez, 55, and pretty much everyone he knows was born ranching. By the age of 10, he and his friends had all learned from their fathers how to lasso, brand and even pull a calf from the womb.

Now, as they desperately watch the skies for rain, they wonder if there’s any future in it.

Gutierrez doesn’t use the phrase “climate change” to describe what’s happening, but he laments that every year seems drier and hotter than the last. In recent months, he has watched helplessly as 70 of his 100 cows have starved to death.

Over coffee and machaca at a restaurant owned by fellow rancher Julio Aldama Solis, the two friends mulled whether it was finally time to auction off their remaining cattle — or whether they should keep struggling.

Selling would be heartbreaking, Aldama said, a surrender not only of their cowboy identity but also their family legacy.

“Imagine the sadness — all the sacrifices of your grandparents and your parents for nothing,” said Aldama, the 56-year-old scion of a prosperous ranching family in the largely rural county of Cajeme.

Gutierrez sipped his coffee. There was a reason he had held on to his herd during the worst of the drought, even as the animals wasted away in front of him.

It was his father, long dead, who had taught him the arduous but rewarding ways of ranch life.

Healthy livestock drink water from a trough at Rancho La Ventana.
Healthy livestock drink water from a trough at Rancho La Ventana on La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

And Gutierrez had come to love his cattle, even giving names to some: Coyota, La Venada, Vellota.

They had lived alongside his own family, and had helped sustain it financially. Every year the cows birthed calves that he could sell for about $600 each at auction.

At least now they were free from the misery of drought.

“They passed on to a better life,” he said.

‘THEY’RE DRY. COMPLETELY’

The cicadas were humming. That was a good sign.

Some people in these parts believe the buzz of cicadas — like the tambourine shake of a rattlesnake — means a thunderstorm is rolling in.

Gutierrez and Aldama scanned the sky. The sun was beating down, hot as ever, but a few cotton-like clouds loomed on the horizon.

“We’re all praying to the Virgin of Guadalupe that it rains,” Aldama said.

A malnourished cow forages for food
A malnourished cow forages for food along the roadside in Buenavista. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

They were touring the region’s ranches with another friend, Ricardo Alcala, who is the president of the Local Livestock Assn. of the Yaqui Valley. All three wore jeans with silver buckles and white cowboy hats.

There had been a couple of big storms in other parts of the state — enough to cause flooding in the border city of Nogales. Yet 97% of municipalities in Sonora remained officially in drought, and while sporadic rain here in the south had greened up the mesquite trees that dotted the landscape, it had not been enough to make grass grow.

A worker loads bales of alfalfa onto a truck
A worker loads alfalfa in Cocorit, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

It wasn’t even noon yet, and the thermometer on Alcala’s truck read 104 degrees. As the friends drove, they passed people shielding themselves from the sun with umbrellas, and dogs and horses hugging the sides of buildings, desperate for shade.

And then there were the cattle, thousands of them, some so skinny they looked like skeletons wandering the hills.

For months, ranchers had depended on alfalfa grown in fields irrigated with water from private wells or a nearby dam. But when the dam levels fell dangerously low, authorities had cut off the supply to ranches and farms to conserve water for drinking, cooking and bathing. The price of alfalfa had doubled — putting it out of reach for many.

Alcala’s organization had pleaded with authorities to drill wells in the region so ranchers could grow their own food for their cattle. But water table levels have fallen too, making it clearer each day that wells are at best a temporary solution.

A fisherman on Agua Caliente reservoir
A fisherman tosses a net at Agua Caliente reservoir in Cajeme, Sonora. The drought has lowered the water level to below normal. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Alcala pumped the brakes of his Ram truck when he saw a member of his association, Jesús Arvizu Valenzuela, cutting hay in a field that stood out for its lushness. But Arvizu, 68, told him the pasture would soon lie fallow — brown like the unirrigated land that surrounded it.

“They won’t give us water anymore,” he said.

“The wells aren’t working either?” Alcala asked.

Arvizu shook his head. “They’re dry. Completely.”

‘A MATTER OF IDENTITY’

Five hundred years ago, there were no cattle here.

