Category: Politics and American Democracy

Can the Leopold Center be Saved?

Civil Eats

Can the Leopold Center be Saved?

A year after the influential center for sustainable agriculture research was defunded, farmers and students are urging Iowa’s legislators to reinstate its budget.

By Lisa Held – Agroecology, Climate, Farming, Food Policy                February 14, 2018

Nearly a year ago, the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, one of the country’s preeminent research centers for sustainable agriculture, was defunded via budget cuts made by Iowa’s state government. Now, a grassroots coalition is fighting to revive the Center and to educate the public on why its work matters more than ever.

Last Tuesday, students, farmers, and community members called for a “fully funded, fully staffed, re-imagined” Leopold Center during a press conference at the Iowa State Capitol building and in meetings with legislators and staff members at the governor’s office.

“The work is far from done,” said Liz Garst, a conventional row crop farmer who’s been involved in Leopold Center research on several topics, including prairie hay and cover crops. Because these practices are uncommon in a state where most farmers grow only corn and soybeans in otherwise bare soil, and most university-level research in the area focuses on that system, losing any hub for alternative information is significant. “As a practicing cover crop farmer, I have way more questions than answers,” added Garst.

The Iowa Sustainable Ag group—which also launched a website that includes a petition and videos highlighting the center’s work—included representatives from the Iowa Farmers Union, the Women, Food, and Ag Network, the Center for Rural Affairs, and several former students from Iowa State University’s (ISU) Sustainable Agriculture Graduate Program.

“A lot of the students received funding and support from the Leopold Center, and some of them came to ISU to study because the Center was there and it has an international reputation,” said Debbie Bunka, a representative from the Iowa Farmers Union.

The participants in last week’s event signify the Leopold Center’s wide reach. Iowa Farmers Union president Aaron Lehman, who farms both organic and conventional row crops, spoke alongside several other farmers who talked about how the Center had supported their work in the fields. Third-generation organic crop and livestock farmers Ellen Walsh Rosmann and Daniel Rosmann spoke about how the Center supported their creation of a food hub that now links over 40 producers in western Iowa to institutions like schools and grocery stores.

Daniel Rosmann said the hub was one tool for supporting Iowa’s struggling rural communities, a topic the Leopold Center had advanced in many ways. “They have created an understanding of what rural communities need to survive and thrive,” he said.

Between 1987 and 2017, the Center awarded more than 500 research grants to study pressing agriculture issues like conservation buffers, rotational grazing, and building local food economies. While Leopold’s focus was on Iowa’s specific food and farm landscape, many of its findings have had national and international impact.

An Iowa State University student collects water infiltration data in a field with cover crops, as part of a Leopold Center supported research project studying the long-term impact of cereal rye on cash crop yields. (Photo courtesy The Leopold Center)

In fact, the day before the press conference, the results of a new Leopold Center study made the news, promising “transformative” change for the dairy industry. The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, identified a new technique for differentiating between milk from grass-fed cows and that from cows fed grain. Fluorescence spectroscopy, the researchers found, measures the amount of chlorophyll metabolites in the milk and found that they were higher in milk from the cows fed grass—a fact that could make it easier for the industry to monitor whether producers using the “grass-fed” claim are truly grazing their cows on pasture.

“This project was started a couple of years ago,” said Leopold Center director Mark Rasmussen. “It was totally coincidental that it came out the very week that the advocacy event happened.”

A Long, Slow Shutdown

Last week’s advocacy event marked a bright moment during a tough year for Rasmussen, who, since the funding disappeared last May, has been presiding over shutting down most of the Center’s operations.

The staff’s first order of business was figuring out how to manage the grants that had already been awarded. They moved up the end dates of some projects so that they could be completed before the end of last year, and transferred 20 projects to the Iowa Nutrient Research Center for completion. Twelve projects were cancelled outright, although four of those found alternative funding.

After dealing with the grants, five of the Center’s staff members were let go, leaving just two: Rasmussen and distinguished fellow Fred Kirschenmann. The duo moved into a smaller office and downsized 30 years of records, taking care to maintain the history and work of the center. They received a commitment from ISU, for example, to keep the Leopold Center’s website up and running, with all past research searchable in the university database.

Finally, they set up listening sessions around the state to hear input on what the future of the Center could be, with the goal of determining a narrower focus with limited resources.

“The old Center is gone; we have to accept that and think of a new Center, a Leopold Center 2.0,” Rasmussen said. “When Leopold Center started it was the only game in town. Thirty years later, there are a bunch of organizations that are focusing on beginning farmers, women in agriculture, you name it.” Using information from the listening sessions, an 11-member volunteer task force conducted a gap analysis to look at where the center should go from here. Findings from the analysis will be presented to the Center’s advisory board in March.

A Path to Rebirth?

If the grassroots advocacy campaign is successful, however, Leopold 2.0 won’t be a stripped-down version of its former self. At the Capitol, the activists—several of whom worked on fighting the Keystone XL pipeline—talked to lawmakers about supporting new legislation that was introduced by state representatives Charles Isenhart and Beth Wessel-Kroeschell. The bill would make $1 million in annual public funding available to the center if ISU’s president first raised the same amount in private funds. Together, the $2 million would equal the Leopold Center’s pre-cutback budget.

“This legislation would provide the opportunity for [ISU] President [Wendy] Wintersteen to demonstrate her commitment to the Leopold Center and deploy her fundraising skills to benefit the Leopold Center, advancing the cause of sustainable agriculture in Iowa,” Rep. Isenhart explained by email.

A Leopold Center-funded a grant project supported Congera Alex, originally from Burundi, shown here transplanting his crops in early spring in a community garden in Des Moines, Iowa. (Photo courtesy The Leopold Center)

Iowa Farmers’ Union’s Debbie Bunka said during meetings, however, that support for the bill generally broke down along party lines, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed, a fact Isenhart confirmed. “The bill itself is not likely to be considered, unless Rep. [Pat] Grassley [the appropriations chair] is encouraged to do so by agricultural interest groups [such as the Farm Bureau],” Isenhart said. “We will, however, probably offer this as an amendment to the state’s Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Environmental Protection Appropriations Bill.”

David Osterberg, the co-founder of the non-partisan Iowa Policy Project and one of the former state senators who created the Leopold Center, blames the influence of agribusiness on legislators’ unwillingness to support the center.

“I’m not sure you can follow the money and find out that each person who voted [to defund the center] also got money from agribusiness,” Osterberg said, “but in general, if you’re a rural legislator you realize that there are a lot of entities you don’t want to piss off. And this legislature seems to be willing to do anything for corporations.”

Bunka confirmed that in meetings, legislators said they perceived the Center as “bashing conventional ag,” which is one reason part of the advocacy group’s mission is educating the public education to help more people understand the Center’s mission and activities.

“This movement is not for the benefit of a small group of people,” Bunka said. “The Leopold Center is internationally known, and they do so much good work that helps conventional farmers, farmers growing organic crops … it’s a wide range of groups. We like to say it’s ‘agriculture research for the common good.’”

Top photo: Aldo Leopold during his 1936-37 trip to the Sierra Madre in Mexico. Photo by the U.S. Forest Service.

No-Till Farmers’ Push for Healthy Soils Ignites a Movement in the Plains

Civil Eats

No-Till Farmers’ Push for Healthy Soils Ignites a Movement in the Plains

No-till farming started as a way to keep costs down for conventional farmers in danger of losing their land. Now it has become a subculture and a way of life for outsider farmers all over rural America. 

By Twilight Greenway                                                                                                 Farming, Rural Environment and Agriculture    Feb. 13, 2018

Editors’ Note: Today, we introduce our year-long reporting series on rural America, the Rural Environment and Agriculture Project (REAP).

Jimmy Emmons isn’t the kind of farmer you might expect to talk for over an hour about rebuilding an ecosystem. And yet, on a recent Wednesday in January, before a group of around 800 farmers, that’s exactly what he did.

