Ukraine defense minister thanks UK for sending ‘fantastic’ tanks
March 28, 2023
Ukraine’s Defence Minister Reznikov poses for a picture in front of a British Challenged 2 tank in an unknown location in Ukraine
KYIV (Reuters) – Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov gave Britain the thumbs up as he took a ride in what he said was the first British Challenger 2 main battle tank to arrive in Ukraine.
Britain said in January it would send 14 of the tanks to Ukraine, which is preparing for a possible counter-offensive against Russian forces that invaded 13 months ago.
Reznikov wrote on Twitter that the tanks had “recently arrived in our country” and posted a video that showed him sitting in one of a long line of tanks in an open field, all of them flying Ukraine’s yellow and blue flag.
“It was a pleasure to take the first Ukrainian Challenger 2 MBT (main battle tank) for a spin,” Reznikov wrote. “These fantastic machines will soon begin their combat missions.”
In the video, he gave the thumbs up sign and thanked British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace for the tanks.
“Marvellous, Ben,” he said in English. “It’s…very good stuff. Thank you very much from Ukraine to the United Kingdom.”
Germany’s defence ministry said on Monday that 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks and 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles had also arrived in Ukraine.
(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
The Ultra-Processed Canned Foods No One Over 40 Should Be Eating Anymore
Georgia Dodd – March 28, 2023
Canned food is convenient, budget-friendly, and shelf-stable. It’s a way of processing food to extend its shelf life. The canning process is usually done within hours after picking. Some examples of canned foods include canned peaches, pears, corn, beans, noodle soup, evaporated milk, tuna, and so much more. But not everyone loves canned food. It has a reputation for being over-processed and less flavourful than its fresh and frozen counterparts. Some canned foods contain harmful chemicals that can have a detrimental effect on gut health, increase blood pressure, and the high sodium content may also lead to water retention that can cause weight gain.
To learn more about the worst kinds of canned food for women over 40, we spoke with Michelle Saari, registered dietitian and founder of The Dietitian Prescription. She said that the most ultra-processed canned foods no one should be eating anymore are canned fruit in syrup and canned meats that’ve been cured (like pork, beef, and fish). This is because they have an incredibly high sugar and sodium content which can lead to health problems like weight gain, diabetes, increased blood pressure, and more. Read on to learn more!
Canned fruit like peaches, pears, and pineapple can be a convenient alternative to fresh fruit. But, not all canned fruit are created equally. Fruits that are canned in syrups can be especially unhealthy because of their incredibly high sugar content. Saari says, “While fruit does have natural sugars called Fructose when the fruit is canned in syrup it’s just added sugar. The added sugar is typically corn syrup, which if the body doesn’t use it just turns to fat. It doesn’t provide any added nutrients, it’s simply there to sweeten up the fruit, which by nature is already sweet.” Adding excessive sugar to your diet provides barely any nutritional value.
Saari says that it’s ok to have canned fruit every once in a while. “It’s fine to have a sweet treat every so often, but if we’re looking at eating for long-term health, we should limit it. Instead of reaching for canned fruit, reach for either fresh or frozen. Frozen fruit can provide the same nutritional value as fresh, but will save you some money!” she explains. Check out the best types of fruit to eat for a healthier body over 40.
Canned Meat
Another canned food that Saari recommends women over 40 avoid is canned meat. Canned meats, she says, can have an incredibly high amount of sodium. “If you choose a canned meat like pork, for example, you may be getting half of your daily recommended amount of salt in one serving,” she notes. “A recommended daily salt amount would be 2,300 milligrams, for someone with heart disease this number will be even lower. Canned meat can have as high as 1,400 milligrams of sodium.” Yikes! And, experts point out that canned tuna is usually packed with oil that is high in saturated fat and alarmingly high mercury content which can lead to neurological side effects.
When it comes to long-term health, canned meats like pork, beef, and fish won’t provide you with the nutrition your body needs. “If you need less expensive protein options, look for canned beans, lentils, and legumes as an alternative. You can find these in the canned vegetable aisle. These will have little to no sodium, and will provide protein and fiber, which can actually have cardiovascular protective factors,” Saari explains. We guess it’s best to just avoid canned meats and opt for fresh meat from the grocery store.