The first cows were brought to Mexico by Spanish conquistadors in the 1500s. In Sonora, Jesuit missionaries encouraged Indigenous tribes, who had subsisted mostly on beans, corn and squash, to raise them.

By the second half of the 20th century, livestock had become big business here, with cattle roaming over 85% of the state. Tens of thousands of ranchers raised steers to sell at auction, many for export to the United States. Ranchers here say Sonora’s mix of native grasses give their beef a distinctive texture.

“Very juicy and soft,” Alcala proudly explained.

A ranch hand stands at a fence among cattle
Ranch hand Ernesto Flores Morales tends to healthy livestock at Rancho La Ventana in La Noria de Cuco, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

There were always periods of drought that ranchers had to endure — but in recent decades, climate change has made things worse.

Average rainfall has been decreasing for years. By the second half of this century, climate experts predict that Sonora will receive 20% to 30% less rain than today and regularly see temperatures as high as 122 degrees.

América Lutz Ley, a social scientist at El Colegio de Sonora who studies land use, is one of a growing number of people in the state who believe cattle ranching in its current form is not sustainable, largely because of the huge amount of water required to grow food for the herds.

“We live in a desert yet we are in the business of exporting water in the form of livestock,” she said.

Then there’s the fact that cattle emit significant levels of methane, a major driver of global warming. Mexico’s 34 million cattle are responsible for about 10% of the nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Lutz wishes there was more political will to promote alternatives to ranching. But she acknowledges that major changes are unlikely as long as prices for steers remain high and beef continues to be “a matter of identity” in Sonora.

She grew up spending weekends at carne asadas eating flour tortillas stuffed with salsa, guacamole and thin cuts of charred beef. It’s a family ritual so beloved here that even Lutz still indulges in it.

Rosendo Godinez, left, and his brother Cesar Godinez, remove the meat from cooked cows heads.
Rosendo Godinez, left, and his brother Cesar Godinez, remove the meat from cooked cows heads to later sell tacos de cabeza, or tacos made with the meat. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Chefs prepare meat at an outdoor area
Manuel Medina, foreground, cuts carne asada for a customer at Carniceria Chihuahua in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

It’s not easy changing culture.

Gutierrez knows that. For him and his friends, ranching is more than a livelihood — it’s a way of life.

As they drove on, the sky began to darken. A few fat raindrops hit the truck’s windshield. It seemed the cicadas had been right.

Alcala optimistically turned on his wipers. But a minute later, the rain stopped and he turned them off.

A PAINFUL DECISION

Early the next morning, Gutierrez and his two friends crowded into a different pickup, this time to check on Aldama’s ranch.

The sky was pink with sunrise. The radio was playing an accordion-heavy corrido about three brothers on horseback setting off at dawn to a party on a ranch.

As they turned off the highway onto Aldama’s property, Gutierrez exclaimed with delight.

“It rained, Julio!”

The storm they had driven through the day before had been more generous in this region. Butterflies flitted about orange and pink wildflowers that appeared to have bloomed overnight.

“It’s green and fresh and I’m happy because it rained,” said Aldama as his Chevy splashed through scattered puddles.

But he knew that one decent rain wouldn’t be enough.

Manuel Bustamante Parra, walks through a field of bones from dead livestock.
Manuel Bustamante Parra walks through a field of bones from dead livestock that died of starvation on the dry and barren ground. (Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times)

 

“The ranch is still in crisis,” Aldama said. “There’s no grass.”

He signaled to a field where a month ago his son and some friends had planted sorghum for his animals.

Weeks later, the field was barren except for the empty cans of Bud Light the young men had downed after finishing their work.

“It should have been a foot high by now,” Aldama said. “We planted sorghum but only beer has grown.”

They came to a pen where a ranch hand was milking cows. During the hottest months of the drought, Aldama had kept most of his cattle alive by feeding them carrots he had grown on another plot he owned.

He proudly appraised the half dozen calves, some just a few weeks old, that were competing with the ranch hand to get milk from their mother.

But selling all of the calves in a few months wouldn’t make up for the costs of keeping his herd alive, he said.

His grandparents founded this ranch, growing it from just a few cattle to a lucrative business. Lately their descendants had been talking, and had recently come to a painful decision.