After walking onstage at the Hyatt in Wichita, Kansas to upbeat country music and stage lights reminiscent of a Garth Brooks concert, Emmons declared himself a recovering tillage addict. Then he got down to business detailing the way he and his wife Ginger have re-built the soil on their 2,000-acre, third-generation Oklahoma farm.

A high point of the presentation came when the 50-something farmer—who now raises cattle and grows alfalfa, wheat, and canola along with myriad cover crops—described a deep trench he’d dug in one of his fields for the purposes of showing some out of town visitors a subterranean cross-section of his soil. After it rained, Emmons walked down into the trench with his camera phone, and traced the way water had infiltrated the soil. Along the way, the Emmons on stage and the Emmons behind the camera became a kind of chorus of enthusiasm, pointing out earthworm activity, a root that had grown over two-and-a-half feet down, and the layer of dark, carbon-rich soil.

“It was just amazing,” said Emmons in an energetic southern drawl. The water had seeped down over five feet. And the other farmers in the room—a collection of livestock, grain and legume producers mainly from Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, as well as several Canadian provinces who had gathered for the 22nd annual No-till on the Plains conference—nodded their heads in a collective amen.

Most had travelled for hours to hear Emmons and others like him share their soil secrets, their battle scars, and their reasons to hope. And they knew that getting rainwater to truly soak into farmland—instead of hitting dry, dead soil, soaking an inch or two down, and then running laterally off—is a lost art.

Jimmy Emmons on his farm in Leedey, Oklahoma. Courtesy of No-till in the Plains.

The previous morning, the controversial grazing guru Allan Savory had stood on the same stage before the enthusiastic crowd and described the enormous quantity of spent, lifeless soil that erodes into the ocean every year in terms of train cars. “A train load of soil 116 miles long leaves the country every day,” said Savory, quoting the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Or to put it another way, erosion accounts for the loss of around 1.7 billion tons of farmland around the world very year. As that soil escapes, so does an abundance of nitrogen and other nutrients that are slowly killing vast parts of our oceans and lakes. And as agricultural soil dies and disperses, it also releases greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide.

View image on Twitter

Robin Tait: The soil is the skin of the earth! How do you treat your ‘skin’?!#notill2018 #NuffieldAg #soilhealth #bieberfarms

As the world begins to zero in on the need to bring this soil back to life—as a solution to drought, nitrogen pollution, climate change, and more—farmers like Emmons and others practicing no-till in the middle of the country could play a key role. As they reshape their operations with a focus on things like earthworms and water filtration, and practice a suite of other approaches that fit loosely under the umbrella of “regenerative agriculture,” these farmers are stepping out of the ag mainstream. And while most no-till farmers see organic agriculture as inherently disruptive to the soil, they also have a great deal in common with many of the smaller-scale farmers that are popular with today’s coastal consumers.

These two groups of farmers don’t use the same language to describe what they’re doing (you’re unlikely to hear words like “sustainable” or “climate change” among the no-till set, for instance), but it’s clear that both groups are motivated by the opportunity to be responsible stewards of the land while exploring creative solutions to the status quo. And many no-till farmers are also just as skeptical as their organic counterparts are of the large seed and fertilizer companies they see as running their neighbors’ lives (and controlling their finances).

With Every End Comes a New Beginning

No-till farming has been around for more than half a century, ever since herbicides and precision planting tools allowed farmers to plant crops directly into the soil without disturbing it. But because tilling—or breaking up the soil—is primarily a means to control weeds, farmers who practice no-till have often relied heavily on herbicides to manage weeds instead. For this reason, it has traditionally found a home among conventional farmers looking for a way to improve yields or cut costs—although some no-tillers reject the term “conventional.”

But over the last decade or so, no-till has also become a kind of farming subculture—a world in and of itself. And, as the farmers who gathered in Wichita see it, putting an end to tilling the soil is often just the beginning of a whole range of practices that include growing cover crops, managed grazing, and diversification, i.e., literally increasing the number of cash crops in their rotations.

“No-till without cover crops and crop diversity is still an incomplete system,” Emmons told the crowd.

Together, however, these approaches have the ability to bring back living fungal ecosystems in the soil, retain water and organic matter, and sequester carbon. The farmers who practice them are also eligible for conservation funding from the USDA via the farm bill, and yet they are likely to see a reduction in the amount of available funds in this year’s smaller-than-average bill.

Many of these practices have also made modest gains in popularity recently. According to the USDA’s latest data, by 2010-11, no-till farming had grown to the point where roughly 40 percent of the corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton grown per year in the U.S. used either no-till or a half-step technique called strip-tilling. That works out to around 89 million acres per year. And while it’s unclear just how many of these farmers see no-till as a bridge to other practices—and therefore a way to cut down on the quantities of synthetic herbicides and fertilizers—it’s clear that the path forward is there for those who do.

Photo of dark, carbon-rich soil courtesy of North Central Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education.

“Those who are truly committed to regenerative ag are trying to use plants in place of [fertilizer and herbicides],” says Steve Swaffer, executive director of No–till on the Plains, the nonprofit that hosts the annual conference. “As your soils heal and go back to a more natural state,” he says, most successful farmers are able to “wean themselves off” chemicals. But he adds that most “haven’t eliminated [herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers] from their toolbox,” entirely even if they see them as last-resort options.

“You can’t quit [synthetic fertilizer and herbicides] cold-turkey,” said Adam Chappell, a fourth-generation farmer from Arkansas who practices no-till and plants cover crops on over 8,000 of the 9,000 acres he farms with his brother. Now that he’s several years into the practice, however, he said, “I don’t need seed treatments for my cotton anymore. I’ve taken the insecticide off my soybeans. I’m working toward getting rid of fungicide … I’m hoping that eventually my soil will be healthy enough that I can get rid of all of it all together.”

Nearly all the farmers who spoke at the conference had similar stories. And while many of the environmental benefits were left implied, the financial benefits were right up front. Emmons reported cutting fuel costs by two-thirds and fertilizer costs by half. Derek Axten, a grain and pulse farmer from southern Saskatchewan, described a major reduction in fungicide use for the high-value chickpeas he grows there. “I used one application while my neighbors used five,” he told the audience. “That works out to about $100 an acre.”

For today’s farmers, many of whom are squeezed financially at every turn, this ability to spend less on inputs is hugely compelling. “It’s not always how much money you make, it’s how much you keep,” Axton told the crowd.

Since this approach requires gradual, system-level changes, however, Emmons underscored, “the first year is going to be crappy. The cover crops aren’t going to work as well as you want and you’ll want to give up. But if you can make it three to four years, you’ll start seeing fungal dominance, more diversity of living organisms in the soil, and more biomass in the system.”

Photo courtesy of No-till on the Plains.

Tension with Organic

There was a resounding disdain at the conference for large organic operations, which many no-till farmers see as “ruining the soil” by tilling it.

Jonathan Lungren, an agroecologist and entomologist who left a job with the USDA in 2015 after filing a whistleblower suit alleging the agency had suppressed his research on bee health and pesticides to start a farm and nonprofit science lab for independent research in North Dakota, is an interesting example of this perspective.

After meeting no-till veteran and minor farm celebrity Gabe Brown and cover crop expert Gail Fuller, Lungren says he was convinced to try their approach. “Some farmers are way ahead of the science when it comes to this stuff,” he said. He contends that, “Insecticides are an addiction. The more you use, the more you need,” and advocated for “changing the whole system, rather than trying to make a broken system work.”

And yet, his disdain for certified organic farms was palpable. “I’ve been on organic farms in California and I wouldn’t eat that food,” he said. “The soil is dust!”