At the end of the day, Saari says that while canned foods by nature get a bad rap. However, there are some canned foods that can actually provide the same nutritional value as their fresh counterparts. “If you want to buy canned vegetables, fruits, or meats, just look at what they’re ‘soaking’ in. For canned fruits look for some that are not canned in syrup, this is typically right on the front label. For canned vegetables, you want to select those that have no added sodium. The same goes for canned meats, look for the low to no added sodium options,” she recommends. Noted!
Could wild blueberries help burn fat during exercise?
Vishwam Sankaran – March 28, 2023
Consuming a cup of wild blueberries daily for two weeks can help the body burn more fat during exercise, according to a new study.
The research, published recently in the journal Nutrients, is the first to examine the fat-burning effects of wild blueberries during exercise in non-elite athletes.
The blueberries can help accelerate fat oxidation in the body, the process by which fatty acid molecules are broken down for energy, found scientists, including those from the California Polytechnic State University in the US.
However, citing some of the limitations of the study, researchers said it included only 11 males and no women.
The 11 healthy, aerobically trained males were instructed to follow a diet that included consuming 25 grams of freeze-dried wild blueberries each day for two weeks.
Each participant exercised on a bike for 40 minutes at Cal Poly Humboldt’s Human Performance Lab, and their urine and blood samples were collected before and after cycling. Their blood samples were collected every 10 minutes during the workout as well.
The findings suggest the participants notably burned more fat after consuming the blueberries.
The fat oxidation rate rose by about 20 per cent, 43 per cent and 31 per cent at 20, 30 and 40 minutes after cycling, according to the study.
The berries, known previously as a superfood, accelerate fat burning and also decrease the use of carbohydrates by the body – a metabolic change which scientists said could be significant for athletes.
“Increasing the use of fat can help performance, particularly in endurance activities as we have more fat stores to keep us going longer than we do carb stores,” study co-author Taylor Bloedon explained.
Researchers said saving stored carbs also helps when exercise intensity needs to be increased, particularly towards the end of a race or training session.
“At these higher intensities we cannot rely on fat to fuel us as fat cannot be used as a fuel source for high-intensity activities,” Dr Bloedon said.
The scientists also found that drastically cutting carbs when people want to burn more fat “may lead to negative health and performance outcomes”.
They say anthocyanins – the compounds which give fruits and vegetables their blue, red and purple colors – may be responsible for the increased fat oxidation.
“Women tend to have a greater ability to oxidize fat naturally so it will be interesting to see the results,” Dr Bloedon said.
“Results indicate that wild blueberries may increase the rate of fat oxidation during moderate-intensity activity in healthy, active males,” said the study.
The Physical Toll Systemic Injustice Takes On the Body
Arline T. Geronimus – March 28, 2023
abstract portrait symbolizing depression and psychotherapy. Profile of a woman with a road and tears
Credit – Getty Images
The pathologists who performed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s autopsy noted he had the heart of a 60 year old, although he was 39 when he died. His damaged heart was duly noted in the official record as a curiosity, but there was no question as to the cause of death: homicide; indeed, assassination. A racist hate crime.
But if we were to try to understand the poor condition of his heart, we might be flummoxed. Our general repertoire for understanding the early onset of heart disease points us to demographic and behavioral risk factors like poverty, low education, family breakdown, unhealthy diet, and little exercise. King certainly looked physically fit, capable of leading miles-long civil rights marches. He was well-educated, not impoverished. He grew up in an “intact” household and had a strong father figure. His faith was unswerving, as was his sense of purpose. He had a loving wife and family.
We might ask, did he partake of a particularly unhealthy diet? Did he have a genetic predisposition, a family history of heart disease? We can neither rule out nor rule in such possibilities for King. Yet, the more likely explanation, according to data on the prevailing causes of heart conditions, is that chronic stress or exhaustion took a toll on his heart. But what does that really mean? Would his heart have been healthy if he had managed his stress with meditation? (We don’t know that he didn’t.) Or if he reduced his travel and public engagements to get more rest? Perhaps marginally. But those strategies alone would not have addressed the source of his most severe and chronic stressors—the fact that he lived continuously on alert to threats, maintaining his composure, nonetheless, and in survival mode. This chronic vigilance and adaptation takes a huge health toll on the human biological canvas—a condition known as “weathering.”