Unless there are recurring, penetrative rains in August, the family will sell half of its herd. Where the cow pastures once grew, they are thinking about planting agaves — which require little water and are used to make a stiff local liquor called bacanora.

“I don’t see a future in ranching,” Aldama said, his voice cracking. “It’s a really good business when it rains, but lately it’s all losses.”

But the power of tradition is strong. Stronger, sometimes, than reason.

Fishermen on Agua Caliente reservoir
Fishermen clean their catch of tilapia on Agua Caliente reservoir. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

 

Gutierrez did everything he could to keep feeding his cows. To raise money, he started buying and selling tilapia and carp caught from the local dam. But that business tanked as the dam nearly went dry.

He and his wife, who works at a hospital, have decided that their two children should not have to endure such hardships. They are studying in Ciudad Obregon, the nearest city.

“I suffered a lot and I don’t want them to suffer,” Gutierrez said.

He still doesn’t know what he’ll do — try to rebuild his herd or give up.

On a recent hot afternoon, he was commiserating with Manuel Bustamante Parra, a 58-year-old friend in similar straits.

Bustamante used to have 28 cattle, but now has 19. He did his best to save the hungry animals in their final days — using a rope-and-pully system to haul them upright to eat when they were too weak to stand — but it wasn’t enough.

Every few days, Bustamante rides his horse to a different small chapel in the region. He asks for rain as he lights candles to the Virgin of Guadalupe. He and Gutierrez have been traversing these hills on horseback for as long as they can remember.

“I’m too old to learn something new,” Gutierrez said.

“We’ll keep ranching until all the cows die,” Bustamante told him. “Or we do.”

A man wipes his brow with his shirt
Manuel Bustamante Parra has seen his livestock die of starvation because of the drought. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

Cecilia Sánchez in The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.

Global Warming Will Kill 83 Million People in the Next 80 Years

Global Warming Will Kill 83 Million People in the Next 80 Years

Jonathan Tirone              

(Bloomberg) — A population equivalent to that of Germany — 83 million people — could be killed by 2100 because of rising temperatures caused by greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a new study that might influence how markets price carbon pollution.

The research from Columbia University’s Earth Institute introduces a new metric to help companies and governments assess damages wrought by climate change this century. Accounting for the “mortality cost of carbon” could give polluters new reasons to clean up by dramatically raising the cost of emissions.

“Based on the decisions made by individuals, businesses or governments, this tells you how many lives will be lost or saved,” said Columbia’s Daniel Bressler, whose research was published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications. “It quantifies the mortality impact of those decisions” by reducing questions down “to a more personal, understandable level.”

Read More: Life and Death in Our Hot Future Will be Shaped by Today’s Income Inequality

Adapting models developed by Yale climate economist and Nobel Prize winner William Nordhaus, Bressler calculated the number of direct heat deaths that will be caused by current global-warming trajectories. His calculations don’t include the number of people who might die from rising seas, superstorms, crop failures or changing disease patterns affected by atmospheric warming. That means that the projected deaths — which approximate the number of people killed in World War II — could still be a “vast underestimate,” Bressler said.

Every 4,434 tons of carbon spewed into the Earth’s atmosphere in 2020 will kill one person this century, according to the peer-reviewed calculations that see the planet warming 4.1º Celsius by 2100. So far the planet has warmed about 1.1º C, compared to pre-industrial times.

The volume of pollution emitted over the lifetime of three average U.S. residents is estimated to contribute to the death of another person. Bressler said the highest mortality rates can be expected in Earth’s hottest and poorest regions in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Read More: How Biden Is Putting a Number on Carbon’s True Cost: QuickTake

The new metric could significantly affect how economies calculate the so-called social cost of carbon, which U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration set at $51 a ton in February. That price on pollution, which complements carbon markets like the European Union’s Emissions Trading System, helps governments set policy by accounting for future damages. But the scale revealed by Bressler’s research suggests the social cost of carbon should be significantly higher, at about $258 a ton, if the world’s economies want to reduce deaths caused by global warming.

A higher cost on carbon pollution could immediately induce larger emission cuts, which in turn could save lives. Capping global average temperature increase to 2.4ºC by the end of the century, compared with modest emissions reductions that would warm the planet 3.4ºC, could save 74 million people from dying of heat.