Of course, not all organic farms are the same and while most do practice tillage, they also build fertility slowly using compost, rather than synthetic fertilizer—a fact that some research says makes their practices inherently better for the soil than most conventional systems. And many organic producers also rely on cover crops, green manure, and crop diversity to retain carbon and organic matter in the soil. For instance, a 2017 study from Northwestern University found that soils from organic farms had 13 percent more soil organic matter (SOM) and 26 percent more potential for long-term carbon storage than soils from conventional farms

But Kristine Nichols, former chief scientist for the Rodale Institute—one of the only locations where researchers have long-running plots that combine no-till with organic practices—says that the gradual breakdown to fungal communities in the soil over time in many organic systems can be a serious problem.

“Tilling can start to erode the diversity of the fungi in the soil over time. So you’re going to start getting the loss of certain keystone organisms for providing amino acids and antioxidants that can be very important for human health,” said Nichols. While at Rodale, Nichols worked with researchers at Penn State University to look at an antioxidant and amino acid called ergothioneine, which is produced by soil fungi. They saw a very strong relationship between both the concentration and frequency of tillage and loss off ergothioneine.

As scientists begin to get a firmer grasp on the human microbiome and its relationship with microbial communities in the soil, Nichole believes, “it’s going to start putting more pressure on the organic community to reduce tillage.”

Nichols, who worked with no-till farmers in Nebraska for a decade before going to Rodale, says that while organic farmers tend to see any use of herbicides as “the ultimate evil,” the no-till set feel similarly about tillage. In the same way that no-till farmers are often told to use herbicides only when no other solution is available to them, Nichols likes to challenge organic farmers to see tillage as the choice of last resort.

Steve Swaffer also acknowledged that that sweeping generalization about soil health can be hard to make. “It’s all about management, right? And it’s a human being who makes the decisions about how a farm is managed,” he explained by phone after the event.

“I think that the organic producers have been bastardized somewhat because of the large production and people capitalizing on the premiums that are available,” he said. “I’ve been on these farms where it’s a monoculture of lettuce or spinach and it certainly meets the organic standard, but the dirt that’s being used as a growing medium has no life in it. And yet those people are able to capture those premiums.” Meanwhile, he added, many of the farmers he works with aren’t able to sell the food they grow outside the commodity market. “So I think there’s probably some resentment,” he said.

That feeling is compounded by the fact that many of the farmers who gathered in Wichita are often ostracized in their own communities for stepping outside the expected rules of conventional agriculture.

Soybeans coming up in a rye cover crop. Photo by Lander Legge for USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

Even Jimmy Emmons, who seems about as self-assured as a farmer can be, acknowledged that he doesn’t even go to his local coffee shop anymore. If he did, he’d hear disapproval from his fellow farmers for doing things like planting his wheat directly into a living stand of plant residue without tilling or grazing his animals on cover crops.

On one panel at the conference, for instance, Adam Chappell responded to a comment made about the science of monoculture by saying, “There is no scientific evidence of the benefit of monoculture, but there is plenty of propaganda. The salesmen tell me constantly that I’m stupid, or that I’ll go broke” because he’s using fewer inputs.

Tuning out those messages, he added, has become a lot easier thanks to the network of other no-till farmers he stays in touch with online—Twitter and YouTube are popular platforms for sharing photos, observations, and videos of one another’s farms—and at conferences like No-till in the Plains.

Reaching Consumers

In some ways, the fact that this approach to farming is based on profiting by cutting costs has liberated the “soil health movement” from the need to make a premium by differentiating in the marketplace. And yet several groups are currently working to do just that through potential certification schemes for regenerative agriculture, making a label likely in the near future.

And because consumers are more likely to spend with their health in mind than the health of the environment, the success of such a label may rely, at least in part, on proving what many no-till and regenerative farmers say they’ve seen anecdotally: that healthier soil leads to more nutrient-dense food. And several of the scientists present in Wichita, like Nichols and Jill Clapperton, farmer and founder of Rhizoterra, hope to help move that research forward.

View image on Twitter

Kris Nichols: Listening to Christine Jones @Notillorg. Have work to do.

At the conference, Australian soil ecologist Christine Jones pointed to research that looked at 27 kinds of vegetables and found that since 1940, the amount of copper present in the food had declined by 76 percent, while calcium had declined by 46 percent, iron by 27 percent, magnesium by 24 percent, and potassium by 16 percent. She and others believe that depleted soil is the culprit. But rather than being deficient in minerals, argued Jones, today’s soils are often deficient in the microbes necessary to help plants access those minerals.

Nichols points to ongoing research at The University of Massachusetts, Johns Hopkins, and the University of California at Davis aimed at determining the links between soil health and nutritive content in food. And she says some of the preliminary research she has seen suggests that improved soil health could point toward solutions to the obesity crisis as well.

The diluted nutrient content in our food, says Nichols, “basically drives our bodies to have to consume more. Our gut microbiome essentially signals to our brain that it’s starving, and says, ‘eat more food.’”

She hopes that the organic and no-till communities—which are both relatively small on their own—can work together to begin to find solutions. If that doesn’t work, she says, a broader goal of saving soil could inspire unity.

“Organic farmers, conventional farmers, no-till farmers—everyone is seeing soil leaving their farms,’ says Nichols. “Reducing the amount of tillage you’re doing is a very significant way to stop that from occurring.”

We could send almost 1 million students to 4-year public universities for the $1.7 trillion Trump just asked to be spent on the military.

MoveOn.org shared U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders‘s video.
February 13, 2018

We could send almost 1 million students to 4-year public universities for the $1.7 trillion Trump just asked to be spent on the military.

Outrageous Military Spending

This video is dedicated to the 13 million children who don't know where their next meal is coming from because our country values the Department of Defense budget over their wellbeing.

Posted by U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, February 6, 2018

 

This woman was physically dragged from the microphone trying to expose politicians payoff from oil corps.

DeSmogBlog shared NowThis‘s video.
February 13, 2018

This woman was physically dragged from the microphone after announcing how much money her state’s politicians get from oil corporations (via NowThis Politics)

Woman Physically Dragged from Microphone For Pointing Out How Much Money Her State's Politicians Get from Oil Corporations

This woman was physically dragged from the microphone after announcing how much money her state's politicians get from oil corporations (via NowThis Politics)

Posted by NowThis on Monday, February 12, 2018

This is the republican agenda and is counterproductive to our livelihoods and standard of living

This is the republican agenda and is counterproductive to our livelihoods and standard of living

Guy Speaks the TRUTH on how "Right to Work" Laws SCREW Workers

Mark Harrison of The Labor Network just released this incredible takedown of "Right to Work" laws. Definitely worth a watch in Trump's America – KNOW your RIGHTS!!Video by The Labor Network – check them out for more information on labor rights!Shared by Occupy Democrats

Posted by Occupy Democrats on Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Occupy Democrats

Mark Harrison of The Labor Network just released this incredible takedown of “Right to Work” laws. Definitely worth a watch in Trump’s America – KNOW your RIGHTS!!

Video by The Labor Network – check them out for more information on labor rights!
Shared by Occupy Democrats

Satellite observations show sea levels rising, and climate change is accelerating it

CNN

Satellite observations show sea levels rising, and climate change is accelerating it

By Brandon Miller, CNN Meteorologist    February 12, 2018

Story highlights

  • Global sea level is on the rise at an increasing rate, according to a new study
  • By the end of the century, it could rise another 2 feet

(CNN)Sea level rise is happening now, and the rate at which it is rising is increasing every year, according to a study released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers, led by University of Colorado-Boulder professor of aerospace engineering sciences Steve Nerem, used satellite data dating to 1993 to observe the levels of the world’s oceans.

Changes in sea level observed between 1992 and 2014. Orange/red colors represent higher sea levels, while blue colors show where sea levels are lower.

Using satellite data rather than tide-gauge data that is normally used to measure sea levels allows for more precise estimates of global sea level, since it provides measurements of the open ocean.

The team observed a total rise in the ocean of 7 centimeters (2.8 inches) in 25 years of data, which aligns with the generally accepted current rate of sea level rise of about 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year.

But that rate is not constant.