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After almost 40 years of research in public health and a lifetime of wrestling with questions of racial and class injustice, I have concluded that a process I call “weathering” is critical to understanding why someone like King, whom we’d consider young and healthy by all conventional measures, would have the damaged heart of someone in late middle age. Weathering afflicts human bodies—all the way down to the cellular level—as they grow, develop, and age in a systemically and historically racist, classist, stigmatizing, or xenophobic society. Weathering damages the cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, immune, and metabolic body systems in ways that leave people vulnerable to dying far too young, whether from infectious diseases like COVID-19, or the early onset and pernicious progression of chronic diseases like hypertension. Because of the physiological impacts of unrelenting exposure to stressors in one’s physical and social environment, as well as the high physiological effort that coping with chronic stressors entails, weathering means that relatively young people in oppressed groups can be biologically old.
Take Erica Garner. She became a tireless advocate for racial justice after her father, Eric Garner, was murdered by a New York City in 2014 police officer who placed him in an illegal chokehold for the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes. Her father’s dying words, “I can’t breathe,” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. Afterward, though she was initially apprehensive, Garner became a major force in the movement for police accountability. She died at age 27 in 2017, only three and a half years after the death of her father, and four months after the birth of her second child. Her own difficulty breathing, due to asthma, precipitated a major heart attack that killed her. According to her doctors, the pregnancy had stressed Garner’s already enlarged heart, so her death was classified as a maternal death. But why did she have an enlarged heart at her young age?
In the weeks before her death, Garner described the stress, exhaustion, and frustration she suffered as a spokeswoman for the Black Lives Matter movement. “I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything,” she said. “This thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down to where you can’t win.” Or as her sister, Emerald Snipes Garner, described it a week after Garner’s death, “It was like a Jenga”; they were “taking out pieces, taking out pieces, ripping her apart.”
Weathering is a life-or-death game of Jenga. The Jenga tower appears strong and upright as the first pieces are removed, one by one. To all appearances, it continues to stand strong as pieces keep being taken away until the removal of one last fateful block exposes the many weaknesses of its interior, and the tower collapses. In spring 2020, COVID-19 turned out to be that last fateful block for tens of thousands of people of color. Every day, towers collapsed, as they continue to do, before our eyes.
“The only thing I can say is that she was a warrior,” Garner’s mother, Esaw Snipes, said after she died. “She fought the good fight. This is just the first fight in 27 years she lost.” After she had spent 27 years of battling headwinds, fighting the same system that had killed her father for selling a few cigarettes, those headwinds took their toll and killed her too. She was weathered to death.
I think the same could be said of Fannie Lou Hamer, the 1960s voting rights activist who famously observed at age 46 that she was “sick and tired of being sick and tired.” She died 13 years later at age 59, of breast cancer and complications of hypertension. I think she intuitively understood the price she paid for her years of activism. After failing the literacy test in her first attempt to register to vote, she told the registrar of voters, “You’ll see me every 30 days till I pass.” In later years, as she reflected on her persistence, her words suggest she knew she was being weathered: “I guess if I’d had any sense, I’d have been a little scared—but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kind of seemed like they’d been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember.”
“A little bit at a time,” piece by Jenga piece, the assaults on the body continue to accumulate as weathering. You don’t have to be a high profile political activist to experience weathering. Any marginalized person who persists daily to survive or overcome and to see to their family’s and community’s needs in the face of long odds and systemic barriers will weather, to greater or lesser extent. Through my decades of research, I have seen how cultural oppression and economic exploitation move from society to cells in the bodies of people of color, working-class people, political refugees, the deplored or stigmatized, and the impoverished who sustain ferocious hope as they work hard and play by the rules.
However, as the Reverend William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, asserted in June 2020, “Accepting death is not an option anymore.” He emphasized that the imperative extends far beyond the issue of police brutality. Echoing Fannie Lou Hamer, he said, “In everything racism and classism touch, they cause a form of death.”
Barber’s words read as metaphor, but they are the literal truth. The country is waking up to what Black Americans have known for centuries and what public health statistics have shown us for decades: systemic injustice—not just in the form of racist cops, but in the form of everyday life—takes a physical, too often deadly toll on Black, brown, and working-class or impoverished communities. Contrary to popular opinion and accepted wisdom, healthy aging is a measure not of how well we take care of ourselves—but rather of how well society treats and takes care of us. When society treats our community badly, it doesn’t just “cause a form of death,” it causes damage that can literally age and kill us.