“People shouldn’t take their per-person mortality emissions too personally,” said Bressler. Governments need to mobilize “large-scale policies such as carbon pricing, cap and trade and investments in low carbon technologies and energy storage.”

Why it’s so hard and expensive to plug an abandoned well

Why it’s so hard and expensive to plug an abandoned well

Cathy Bussewitz                         

An estimated 2 million abandoned oil and gas wells across the country, forgotten or ignored by the energy companies that drilled them, are believed to be leaking toxic chemicals. Many of the wells are releasing methane, a greenhouse gas containing about 86 times the climate-warming power of carbon dioxide over two decades. Some are leaking chemicals such as benzene, a known carcinogen, into fields and groundwater.

Here are some questions and answers.

WHAT IS AN ABANDONED WELL?

An oil or gas well is considered abandoned when it’s reached the end of its useful life and is no longer producing enough fuel to make money. If the company that owned the well went bankrupt, or there’s no owner to be found to plug or maintain it, then the abandoned well is considered “orphaned.”

WHAT DANGER DOES AN ABANDONED WELL POSE?

Over time, the amount of oil and gas a company can extract from a well declines. At that point, many operators will cap a well to seal it temporarily. Sometimes, wells sit in that “idle” or “inactive” state for months or even years. But to prevent chemicals from leaking into the air or soil, a well must be properly plugged with cement. Left unplugged, oil and gas wells are at risk of leaking methane into the atmosphere and toxic chemicals into groundwater.

HOW DO YOU PLUG AN OIL AND GAS WELL?

The idea is to fill certain parts of the well with cement, to stop toxic chemicals from leaking into aquifers or the air, and to eventually bury the well underground.

First, crews must remove any pumpjacks or other equipment that might have been left at surface. They then examine the well for problems: leaks, deteriorated casings, cracked cement. They fish out random sticks or debris that might have wedged over time into the wellbore — the vertical shaft that is drilled to extract oil and gas.

“If you leave a well ignored for a long enough time, the casing begins to deteriorate inside,” said Luke Plants, chief operating officer at Plants and Goodwin, a company that plugs oil and gas wells throughout Appalachia. “Every kid that walks by and sees this open pipe throws a rock down in there.”

Next, the pluggers must measure the wellbore and determine to what depths they must pour cement to keep the well from leaking into water tables or other underground geologic formations.

The older the well is, the trickier the operation. When a well is orphaned, detailed records of how the well was drilled might be missing. The crews must try to determine, based on records of nearby wells, what is occurring underground. If a well had been abandoned decades ago, crews might have to build roads to move heavy equipment needed for the job. If a well is found under a driveway or a parking lot, crews must operate carefully around homes, schools or electric wires.

WHAT DOES IT COST?

The cost to plug an orphaned well varies depending on its age, depth and location. In North Dakota, where some wells are drilled to depths of more than 20,000 feet, it can cost $150,000 to plug a single well and restore the land around it. In Pennsylvania, the state budgets about $33,000 to plug each well.

Many states require companies to post bonds to pay for well plugging. But the bond amount is generally far lower than the cost of plugging. On federal lands, the average amount the government held in bonds was just $2,122 per well in 2018, according to the Government Accountability Office. Some groups are pushing states to tighten rules on how long a well can remain idle or to raise the bond amounts required of operators.

An effort in 2005 to obtain funding from Congress for a federal well-plugging program failed to secure much money. Many states, including Texas, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and North Dakota, fund their plugging operations through fees or taxes paid by the oil and gas industry. But that money isn’t enough to plug all the wells that need it. And state lawmakers often face pushback from groups that would rather have that money go to education or other community needs.

In Pennsylvania, plugging all the known orphaned wells could cost $250 million to $300 million, said Seth Pelepko, the environmental program manager at the Bureau of Oil and Gas Planning and Program Management in the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. But his office has secured only enough money to spend about $1 million annually. Pelepko estimates that plugging all the wells there — including those of unknown location — could range into the billions of dollars.