Continuous emissions of greenhouse gases are warming the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and melting its ice, causing the rate of sea level rise to increase.

“This acceleration, driven mainly by accelerated melting in Greenland and Antarctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise by 2100 as compared to projections that assume a constant rate, to more than 60 centimeters instead of about 30,” said Nerem, who is also a fellow with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science.

Greenland’s melting glaciers may someday flood your city

That projection agrees perfectly with climate models used in the latest International Panel on Climate Change report, which show sea level rise to be between 52 and 98 centimeters by 2100 for a “business as usual” scenario (in which greenhouse emissions continue without reduction).

Therefore, scientists now have observed evidence validating climate model projections, as well as providing policy-makers with a “data-driven assessment of sea level change that does not depend on the climate models,” Nerem said.

Sea level rise of 65 centimeters, or roughly 2 feet, would cause significant problems for coastal cities around the world. Extreme water levels, such as high tides and surges from strong storms, would be made exponentially worse.

Consider the record set in Boston Harbor during January’s “bomb cyclone” or the inundation regularly experienced in Miami during the King tides; these are occurring with sea levels that have risen about a foot in the past 100 years.

Nerem provided this chart showing sea level projections to 2100 using the newly calculated acceleration rate.

Now, researchers say we could add another 2 feet by the end of this century.

Nerem and his team took into account natural changes in sea level thanks to cycles such as El Niño/La Niña and even events such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, which altered sea levels worldwide for several years.

The result is a “climate-change-driven” acceleration: the amount the sea levels are rising because of the warming caused by manmade global warming.

The researchers used data from other scientific missions such as GRACE, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, to determine what was causing the rate to accelerate.

NASA’s GRACE mission used satellites to measure changes in ice mass. This image shows areas of Antarctica that gained or lost ice between 2002 and 2016.

Currently, over half of the observed rise is the result of “thermal expansion”: As ocean water warms, it expands, and sea levels rise. The rest of the rise is the result of melted ice in Greenland and Antarctica and mountain glaciers flowing into the oceans.

Theirs is a troubling finding when considering the recent rapid ice loss in the ice sheets.

“Sixty-five centimeters is probably on the low end for 2100,” Nerem said, “since it assumes the rate and acceleration we have seen over the last 25 years continues for the next 82 years.”

“We are already seeing signs of ice sheet instability in Greenland and Antarctica, so if they experience rapid changes, then we would likely see more than 65 centimeters of sea level rise by 2100.”

Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann, who was not involved with the study, said “it confirms what we have long feared: that the sooner-than-expected ice loss from the west Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets is leading to acceleration in sea level rise sooner than was projected.”

CNN’s Judson Jones contributed to this story.

Donald Trump pushes deep cut to Great Lakes funding — again

Detroit Free Press

Donald Trump pushes deep cut to Great Lakes funding — again

Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press     February 12, 2018

(Photo: Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for next year again calls for drastic cuts in Great Lakes restoration efforts, as well as for slashing rental aid that tens of thousands of Michiganders rely on and toughening work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving nutrition assistance.

It also calls for investing $1.5 billion in programs that support private and charter schools while cutting about $5 billion overall from the U.S. Department of Education.

Like the budget proposal made about this time last year, Trump is looking to nearly eliminate funding for a $300-million program that helps restore Great Lakes water quality by improving fish habitat, cleaning up polluted waterways and protecting wetlands. Trump’s earlier efforts to defund it have so far been rejected, as the program enjoys the support of Republicans as well as Democrats in the Upper Midwest.

Unlike last year, however, Trump’s White House did not make the proposed cut — from $300 million this year to $30 million in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 — clear in its budget message or its list of major reductions and reforms, burying it in a line in a 96-page budget explanation by the Environmental Protection Agency without explanation.

President Donald Trump looks on before signing a proclamation to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the White House on Jan. 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Olivier Douliery, Abaca Press, TNS)

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned, we can’t take it for granted that others understand how important our water is,” said U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “This is outrageous. People across Michigan spoke out and took action last year to stop these cuts and I know they’ll do so again.”

Added U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, “Cutting Great Lakes investments by 90% — essentially eliminating the program — threatens the health of our lakes and jeopardizes Michigan’s economy.”

Trump’s budget also again looks to slash other programs considered important to Detroit and other cities in Michigan, including the Community Development Block Grant fund. But it’s unlikely he will be able to push through such draconian reductions — especially given that he was unable to do so in his first year in office with members of his own Republican Party in control of both chambers of Congress..

More on this topic:

Trump plan slashes funding for Detroit, Great Lakes and much more

$300 million for Great Lakes protected in funding bill, thwarting Trump

Trump announced the $1.2-trillion budget for the next fiscal year as expected on Monday, including in it $23 billion for border security, $21 billion for infrastructure and $17 billion to fund efforts to fight the ongoing opioid epidemic, as well as substantially increasing military spending by $80 billion or 13%.

But with Congress having final say over appropriations for programs and agencies, the president’s budget proposal has in recent years become more of a political statement of his own than a plan likely to be embraced by either the House or Senate.

Congress has already rejected, for now at least, many of Trump’s last-year proposals such as the elimination of CDBG funds and the popular Great Lakes restoration efforts as it has cobbled together a series of resolutions to keep government funded from month-to-month in the current fiscal year.

Trump’s proposal on Monday even suggested spending about $57 billion less overall on nondefense programs even though Congress authorized that higher level in a bipartisan deal — one signed off on by Trump — just last week.

“The budget reflects our commitment to the safety, prosperity and security of the American people,” Trump said in his budget message to Congress. “The more room our economy has to grow, and the more American companies are freed from constricting
overregulation, the stronger and safer we become as a nation.”

As a policy document, however, the annual budget release still presumably indicates where the chief executive would cut or spend if he could, and he continues to have his sights set on cutting certain programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which helped feed 1.3 million people in Michigan as of December.

Trump proposed cutting back on a portion of the financial benefits received by families and sending them regular packages of milk, cereal, meat, canned fruit and other goods, saying it would save money, improve nutritional benefits and reduce fraud. His budget message also said his administration would move to expand “previous reforms aimed at strengthening the expectation for work” among SNAP recipients though details on how that would be accomplished weren’t provided.

Able-bodied receipients already have some work requirements in many cases. The Trump administration suggested more than $213 billion over a decade could be saved through the president’s proposed changes.

Trump’s budget also calls again for eliminating the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program — which helped more than 440,000 Michiganders pay home energy bills last year — and the Community Development Block Grant program, administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The program helps pay for home shelters, transportation services, housing rehabilitation and more. In 2017, Michigan communities received more than $111 million in CDBG funds, including $31 million for Detroit.

The budget also suggests reforms to some HUD rental assistance programs —including increasing tenants’ share of rent they must pay from 30% of their income to 35%, which could save the government about $4.3 billion. The Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated last year that about 145,000 low-income households in Michigan used federal rental assistance.

An addendum to the budget suggests adding about $2 billion from the recently agreed upon budget deal in Congress back into rental assistance to keep elderly and disabled renters from getting hit with higher rents.

Meanwhile, the proposal also argues for investing $1.5 billion in school choice programs under U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, with states applying for funding for scholarships that would allow students from low-income families to transfer to private schools and local school boards requesting funding to expand “open enrollment” systems. About $500 million or more would also go to start new charter schools.

Overall the Department of Education would be cut by $5 billion or so with several programs being eliminated, including $2 billion in a grant program to the states to help improve the quality and effectiveness of teachers, principals and other educators.

The grants, the White House said, “are poorly targeted and funds are spread too thinly to have a meaningful impact on student outcomes.”

“The president’s budget request expands education freedom for America’s families while protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students,” said DeVos, a former Michigan school choice advocate and state Republican Party chairwoman. “The budget also reflects our commitment to spending taxpayer dollars wisely and efficiently by consolidating and eliminating duplicative and ineffective federal programs.”