The US housing market is crashing and soaring at the same time. It all depends on where you live.
Matthew Fox – March 28, 2023
Mortgage rates could fall as low as 5% this year but may not be enough to significantly boost home sales.Thomas Northcut/Getty Images
The US housing market is crashing and soaring all at the same time as pockets of the market see divergent trends.
Home prices on the West Coast have plunged as much as 10%, while homes in the East have surged.
The home price trends have been driven by mortgage rates, little supply, and broader economic trends.
The US housing market is experiencing both a crash and a boom at the same exact time, and it all depends on where you live.
According to data from Black Knight, home prices on the West Coast are plunging at the same time home prices on the East Coast are surging. The split between rising fortunes or sinking home values essentially depends on whether the home is located east or west of the Rocky mountains.
From January 2022 to January 2023, home prices fell 7.5% in Seattle and dropped 10.3% in San Francisco. At the same time, home prices surged 12% in Miami and jumped 9.3% in Orlando. Even Buffalo, NY saw home price values rise 8.3% on an annual basis in January.
Except for Austin, Texas, 37 of the biggest metro areas east of Colorado saw home prices rise year-over-year in January. Meanwhile, all 12 of the major housing markets west of Texas saw home prices fall over the same time period.
Such a split in the US housing market is unprecedented. In the US housing crisis of 2007 and 2008, home prices dropped in 134 out of the 153 metropolitan areas, and the select few pockets of strength saw home prices stay essentially flat, not rise like they are today.
“We’ve never seen anything quite like this where it’s so stark, west to east,” Black Knight vice president Andy Walden told The Wall Street Journal.
The unprecedented nature of the bifurcated housing market is driven by a number of factors that stem from the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a boom in housing demand at a time when the supply of homes was limited.
Fast forward to today, and supply is still low, while mortgage rates have soared to levels not seen in more than a decade, making it more expensive for prospective home buyers. That means housing markets that have a supply of relatively affordable homes, such as Buffalo, NY and Hartford, Connecticut, have seen steady price gains.
But in areas of the market that were already suffering from sky-high home prices, like in San Francisco and Los Angeles, there has been room for home prices to fall. And a wave of layoffs at high-profile technology companies that are mostly concentrated in West Coast cities has removed potential buyers from the market and has likely sparked an uptick in homes for sale.
To be sure, West Coast home prices had room to fall after experiencing dizzying gains over the past decade. Home prices in San Francisco soared 112% between 2012 and 2020, nearly doubling the national gain of 58% during that same time period, according to data from S&P Dow Jones Indices.
That’s as long as mortgage rates don’t surge even higher. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate was at 6.42% last week, well below its one-year high of 7.08%, according to data from Freddie Mac. That represents some relief for prospective home buyers.
Bulgaria can provide Ukraine with ammunition that can ‘turn the tide of war’, ex-Defense Minister
The New Voice of Ukraine – March 28, 2023
Ammunition for howitzers during a training exercise at a German military base in Munster, May 10, 2022
Bulgaria will transfer old ammunition worth nearly EUR 175 million ($190 million) to state-owned military plant VMZ, who will forward them to Ukraine through intermediaries, Noev said.
Bulgaria will replace the shipment with newer ammunition.
“This is the largest rearmament of the Bulgarian land forces in recent history. That’s a huge amount of ammunition – hundreds of thousands. There is a huge increase in the price of ammunition, and VMZ will sell this ammunition through intermediaries to Ukraine. This is an amount of ammunition that can turn the tide of the war in some directions on the Ukrainian front,” Euroactiv quoted the former minister as saying.
Bulgaria possesses old Soviet-era ammunition the Ukrainian Armed Forces need for their tanks, howitzers, anti-tank grenades, multiple rocket launchers, and AK-47 assault rifles.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that Sofia sells weapons and ammunition to European countries on the condition of not transferring them to Ukraine.
His claims contradict the parliament’s Dec. 2022 decision to provide Kyiv with direct military aid. Radev dissolved the parliament in early Feb. 2023 and ordered the government to suspend supply until elections are held.
The VMZ plan should be able to work around the president’s commitment to not supply Ukraine, Euroactiv explained.
Bulgaria has already covertly supported Ukraine in one of the most crucial periods of the Russian full-scale invasion.