In Colorado, state regulators spent $14.4 million over three years to plug and reclaim wells after operators had set aside only $1.3 million, according to the Western Organization of Resource Councils, a network of grassroots groups involved with land stewardship. Colorado would need about $5.3 million a year for five years to address the current inventory of orphaned wells, the group said.

‘You’re all f—ed up’: Trump exploded after his officials warned against using military troops to end George Floyd protests, book says

‘You’re all f—ed up’: Trump exploded after his officials warned against using military troops to end George Floyd protests, book says

John L. Dorman                           

 

  • Milley and Esper spoke against Trump using troops to blunt the Floyd protests, per a new book.
  • Trump was intrigued with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, according to the book.
  • During the early days of the protests, Trump was concerned that the US appeared out of control.

After George Floyd was killed while in the custody of Minneapolis police in May 2020, millions of Americans poured into the streets to protest his death and call attention to racial injustice.

In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, Trump summoned Gen. Mark Milley, Defense secretary Mark Esper, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and other advisors to find a way to end the protests.

The president was incensed by a New York Times report that he had been taken to a bunker as protests near the White House turned violent, thinking the news “made him appear scared and weak,” according to a newly-released book by the Washington Post reporters Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

To blunt the continued protests, Trump insisted that active-duty troops be used, which Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Esper sought to eliminate as an option.

When Trump mentioned the 1960’s race riots to justify the use of troops to restore order, Milley threw cold water on the suggestion, part of a longer discussion that resulted in the president cursing out his top military advisors, which Leonnig and Rucker detailed in “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”

“Mr. President, it doesn’t compare anywhere to the summer of sixty-eight,” Milley said, according to the book. “It’s not even close.”

After senior advisor Stephen Miller chimed in to declare the protests as “an insurrection,” Milley pointed to a portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln, who led the country through the American Civil War.

“Mr. President, that guy had an insurrection,” Milley said, according to the book. “You don’t have an insurrection. When guys show up in gray and start bombing Fort Sumter, you’ll have an insurrection.”

Trump entertained the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act, which would let him deploy troops across the country to quell any civil disorder or insurrection, but Milley and Esper continued to fight against the idea.

On June 1, Trump had grown angrier over the press coverage of the protests, urging governors and law enforcement to “dominate” the nationwide unrest.

“How do you think this looks to hostile countries?” Trump said, according to the book. “They see we can’t even control our own capital city and the space around the White House!”

After once again calling for troops, Esper said that the National Guard remained the best option to stop any unrest, but the president proceeded to slam on the Resolute Desk and told the Defense secretary that he wasn’t done enough to solve the problem, according to the book.

Trump sought to make Milley the leader of an operation to restore order, but after the general reiterated that he wasn’t in an operational role, the president lost it.

Read more: Where is Trump’s White House staff now? We created a searchable database of more than 327 top staffers to show where they all landed

“You’re all f—ed up,” Trump said, according to the book. “Every one of you is f—ed up.”

Trump then looked at Vice President Mike Pence, who had been a quiet observer, and directed his ire toward his No. 2.

“Including you!” the president said, according to the book.

Later that day, Trump, along with Milley, Esper, and several other advisors, walked from the White House complex to nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church.

The now-infamous photo op, which showed the president holding a bible in front of the church after protestors were violently cleared from Lafayette Park, immediately attracted criticism. However, the inspector general for the Interior Department determined in June 2021 that the US Park Police and Secret Service did not clear the park for Trump’s photoshoot, but to install anti-scale fencing.

Why Republicans Are So Determined to Distort the Truth About the Capitol Attack

Why Republicans Are So Determined to Distort the Truth About the Capitol Attack

David French                             
US-POLITICS-UNREST-CAPITOL-INVESTIGATION
Members of law enforcement leave following testimony during the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol adjourned their first hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on July 27, 2021. – The committee heard testimony from members of the US Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department who tried to protect the Capitol against insurrectionists on January 6, 2021. Credit – Bill O’Leary-AFP

 

On Monday a small band of U.S. Capitol Police officers delivered vivid, emotional testimony about a previously unthinkable event—the day a partisan mob stormed the Capitol to try to overturn an American election. Many Americans had already seen the sounds and images of that shocking day, but there was something about their description that brought the event more vividly to life.