Trump on Monday clearly tried to steer interest toward an infrastructure proposal he argues could help attract about $1.5 trillion in new investments in roads, bridges and other projects by using $200 billion over 10 years to leverage state, local and private funding. What’s unclear, however, is whether Congress would be willing to put up such funding or whether states and local governments have the matching money needed to pay for the remainder of the program.

Gov. Rick Snyder’s office said he is “happy to see President Trump and his team discussing infrastructure across the board” and that he looks forward to “working with the Trump administration and serving as a role model for infrastructure development and solutions.”

But it wasn’t immediately clear what benefit the infrastructure proposal could mean to key Michigan projects, such as a sought-after navigation lock at Sault Ste. Marie. Shippers have been seeking a new super-size lock for decades to protect against any potential shutdown of the one aging lock there now that is large enough to handle the biggest ships carrying iron ore and other freight through the Great Lakes.

“It appears there is very little in the proposal that would benefit the Soo Lock project,” Glen Nekvasil, vice president of the Lake Carriers’ Association, which represents shippers on the Great Lakes, said after reviewing the White House’s infrastructure plan. “Nor does it seem to provide any additional funding for authorized projects such as the second (large) lock.”

Contact Todd Spangler: 703-854-8947 or tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter at @tsspangler. USA TODAY contributed to this report.

Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan is a fraud

ThinkProgress

Trump’s long-awaited infrastructure plan is a fraud

This is the way Infrastructure Week begins, not with a bang but a whimper.

Elham Khatami, Adam Peck       February 12, 2018

Credit: Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images

President Donald Trump unveiled his long-awaited infrastructure plan on Monday, touting the proposal as a $1.5 trillion investment in the nation’s highways, bridges, waterways, and other infrastructure projects. The plan’s topline number sounds great on the surface, but it wildly misconstrues the actual investment being proposed by the federal government — and Trump knows it.

The proposal aims to turn $200 billion in federal funds into a $1.5 trillion investment over the next ten years by placing most of the financial burden on states and cities, which will have to cover at least 80 percent of the cost of any infrastructure project in order to qualify for federal grants, likely through higher taxes, tolls, and other user fees. The $200 billion number is a dramatic reduction in federal cost-sharing from years past.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in January, Trump conceded that the $200 billion in federal funds is “not a large amount,” going on to criticize the amount of money the United States has spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In a tweet Monday morning, Trump reiterated his criticism:

Donald Trump: This will be a big week for Infrastructure. After so stupidly spending $7 trillion in the Middle East, it is now time to start investing in OUR Country!

But Trump’s plan barely makes a dent in what’s needed to fix the country’s ailing infrastructure. Instead, it places the onus on cash-strapped states and municipalities to come up with the revenue to improve their own infrastructure. As CityLab reported last year, this will be especially difficult for “cities that never financially recovered from the recession, like Detroit, Cleveland, Stockton, and Memphis,” which are limited in their spending ability and yet need infrastructure investments the most.

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) annual Infrastructure Report Card, the United States needs to invest $4.59 trillion by 2025 in order to improve the country’s infrastructure — a figure three times larger than even the rosiest estimate in Trump’s proposal and more than 20 times larger than the $200 billion actually allocated.

“If the United States continues on this trajectory and fails to invest, the nation will face serious economic consequences, including $3.9 trillion in losses to U.S. GDP and more than 2.5 million American jobs lost in 2025,” the ASCE report said.

The $200 billion in federal spending includes $100 billion in incentive grants, aimed at encouraging increased state, local, and private infrastructure investment; $50 billion in rural formula funds, which seeks to promote investment in rural infrastructure needs; and $20 billion in so-called transformative projects, described as projects “that can significantly improve existing infrastructure conditions and services” but are considered too risky to attract private or local investments.

Even calling it a $200 billion investment by the federal government is a misnomer. Instead of finding new sources of revenue, the funds will be entirely offset by cuts to other existing infrastructure programs, including a 19 percent decrease in funding for the Department of Transportation and a 3 percent decrease for the Department of Energy, as highlighted in Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget, which was also released today.

Pointing out the glaring lack of new sources of funding in the infrastructure proposal, Michael Linden, fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, said on Twitter, “All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan.”

Michael Linden: No. No. No. This headline is budget-illiterate. Trump’s budget will include $200 billion in infrastructure spending, offset by 20% reductions in base funding for Depts. of Transportation and Energy. All told, he’s basically proposing a $0 infrastructure plan. https://twitter.com/TIME/status/962904104648499200 …

It is unlikely that most lawmakers on either side of the aisle will support Trump’s proposal — with Democrats, and some Republicans, criticizing the plan’s lack of new revenue sources.

But even if the proposal made its way through Congress and money began flowing to projects around the country, it’s unlikely the spending would have any meaningful impact on the worsening condition of the most vital infrastructure programs.

By leaving local governments on the hook for 80 percent of the cost of a project, the Trump administration is encouraging investments in public-private partnerships. A city will partner with a private developer, for instance, to construct a new building as part of neighborhood revitalization. But spending is most needed where public-private partnerships are hard to come by. Private financiers seek to tap into sustainable revenue streams when deciding what projects to invest in, and there are few revenue streams to be had for street repairs or water pipe maintenance. In states that have ceded some authority to private companies for the management and maintenance of highways, regressive tolls have hit the poorest workers the hardest.

The Next Recession Is Really Gonna Suck

HuffPost – Politics

The Next Recession Is Really Gonna Suck

The extra help unemployed people got during the Great Recession has emboldened states to mistreat them.

By Arthur Delaney      February 10, 2018

JI SUB JEONG / HUFFPOST

WASHINGTON ― When the next recession comes, many people who lose their jobs will have a harder time getting unemployment insurance, an important lifeline for most Americans. In several states, these people could have to pee in cups just to qualify.

Those who don’t get benefits will have to settle for the sort of fake jobs our economy produces in abundance — a contract job in an Amazon fulfillment center, say, or a gig delivering groceries to people who still have careers.

Talk of a recession is in the air again after the recent wobble in the stock market. It’s highly likely the next recession will occur in the coming three years, while President Donald Trump is still in office. Maybe it’ll happen as a result of his inflation-baiting tax bill. Maybe it’ll have something to do with excessive consumer debt. We don’t know what the cause will be, but we do have some idea of how Americans will experience the next sustained economic slump. Since the Great Recession, during which the GOP repeatedly if grudgingly went along with former President Barack Obama to extend unemployment insurance, Republicans on both the state and federal level have pushed to make benefits less generous and harder to get.

Meanwhile, the holes they’ve created in the safety net will be filled by so-called “alternative work arrangements” — gigs — which offer fewer protections for workers than full-time jobs.

By design, America is ill-prepared for its next recession, and it’s going to suck.

YURI GRIPAS / REUTERS

The president of the United States will deny that the bad jobs numbers are real.

It’s the U.S. government that measures economic growth and the unemployment rate, but it’s actually up to a private nonprofit organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research to tell us when a recession has begun. Since the 1920s, this organization has had a committee of eggheads looking at a variety of indicators, especially personal income levels, unemployment rates and the gross domestic product, to determine when a recession has started.

A recession starts after economic activity has reached its peak. Right when things are better than ever is when they’re about to get worse. The decline in business conditions has to affect the whole economy; it can’t just be a single-sector slump, like the one Amazon has wrought among retailers. But you won’t know the recession has started until later, because the NBER waits until the government has finished its data revisions, which happens over a period of months. It wasn’t until 2008 that the organization announced that the last recession had begun in 2007.

There have been 11 recessions since World War II. The current economic expansion began in mid-2009, making it the third longest in history, and it can’t last forever.

Expansions don’t just die of old age. One thing that can trigger recessions is the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates to quell inflation. The Federal Reserve is currently in the process of raising rates, but inflation is still low and most economists see no cause for concern in the immediate future ― though economists are not exactly great at predicting what will happen.