Bulgaria covered up to one third of the Ukrainian army’s needs, as well as up to 40% of tanks, cars, and diesel fuel supply for the military from April to August 2022, German news site Welt reported.
See Stunning Photos of How Climate Change Is Altering Our World
Molly Taft – March 27, 2023
Photo: Paolo Patrizi
Beautiful and troubling photographs of how the world is changing and heating up are part of a competition to pressure one of the world’s leading camera companies to drop its controversial views on climate.
Business accountability watchdog Action Speaks Louder launched the “Cameras Don’t Lie” competition in February in order to pressure photography giant Canon to distance itself from the climate denial the group says is being perpetuated at a nonprofit Canon supports.
“Canon has two faces; while branding itself as an environmentally-friendly and socially responsible company, it has created a think tank, the Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS), which is a platform for climate denial,” the campaign’s website reads.
The Canon Institute for Global Studies was founded by Canon in 2008 “with the aim of contributing to the development of Japan and the rest of the world,” according to a company press release. As the Guardian reported last year, a fellow at the Institute, Taishi Sugiyama, has written multiple blog posts for the Institute that question the science behind climate change and endorse content and theories from prominent denier-led groups and institutions. A report released by a think tank last year also found that Canon has significantly lower climate ambitions than competitors like Nikon, Sony, and Panasonic, and recently lowered its emissions reductions targets.
Earther reached out to the Canon Institute as well as Canon for comment but did not hear back by time of publication. Multiple articles mentioned in the Guardian piece from Sugiyama, including one article calling Thunberg a communist as well as a description of a children’s book he wrote that encourages kids to “investigate the effects of global warming based on facts,” remain live on the site.
“The statements referred to by Action Speaks Louder are those published by Mr. Sugiyama, who is affiliated with CIGS. CIGS operates independently and is unrelated to the business activities of Canon. The research and statements published by Mr. Sugiyama are solely his own,” the company told PetaPixel early last month. “Therefore, Canon is not in a position to officially respond to inquiries from Action Speaks Louder. Global environmental issues are one of Canon’s management core pillars, and Canon remains committed to contributing, through a variety of means, to the realization of a net-zero CO2 emissions society.”
The finalists here were selected from more than 180 entries from 30 countries. The winning image, “Vanishing Island of Dhal Chor Bangladesh” by photographer Paolo Patrizi, shown above, was on display in Times Square in New York City in March, ahead of Canon’s shareholder meeting.
Click through to see the winning photograph and other finalists in the campaign.
Vanishing Island of Dhal Chor, Bangladesh
Photo: Paolo Patrizi
“Rapid erosion and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening the existence of islands off the coast of Bangladesh. Dhal Chor, Monpura and Bhola are some of many islands on the bay of Bengal affected by increasingly rapid erosion and some of the fastest recorded sea-level rises in the world,” Patrizi said of his photo. “These ‘vanishing islands’ are shrinking dramatically.”
Hatonuevo mining complex, Colombia
Photo: César David Martínez
Martínez told the campaign: “The biggest open pit mine in Colombia and one of the biggest in the world, shows the deep impact that the extraction of one of the worst polluter and greenhouse gases causes in nature and environment: The coal.”
Amami Oshima Island, Japan
Photo: Hisayuki Tsuchiya
Tsuchiya described his photograph: “The breeding and calving of humpback whales are gradually moving northward due to global warming. Microplastics are also increasing, and the ecosystem of whales is changing.”
Lake Abashiri, Hokkaido, Japan
Photo: Kanade Endo
“While traveling alone in Hokkaido, I noticed a strong smell of decay on the shore of Lake Abashiri. The source of the smell was diatoms that had grown so abnormally that they filled the sand of the lakeside and the rotting corpses of salmon,” Endo said.
Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada
Photo: Katherine Cheng
Cheng said of her photo: “On the first day of 2023, the Presqu’ile Provincial Park and its coastal trails were flooded with water. Typically on January 1, the ground and nearby lake would be covered in ice and snow in Ontario. However, record-high temperatures have been broken across the province this year, leaving many trails, river ice rinks and ski hills closed.”
Mt. Zao, on the border of Yamagata and Miyagi Prefectures, Japan
Photo: Kazuaki Koseki
“On a clear night at the end of May, when the snow had melted from the trees, I looked up wistfully at the withered ice and the starry sky, and continued to gaze at these trees, clasping my hands and praying,” Koseki said. “Global warming and climate change are believed to be one of the reasons for the death of these trees. Other possible reasons include the impact of tourism development and attraction of tourism.”