Yet it’s unlikely to change hearts and minds, at least not Republican hearts and minds. In GOP circles, two things are true at once. First, large majorities of Republican voters disapprove of the January 6 rioters. At the same time, large majorities still approve of Donald Trump, and Liz Cheney—the Republican most prominently intent on investigating and exposing what happened—is less popular with Republicans than renowned conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene.

In fact, Cheney might now be the least popular Republican in the entire Republican Party, in spite of her consistently conservative voting record and her support for Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020. The reason is simple. She has violated the prime directive of negative partisanship. Even if she’s right to be upset by the riots, she’s attacking her own team. It’s the responsibility of GOP politicians to always, always train their fire on the left.

Negative partisanship is a simple concept with profound implications. At its most basic, it means that “the parties hang together mainly out of sheer hatred of the other team, rather than a shared sense of purpose.” When negative partisanship dominates, a political coalition is united far more by animosity than policy. The policy priorities are malleable and flexible, so long as the politician rhetorically punches the right people.

The problem is severe and getting worse. Available data indicates that partisan perceptions of the opposing party have been plunging for more than 30 years, to the point where the overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats have profoundly negative perceptions of their political opponents.

Liz Cheney’s changing polling is Exhibit A of the phenomenon. She was and is one of the House’s most ideologically conservative members, yet she’s now three times more popular with Democrats than Republicans. Fight Republicans, and you’ll get Democratic fans, even if your underlying ideology remains profoundly conservative.

Republican acceptance of conspiracy theorists like Marjorie Taylor Greene is Exhibit B. The same poll that showed Cheney significantly underwater with Republican voters showed Green with a slight positive rating. She’s endorsed truly bizarre and baseless conspiracy theories, including allegations that Hillary Clinton ritually killed a child. But she fights the left, and the left despises her, and for millions of Republicans that is more than enough to earn their regard.

Given our culture of negative partisanship, a true bipartisan effort to explore the events, causes, and consequences of January 6th never had a chance. The riots at the Capitol weren’t an external attack from a shared enemy (like the attacks on 9/11). They were a purely partisan attack launched by fanatical Trump supporters. That means a close examination of January 6th was always going to be a close examination of the failures and misdeeds of one partisan side.

There is even a link between the malady of negative partisanship and America’s ongoing struggle with vaccine hesitancy. As the vaccination gap between blue counties and red counties continues to grow, Republicans who advocate for increased vaccine uptake have to strike a delicate balance. They can exhort vaccinations, but critiquing those who amplify doubts about the vaccine–especially, say, a powerful personality like Tucker Carlson–carries its own perils.

Nobody thinks that negative partisanship is confined to the right side of the aisle. All the polling data indicates that animosity is a bipartisan concern. Democrats dislike Republicans just as Republicans dislike Democrats. But at the moment, two of the greatest challenges to the American body politic–the belief that the 2020 election was “stolen” and the vaccine hesitancy that is infecting Americans by the hundreds of thousands and killing them by the thousands–come from the right, and thus it is imperative that the right clean its own house.

When animosity is the guiding principle, however, there is no tolerance for any degree of introspection that could lead to potential political weakness. Cheney knows understands this intimately. During the hearing she asked the key question, “Do we hate our political adversaries more than we love our country and revere our Constitution?”

Republicans might be embarrassed about January 6th. They may even be frustrated or angry that the riot occurred. But those feelings pale in comparison to their desire to defeat Democrats, and they’re keenly aware that every second spent relitigating January 6th is a second spent highlighting the worst of their party and their movement. Of course they want to move on, quickly. Of course they’re angry at any Republican who wants to investigate.

To say that Republican frustration is understandable is not to argue that it’s excusable. January 6th was a historic atrocity. It represented a violent effort to overturn an election. The health of the American experiment is not determined by the electoral success of the Republican Party. It’s ultimately determined by its commitment to its constitutional ideals, and in January the Constitution came under frontal attack.

So the investigation must continue, and conservatives like Cheney and her House Colleague Adam Kinziger who seek to know the full truth of January 6th should maintain their lonely stands. After all, the truth is important even if the truth doesn’t move the polls. The present centrality of negative partisanship doesn’t necessarily imply its permanence, but for now Republican hearts are hard to change.