“When wage and price pressures develop, that’s when the clock starts to tick,” said Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s Analytics, a financial analysis provider.

Upward pressure on wages has begun to develop. The official unemployment rate is still falling, and it has been at or below 5 percent for about two years ― a level that has traditionally triggered inflation fears. But economists can point to a range of other measures, such as reduced labor force participation, that suggests the labor market is still out of whack.With interest rates already very low, the Fed has wanted to bring them up partly to ward off phantom inflation and partly just so it can lower them again when the next recession comes around. Because it will.

One possible table-setter for a recession, Zandi said, is a huge tax cut that increases the size of the federal budget deficit — something very much like the contents of the Republican tax bill that Trump signed in December. In such a scenario all the extra money in taxpayer’s hands could cause the economy to overheat, leading the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates faster in an effort to stave off inflation.

“If the tax cuts are deficit financed, that is going to juice the economy and it will overheat, significantly raising the odds of a recession early in the next decade,” Zandi said.

Most economists are less confident the tax cuts will juice the economy quite so much, but they generally do anticipate an aggressive Fed response. “Interest rates are projected to rise in the short term because the legislation would boost aggregate demand and output, leading the Federal Reserve to increase interest rates to avoid a surge in inflation,” the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said in its December 2017 analysis of the economic effects of the new law.

Outgoing Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, for her part, kept the Fed’s plans cryptic in the wake of the tax bill. “I think my colleagues and I are in line with the general expectation among most economists that the type of tax changes that are likely to be enacted would tend to provide some modest lift to GDP growth in the coming years,” she said.

AARON BERNSTEIN / REUTERS

Republicans on both the state and federal level have pushed to make benefits less generous and harder to get.

While federal and state governments run an array of programs that respond to economic need, nothing is more important when mass layoffs roll around than unemployment insurance, which is not handed out to just anyone. Only people who are laid off through no fault of their own, and who have well-established work histories over the previous year, are eligible. Benefits are designed to replace about 46 percent of the person’s lost wages.

The average unemployment benefit ranged from $330 to $350 per week since 2016, according to The Department of Labor, making it more valuable than other programs responding to economic need. Food stamps, for instance, might provide that much money over the course of a month. The generosity of the benefit serves two purposes: one is to protect layoff victims themselves, and the other is to prevent a broader deflationary spiral caused by desperate people accepting terrible wages at jobs for which they’re not really suited.

After the Great Recession got underway, while hundreds of thousands of people were losing their jobs each month, Congress started increasing the duration of unemployment insurance for people who’d used up the standard 26 weeks of benefits that states provide. Republican foot-dragging over the cost of the benefits led to a huge fight in 2010, with former Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) infamously responding to Democratic pleas by saying “tough shit” on the Senate floor.

Since then, Congress has quietly allowed those benefits to expire while statehouse Republicans ― aghast that Barack Obama gave their constituents up to 99 weeks of combined state and federal unemployment insurance ― have hacked away at their own unemployment programs. Nine states reduced benefit duration from the usual 26 weeks, and many others have apparently gotten more aggressive in checking up on claimants to make sure they’re continuing to look for work, which has always been an eligibility requirement.

As a result, the rate at which unemployed Americans receive layoff compensation overall has fallen from about 36 percent in 2007 to about 28 percent in 2017, according to data from The Department of Labor. Wayne Vroman, an associate with the Urban Institute, said a big reason for the decline is that states are finding ways to kick unemployed people off benefits after they’ve already been deemed eligible. His research shows a big increase in “nonseparation determinations.” These are instances of states investigating whether someone is continuing to meet eligibility requirements by doing things like writing down the names and addresses of businesses where they’ve applied for work on forms to state work agencies.

“When agencies have undertaken nonseparation determinations in recent years, the outcome has become much more likely to be a denial than in 1989 or 1999,” Vroman wrote in a paper that will be published this year. For instance, denial rates for determinations examining a person’s availability for work ― their willingness to take a job ― which is a requirement of benefit receipt, were 64 percent in 1989 and 83 percent in 2016.

Unemployment compensation is a state-federal program financed by payroll taxes on employers. When a lot of people lose their jobs and state unemployment trust funds run dry, states have to borrow money and sometimes increase payroll taxes ― something that makes Republican lawmakers enthusiastic about trimming benefits. (Most extra weeks of federal benefits are fully funded by the federal government and created by Congress on an ad-hoc basis.)

States are still smarting from the Great Recession. At the beginning of last year, only 21 state trust funds had achieved what the Labor Department considers a minimum level of solvency. If they can’t catch up before layoffs hit, there will be political pressure to follow the new path that other states have taken to reduce benefits. Lawmakers in Kentucky, which has a poor solvency rating, are currently considering proposals to make the state’s unemployment system more like Florida’s, currently one of the worst.

It’s an old pattern. After the recession of the early 1980s, changes in state benefits helped reduce the proportion of unemployed workers receiving compensation from 50 percent in 1980 to 37 percent in 1990, according to political scientist Paul Pierson’s 1994 book Dismantling the Welfare State?

Josh Bivens, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank, said the country isn’t well prepared for the next recession.

“We have managed to make UI incredibly non-protective,” Bivens said. “If we want the UI system to not be a complete joke in the next recession, it’s going to depend on Congress and the president.”

But Congress and the president might be more interested in urine tests than UI. Since about 2011, Republicans at the state and federal level have been trying to make drug tests a requirement for welfare, food stamps and unemployment insurance. In 2012, Congress passed a law giving states the right to drug test some unemployment claimants, but the measure let the Obama Labor Department decide who would be subjected to the test, resulting in a narrowly written regulation that Republicans said wouldn’t catch anybody.

Republicans scrapped the regulation last year, and the Trump administration has said it will release a new one sometime soon. Wisconsin, Texas and Mississippi have already passed drug test laws and are just waiting for a green light from the Labor Department.

TERO VESALAINEN VIA GETTY IMAGES

Republicans at the state and federal level have been trying to make drug tests a requirement for welfare, food stamps and unemployment insurance.

How will a new recession play out under this new unemployment benefits regime? The recent hurricanes offer a preview. Storms that battered Texas and Florida threw tens of thousands of people out of work. Storm victims are supposed to be eligible for unemployment benefits and can file through the regular process.

In Florida, it’s not an easy process. The state overhauled its unemployment system in 2011, requiring layoff victims to file claims online and even (for a time) take a math and reading test. Since 2007, before the last recession started, the percentage of unemployed Floridians who receive compensation plunged from 32 percent to 9 percent, almost the lowest rate of coverage in the nation.

Anthony Di Biagio is the co-owner of a residential and commercial cleaning service in Cape Coral, Florida. In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma he was unable to work because some of his clients’ homes and businesses were inaccessible. As a business owner, Di Biagio was ineligible for regular unemployment compensation, but perfectly eligible for the special disaster assistance provided through the state unemployment system.

After spending 40 minutes initiating his application online, Di Biagio learned it would take some real vigilance to actually receive the benefits. He’d have to request payments every two weeks and register with an online service called “Employ Florida Marketplace” as though he were looking for a job ― which, as a business owner, he was not.

“Unfortunately, this is counterproductive for me because I know that my unemployment is temporary and I’ll most likely only need benefits for 1-2 months,” he said in a Facebook message. “Even if I found a job with EFM, I couldn’t commit to it because I already own a company which plans to be fully operational as soon as possible.”

The problems stem partly from the state’s apparent desire to discourage people from obtaining benefits and partly from plain old private sector incompetence. Florida hired Deloitte Consulting to overhaul the website and complained loudly about the contractor’s work, which in 2013 and 2014 the state blamed for claimants being unable to receive benefits in timely fashion. Handling claims through an automated system is supposed to save money on staff, but two other states that hired the firm to overhaul electronic benefits delivery have also encountered massive benefits delays and other problems.