Yosemite National Park, California, USA
Photo: Marcin Zajac
“I came to Yosemite to photograph something completely different and when I arrived to the park it was covered in smoke,” Zajac told the campaign. “I considered going back home to avoid camping in smoke, but eventually I stayed around. When at night the smoke cleared for a bit it was surreal to see the fire burning in the valley. The thick smoke didn’t seem to discourage climbers though – if you look carefully you can see lights from their headlamps as they climb up El Capitan.”
Ishigaki Island, Okinawa, Japan
Photo: Marie Abe
“In the summer of 2022, rising sea temperatures caused the coral reefs around Ishigaki Island to almost completely die after large-scale bleaching,” Abe said. “This is the appearance of the bleached coral with dazzling pastel colours that will be attractive for a little while before it decays.”
San Francisco, California, USA
Photo: Patrick Perkins
Perkins said of his photo: “The day before I took this photo, there had been severe fires all up and down the coast of California, Oregon and Washington. My sister’s house had burned down, and my father’s house had been threatened. My father told me that they had woke up at 2am to fight the fire from spreading onto their land, and my sister had drove home the next day to find her house burned down in a separate fire. The day after I heard that, the sky in San Francisco where I live turned orange from all the smoke. I went out with my camera to try to document what felt like a biblical event. This shot won Unsplash’s photo of the year in 2020.”
Kolkata, India
Photo: Satyaki Acharya
“A waterbody in Kolkata, India has dried up due to the intense heat event before the summer season has set in properly,” Acharya said. “The million footprints are proof of the struggle people undertake everyday for some water.”
Nyaung Oo Township, Mandalay Region, Myanmar
Photo: Wai Maung
“This photo shows the local people in central Myanmar were combating climate change by forest restoration and rehabilitation (i.e., planting trees in a barren land near their village),” Maung said of his photo. “Before planting, rectangular pits (trenches) were dug for capturing and storing sufficient rainwater. Cow dung & bio fertilizers were put inside the pits. The purpose of tree planting is to restore the watershed area and to create a fuel wood supply plantation. For survival and subsistence, planting trees is one of the local strategies to cope with harsh climatic and edaphic conditions.”
Opinion: Sen. Sherrod Brown: American consumers losing power over their savings and paychecks is an emergency, too.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau holds Wall Street and big banks accountable. The U.S. Supreme Court must protect it, writes Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Sherrod Brown – March 27, 2023
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says the CFPB must remain strong and independent. AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sent shockwaves through the global economy and had the makings of another crisis. Depositors raced to withdraw money. Banks worried about the risk of contagion. I spent that weekend on the phone with small business owners in Ohio who didn’t know whether they’d be able to make payroll the next week. One woman was in tears, worried about whether she’d be able to pay her workers.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve responded quickly, took control of the bank, and contained the fallout. Consumers’ and small businesses’ money was safe. That Ohio small business was able to get paychecks out.
The regulators were able to protect Americans’ money from incompetent bank executives because when Congress created the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the FDIC in 1933, it ensured that their funding structures would remain independent from politicians in Congress and free from political whims.
But now, as the U.S. Supreme Court considers the case of Community Financial Services Association v. CFPB, these independent watchdogs’ ability to keep our financial system stable faces an existential threat.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the only agency solely dedicated to protecting the paychecks and savings of ordinary Americans, not Wall Street executives or venture capitalists. Corporate interests have armies of lobbyists fighting for every tax break, every exemption, every opportunity to be let off the hook for scamming customers and preying on families.
The CFPB’s funding structure is designed to be independent, just like the Fed and the FDIC.
Ordinary Americans don’t have those lobbyists. They don’t have that kind of power. The CFPB is supposed to be their voice — to fight for them. The CFPB’s funding structure is designed to be independent, just like the Fed and the FDIC. Otherwise, its ability to do the job would be subject to political whims and special interests — interests that we know are far too often at odds with what’s best for consumers.
Since its creation, the CFPB has returned $16 billion to more than 192 million consumers. It’s held Wall Street and big banks accountable for breaking the law and wronging their customers. It’s given working families more power to fight back when banks and shady lenders scam them out of their hard-earned money.