(A Deloitte Consulting spokesman said unemployment system in all three states have been fully functional since 2014. “Unemployed workers in all of the states in which we have worked are receiving the unemployment benefits for which they’re eligible, in a timely fashion and in accordance with state and federal laws,” he said.)

“The states that run these really threadbare programs, it’s not the economic stabilizer you would want for a family facing job loss for their main wage earner,” George Wentworth, a senior staff attorney with the National Employment Law Project, said in an interview. “It’s the most important program for the average American who loses their job. That’s why there are standards [in federal law] saying as soon as you’re eligible you should be getting payment within three weeks of filing that claim.”

The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity declined to comment.

One thing that could actually make the next recession less miserable than its predecessor is “work sharing.” Thirty states currently offer work-sharing or “short-time compensation” programs that allow companies to reduce a group of employees’ hours instead of doing layoffs. The state then uses its unemployment insurance trust fund to compensate the workers for the missing hours.

Congress doled out $100 million for states to set up work-sharing programs in 2012, and several states designed new programs as a result. A Labor Department-commissioned study released in 2016 found that of the more than 2,000 businesses that enrolled in a state work-sharing program from 2008 through 2013, most had a favorable experience and more than 80 percent said they would sign up again.

It’s such a good idea that of course nobody has heard of it.

Economists who are familiar with work sharing say it’s ridiculous how unfamiliar the concept is to most people considering its bipartisan backing. One flaw of the policy is that it’s entirely up to employers to sign up for the state-sponsored programs, even though its workers whose livelihoods are at stake.

“It would be neat if employees could initiate this as well,” economist Lonnie Golden of Penn State Abington said. “The information is just not out there.”

CHARLES PLATIAU / REUTERS

Alternative work arrangements are more commonly along the lines of those Amazon warehouse jobs than they are for online platforms.

Another distinguishing feature of the next recession will be the prevalence of fake jobs with no benefits. Since 2005, the percentage of the workforce toiling in “alternative work arrangements,” such as freelance or subcontractor gigs, has risen from 10 to almost 16 percent, according to 2016 research by Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger, economists at Harvard and Princeton, respectively. Less than 1 percent of jobs are for online platforms like Uber or TaskRabbit; alternative work arrangements are more commonly along the lines of those Amazon warehouse jobs where you don’t actually work for Amazon.

This kind of work accounted for all of the net employment growth from 2010 to 2015 and has spread throughout occupations. The advantage is that these jobs are easier to get. The disadvantages are that they’re less likely to come with benefits; they’re less secure; and the schedules are more erratic.

And people working in such jobs may be ineligible for unemployment, since if they’re not actual employees of the firm they work for their state won’t have W2 forms on file reflecting their earnings. For people who don’t have benefits, the “flexibility” of contract work may be their only lifeline.

Katz and Krueger found in a follow-up paper that people who’d suffered unemployment were significantly more likely to find themselves in an alternative work arrangement after the Great Recession ― something that will happen even more next time the economy tanks.

“We would certainly expect a jump in people, as they lose out on possibilities of more traditional jobs, moving into alternative work,” Katz said.

Then there’s the Trump factor. When the mass layoffs return and the unemployment rate rises the newly jobless will discover that not only have they lost their livelihoods, but they have also become fake news.

The president of the United States will deny that the bad jobs numbers are real. Just as candidate Trump insisted the official unemployment rate was 10 times higher than the Obama administration said, President Trump won’t hesitate to cast doubt on his own government’s rate when it starts rising.

Who cares? Well, the tens of millions of Americans who will churn through the unemployment system are going to care. One of the worst things about being unemployed, aside from the fact that you have no money, is that you lose a routine that essentially connects you to society through daily interactions with other people. And since American culture closely links your value as a human to your career, it can be difficult to maintain self respect ― which helps explain the link between joblessness and suicide. Massive numbers of alienated and vulnerable people already living a surreal existence will be explicitly told they’re not even real.

Ask anyone who suffered more than a brief spell of joblessness in the wake of the Great Recession, which officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, how it felt to keep hearing that the economy was improving. Ask Donald Witkowski.

“I haven’t believed a word they told me in years,” Witkowski told HuffPost. And that’s how he felt even though the president at the time took pains to say that, despite economic progress, many people had been left behind ― a kind of nuance Trump doesn’t do.

Witkowski, 59, lost his job in 2011 when the paper mill in Whiting, Wisconsin, closed down. He’d worked there for decades. Now, still unemployed and receiving disability benefits, he’s alienated from his government even after having gotten nearly a year of unemployment insurance thanks to a series of federal extensions. Whatever goes wrong with the next recession, he said, will be worse than whatever the statistics say. He has a prediction for the next downturn, and it’s based less on economics than on his experience of the last one.

“It won’t be a recession,” he said. “I think it will be a total collapse.”

Correction: This article initially stated the Great Recession lasted from December 2007 to January 2009. It lasted from December 2007 to June 2009.

Do you have information you want to share with HuffPost? Here’s how. Arthur Delaney, Senior Reporter, HuffPost

First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure as administrator

Chicago Tribune

First-class travel distinguishes Scott Pruitt’s EPA tenure as administrator

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt at the Vatican in June. Pruitt’s tenure has been marked by first-class travel. (Courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency)

Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post     February 11, 2018

Just days after helping orchestrate the United States’ exit from a global climate accord last June, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt embarked on a whirlwind tour aimed at championing President Donald Trump‘s agenda at home and abroad.

On Monday, June 5, accompanied by his personal security detail, Pruitt settled into his $1,641.43 first-class seat for a short flight from the District to New York City. His ticket cost more than six times that of the two media aides who came along and sat in coach, according to agency travel vouchers; the records do not show whether his security detail accompanied him at the front of the plane.

In Manhattan, Pruitt made two brief television appearances praising the White House‘s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, stayed with staff at an upscale hotel near Times Square and returned to Washington the next day.

That Wednesday, after traveling with Trump on Air Force One for an infrastructure event in Cincinnati, Pruitt and several staffers raced to New York on a military jet, at a cost of $36,068.50, to catch a plane to Rome.

The transatlantic flight was part of a round-trip ticket for the administrator that cost $7,003.52, according to EPA records -several times what was paid for other officials who went. The documents do not explain the discrepancy. In Rome, Pruitt and a coterie of aides and security personnel got private tours of the Vatican and met with papal officials, business executives and legal experts before heading briefly to a meeting of environmental ministers in Bologna. Pruitt departed the Group of Seven summit a day early, before negotiations had concluded, to attend a Cabinet meeting at which Trump’s deputies lauded the president’s job performance.

In total, the taxpayer-funded travel for Pruitt and his top aides during that stretch in early June cost at least $90,000, according to months ofreceipts obtained by the Environmental Integrity Project under the Freedom of Information Act. That figure does not account for the costs of Pruitt’s round-the-clock security detail, which have not been disclosed.

In an interview Sunday, EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said all of Pruitt’s travel expenses have been approved by federal ethics officials.

“He’s trying to further positive environmental outcomes and achieve tangible environmental results” through his travel, she said, adding that in the case of the New York trip, “He’s communicating the message about his agenda and the president’s agenda.”

On other domestic trips, Bowman added: “He’s hearing directly from people affected by EPA’s regulatory overreach.”

As he enters his second year in charge of the EPA, Pruitt is distinguishing himself from his predecessors in ways that go beyond policy differences. His travel practices — which tend to be secretive, costly and frequent — are integral to how he approaches his role.

Pruitt tends to bring a larger entourage of political advisers on his trips than past administrators. But while the aides usually fly coach, according to travel vouchers through August obtained by The Washington Post separately from the Environmental Integrity Project, he often sits in first or business class, which previous administrators typically eschewed.

Last year, Pruitt promoted U.S. natural-gas exports in Morocco, sat on a panel about the rule of law in Rome and met with his counterparts from major industrialized countries. This year, he plans to travel to Israel, Australia, Japan, Mexico and possibly Canada, according to officials familiar with his schedule. None of those visits have been officially announced.