The CFPB can do this good work because it’s funded independently and protected from partisan attacks, just as the Fed and the FDIC are. So why, then, does Wall Street claim that only the CFPB’s funding structure is unconstitutional?
Make no mistake — the only reason that Wall Street, its Republican allies in Congress, and overreaching courts have singled out the CFPB is because the agency doesn’t do their bidding. The CFPB doesn’t help Wall Street executives when they fail. It doesn’t extend them credit in favorable terms or offer them deposit insurance like the other regulators do. The CFPB’s funding structure isn’t unconstitutional — it just doesn’t work in Wall Street’s favor.
If the Supreme Court rules against the CFPB, the $16 billion returned to consumers could be clawed back. What would happen then — will America’s banks really go back to the customers they’ve wronged with a collection tin?
Invalidating the CFPB and its work would also put the U.S. economy — and especially the housing market — at risk.
Invalidating the CFPB and its work would also put the U.S. economy — and especially the housing market — at risk. For more than a decade, the CFPB has set rules of the road for mortgages and credit cards and so much else, and given tools to help industry follow them. If these rules and the regulator that interprets them disappear, markets will come to a standstill.
By attacking the CFPB’s funding structure and putting consumers’ money at risk, Wall Street is putting the other financial regulators in danger, too.
The Fifth Circuit’s faulty ruling against the CFPB is astounding in its absurdity — the court ruled that the authorities that other financial agencies, like the Federal Reserve and the FDIC, have over the economy do not compare to the CFPB’s authorities. In other words, the court is claiming that the CFPB supposedly has more power in the economy than the Fed.
That’s ridiculous. Look at the extraordinary steps taken to contain the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank — the idea that the CFPB could take action even close to as sweeping is laughable.
But we know why the Fifth Circuit put that absurd assertion in there — they recognize the damage this case could do to these other vital agencies, and to our whole economy.
Imagine what might happen if another series of banks failed and the FDIC did not have the funds to stop the crisis from spreading.
The FDIC’s own Inspector General has stated that the Fifth Circuit ruling could be applied to their agency. If that happens, the FDIC and other regulators could be subject to congressional budget deliberations, which we all know are far too partisan and have resulted in shutdowns. Imagine what might happen if another series of banks failed and the FDIC did not have the funds to stop the crisis from spreading, or the Deposit Insurance Fund to protect depositors’ money. Imagine if politicians caused a shutdown, and we were without a Federal Reserve.
U.S. financial regulators are independently funded so that they can respond quickly when crises happen. It’s telling, though, that plenty of people in Washington don’t seem to consider the CFPB’s issues in the same category. Washington and Wall Street expect the government to spring into action when businesses’ money is put at risk. But when workers are scammed out of their paychecks, that’s not an emergency — it’s business as usual.
When Wall Street’s abusive practices put consumers in crisis, the CFPB must have the funding and strength it needs to carry out its mission — to protect consumers’ hard-earned money.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
As Jimmy Carter lives his final days, we wonder if he and the country were cheated | Opinion
Jack Ohman – March 27, 2023
AP
As President Jimmy Carter lives out his final days in hospice care, America has already begun observing something of a pre-state funeral for a good man whose stature has only grown in the 42 years since he left the White House.
During Carter’s one term in office, he was labeled an “incompetent” politician by some critics, largely because 52 American diplomats and foreign service workers were taken hostage in Iran, and Carter was unable to bring them home in time to save his own presidency.
That stroke of bad luck, a terrible hand that Carter’s presidency drew, came on the heels of a recession, an energy crisis and the lingering aftermath of the Vietnam/Watergate era that dampened American patriotism. Carter, ever the honest soul, made the hostages and sagging American optimism his primary concerns, to his political detriment.
If he had been more cunning and less earnest, Carter would have played performative politics and appealed to our latent jingoism and xenophobia. That’s what Ronald Reagan did to throttle Carter at the polls in 1980.
But did Reagan have clandestine help that we never knew about until now?
It was a bitter irony that as Carter lay dying in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, a dirty story about the Iran hostages materialized out of the mists of time.
“It has been more than four decades, but Ben Barnes said he remembers it vividly. His longtime political mentor invited him on a mission to the Middle East. What Mr. Barnes said he did not realize until later was the real purpose of the mission: to sabotage the re-election campaign of (President Jimmy Carter).”