Pruitt plans to meet with his foreign counterparts and U.S. and foreign business officials abroad, as well as tour energy facilities.

These overseas trips are largely un-tethered to the kind of multilateral environmental summits that dominated his predecessors’ schedules, and Pruitt rarely discloses where he plans to be.

In an interview Friday, Bowman said the agency doesn’t release Pruitt’s schedule in advance “due to security concerns” and because it could be a “distraction” from the trips. But she added that he has received government invitations for all his foreign trips.

“There’s just a lot of international cooperation that the head of any Cabinet-level agency wants to establish with his or her counterparts,” she said.

The agency records show that wherever Pruitt’s schedule takes him, he often flies first or business class, citing unspecified security concerns. EPA’s assistant inspector general for investigations told The Post in September that Pruitt has gotten a higher number of threats than his recent predecessors.

Federal regulations state that government travelers are required to “exercise the same care in incurring expenses that a prudent person would exercise if traveling on personal business … and therefore, should consider the least expensive class of travel that meets their needs.” Agencies are allowed to authorize first-class travel in rare instances, such as a flight of 14 hours or more, a medical disability or when “exceptional security circumstances” mean “use of coach class accommodations would endanger your life or government property.”

Pruitt has used the security exception often during the past year.

In a two-day period last July, he spent $4,443 for separate round-trips to Birmingham and Atlanta for visits that included a power plant and farm tour. On at least four occasions, he has spent between $2,000 and $2,600 on first-class airfare to official meetings or tours near Tulsa, where he lives. Frequently, he stayed in Tulsa for the weekend, records show, before returning to Washington.

Pruitt’s other first-class trips include a $4,627 itinerary to Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Little Rock to promote the unraveling of a controversial Obama administration water regulation. Another multi-city ticket, which included stops in Colorado, Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, cost $10,830, according to the vouchers, not including lodging and incidentals.

A separate batch of travel vouchers obtained by the Environmental Working Group shows that Pruitt flew coach multiple times from March to May 2017, but he also logged several more expensive trips during that period. On May 11, the administrator delivered the keynote address to the Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank Meeting in Colorado Springs; the conservative group covered his lodging, but the ticket cost $2,903.56. A week later, he flew to Tulsa to tour the Brainerd Chemical Co. and stayed the weekend, for a flight cost of $1,980.34.

While on the road, Pruitt often stays at high-end hotels, according to travel records: the Kimpton in Salt Lake City, Le Meridien in Minneapolis, the Capital in Little Rock and the Michelangelo in New York.

In addition, he frequently opts to fly Delta Airlines, even though the government has contracts with specific airlines on certain routes. Asked whether there is an additional expense associated with flying Delta when there is a comparable government contract flight, Bowman said, “EPA staff seek cost-efficient travel options at all times.”

Such travel decisions, coupled with a tendency to not publicize out-of-town trips, have prompted criticism from Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups, who have questioned how much some of Pruitt’s trips have to do with the EPA’s mission.

“What did American taxpayers get for Pruitt visiting the Vatican and getting photographed with European agency heads?” said Eric Schaeffer, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project, of last year’s Italy trip. “This was all for show.”

The group obtained Pruitt’s travel vouchers through litigation and is suing for other travel-related documents, including speeches he has made in closed-door meetings with industry officials.

“It is acutely paranoid,” Schaeffer said of the EPA’s refusal to disclose Pruitt’s whereabouts on any given day. “He’s a public official. His schedule should be publicly known.”

At the request of congressional Democrats, EPA’s Office of Inspector General is conducting probes of Pruitt’s travel last year and the expansion of his security detail.

The decision to bring seven political aides and his security detail to Rome for two days before the G7 summit significantly increased the cost of the Italy trip, which included just two career EPA officials. The Rome stop included a routine U.S. embassy briefing, a meet-and-greet with business executives and a roundtable on the judiciary. But much of the two-day stop was devoted to papal visits, including a meeting with Archbishop Paul Gallagher and private tours of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica.

Bowman declined to comment specifically on the topics discussed at the Vatican, but said in an email, “While in Italy, Administrator Pruitt discussed how the U.S. is leading the world in environmental achievements to remediate toxic land, reduce air pollution, improve water infrastructure, and ensure access to clean drinking water.”

She added: “These discussions were broad, and very well-received.”

In December, Pruitt journeyed to Morocco, where he touted America’s natural-gas exports and discussed a series of policy collaborations between the two countries.

Pruitt’s two immediate predecessors, Lisa Jackson and Gina McCarthy, also traveled repeatedly to foreign summits and other events. Jackson traveled abroad four times a year while on the job, including to the G8 Environment Ministers meeting in Siracusa, Italy; the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen; the inauguration of Indonesia’s president; and the Netherlands as part of a trip focused on sea-level rise. The entire delegation flew coach to the Netherlands, and invited the media to come along.

McCarthy traveled overseas between four and seven times a year, including to multilateral meetings; a G.E. oil and gas conference in Florence, Italy; the Costa Rican president’s inauguration; and to the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics.

Unlike with Pruitt, the EPA typically announced McCarthy’s general itinerary and the purpose of her trips in advance.

“McCarthy will arrive in China beginning on Monday, December 9, to discuss US-China cooperation on air quality, climate pollution and environmental issues. She will travel to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong during her four-day visit,” read a 2013 agency news release posted days before her visit.

By contrast, Pruitt’s EPA routinely gives the public no such notice, either domestically or internationally.

Last week, for instance, Pruitt surfaced in Florida, to the surprise of reporters who cover the EPA and even media outlets in the state. An official said the agency notified some local and national outlets.

The EPA has also declined at times to confirm in advance Pruitt’s speaking engagements to various industry and political groups.

Several foreign officials, when contacted by The Post, deferred questions about Pruitt’s upcoming visits either to the U.S. embassy or EPA.

In the coming weeks, Pruitt will embark on a series of trips, some of which had been postponed due to external circumstances. A brief government shutdown in January forced the administrator to cancel a trip to Japan and Israel, for example, and he will travel this month instead.

Japanese embassy spokeswoman Rieko Suzuki said in an email that Pruitt had raised the idea of visiting with Japanese Environment Minister Masaharu Nakagawa, and her country was working on finalizing the details. “Since EPA Administrator Pruitt expressed his intention of visiting Japan and meeting Minister Nakagawa,” she wrote, “the Ministry of Environment of Japan has been trying to arrange a bilateral meeting.”

A spokesman for a low-emissions coal thermal plant located in the suburbs of Tokyo, run by the electric utility firm J-Power, confirmed Pruitt was scheduled to visit the facility. J Power spokesman Shingen Tsuneoka said that the plant emits “almost no” nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, two major air pollutants released by burning coal.

Bowman said Pruitt is headed to Japan “to strengthen existing areas of environmental cooperation, learn how Japan is responding to emerging energy challenges, and share successful approaches to innovative environmental technologies.” The administrator also will participate in a business roundtable with the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and visit the Yokohama Hydrogen Supply Chain Demonstration, she added.

In Israel, Bowman said, Pruitt will “visit a water recycling plant, hear from Israeli water technology companies about their successes in wastewater recycling for irrigation, visit a waste processing facility, tour a toxic land remediation site” and take part in a clean energy roundtable.

Next month, Pruitt is tentatively planning a one-day trip to Mexico to meet with Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Rafael Pacchiano Alamán, she said. That trip also had been postponed, according to travel vouchers.

Pruitt had intended to journey to Australia last year, according to EPA officials, where he was set to meet with officials from Peabody, the world’s largest private-sector coal company, as well as Melbourne-based energy giant BHP. The visit was to include a boat trip, according to an official, but was canceled because Pruitt had to work on the federal response to Hurricane Harvey.

This week, Pruitt is expected to travel to New Hampshire on a trip that will include a meeting with the governor, a visit to a local paper company and a tour of a Superfund site. The EPA has not publicized the trip.