Barnes was a former lieutenant governor of Texas, arguably the most powerful political job in the state, and a longtime aide to the late Texas Gov. John Connally. Connally died in 1993, after surviving the assassination attempt that claimed the life of President John F. Kennedy.
When Reagan won the GOP nomination for president in 1980, Connally “resolved to help Reagan beat Carter,” and then make the case to Reagan that he should be defense secretary, wrote The New York Times.
How?
“What happened next Mr. Barnes has largely kept secret for nearly 43 years. Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal,” according to The Times.
A perusal of President Carter’s memoir, “Keeping Faith,” shows no reference to Barnes, and only one derisive mention of Connally about his debate performance.
There is this poignant passage, however:
“It was very likely I had been defeated and would soon leave office as President because I had kept these hostages and their fate at the forefront of the world’s attention, and had clung to a cautious and prudent policy in order to protect their lives during the preceding fourteen months.”
I can tell you that the political milieu of October 1980 featured the oft-expressed bleatings of Republicans warning voters of a sneaky “October surprise,” orchestrated by President Carter.
Carter had ordered a hostage rescue mission in April 1980. This attempt ended tragically when a chopper hit one of the mission’s C-130 transport planes. Another chopper was about to fail, and the mission was aborted.
Of course, this tragedy was widely trumpeted by the GOP as Carter’s latest incompetent failure.
We’ll never know. But we know this: Jimmy Carter did his best to be an honorable president. He reached the twilight of his life at peace, unlike Barnes who shared a story with The New York Times that reeked of the opportunism and dirty politics that are all too common in our republic today. Carter was as decent a man in The White House as he was when he left the White House.
It’s why some are already shedding tears for Jimmy Carter ahead of an emotional state funeral to come.
Florida’s Latest Tourism Problem Is Twice the Width of the United States
Jena Greene – March 27, 2023
The dreaded return of an invasive species could ruin beach-going up and down the coast.
Between hurricane season, rising water levels, ongoing feuds between Disney and the local government, and crazed spring breakers, Florida already has enough to worry about.
The last thing the state wants is a giant blob of seaweed headed directly for a coastal impact on its pristine sunny beaches — but it’s looking like that’s what it’s going to get.
Pedro Portal/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty
What is Sargassum Seaweed?
Buoyant brown seaweed, or The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt as it’s formally known, is something many Floridians have come to know. It’s an invasive species that’s something of a grim reaper for sea life; it kills some marine animals and destroys coral reefs in its path.
Sargassum is a brown, rubbery seaweed that releases a foul odor once it washes up on the beach and decays in the sunlight. In the ocean, the seaweed tends to bind up and reproduce, creating big, blobby problems for boaters and animals. It’s also one of the few marine species that replicates (and therefore, gets bigger) while on the water’s surface.
Once it’s washed up, it can take days or even weeks to remove the stuff. Since it smells sulphuric and makes beaches difficult to enjoy, some hotels even see decreased foot traffic while it’s around.
How Big Is the Seaweed Blob Heading for the U.S.?
Sargassum regularly washes up on coastal North and central America, particularly around Florida, Mexico and the Caribbean. But this year’s Sargassum is massive at 5,000 miles (8,000 km) long, and stretches between West Africa and the Gulf of Mexico. That’s nearly twice as wide as the U.S.
“What is unusual this year compared to previous years is it started early,” University of South Florida oceanography professor Chuanmin Hu said. “The algae generally blooms in the spring and summer, but ‘this year, in the winter, we already have a lot.'”
Experts say it’s already started showing up on Key West, FL. There’s already an estimated 10 million metric tons of the seaweed floating around in the middle of the ocean and it’s likely to get bigger before it washes up.
Sargassum Can Affect Travel and Tourism
It’s no surprise that many hotels view giant seaweed blobs as problematic for tourism, but there are several measures some can take to mitigate its impact.
“Keeping sargassum at bay from a beach where it’s determined to wash ashore is like fighting a rising tide,” Afar reports. “Apart from removing what washes ashore as it arrives, [USF professor Brian] Barnes says a hotel might consider installing a floating boom offshore (usually made of PVC and deployed parallel to the shoreline) with the goal of preventing sargassum from coming ashore. But again, it represents a small measure against a monumental task.”
Luckily, mild to moderate exposure to Sargassum doesn’t a major risk to human health, and some animals, including sea turtles, even dine on the stuff.
