Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
June 26, 2019
I’ve been a cartoonist since 1990 and this might be the hardest cartoon I’ve ever had to draw.
Shame on Donald Trump. Shame on Republicans. Shame on each and every single one of you who supports this.
This cartoon was hard to draw but right now, it’s even harder to be a proud American.
Claytoonz.com
Chris Cuomo: “You must. … Of course it kills you. It kills every part of you, every part of us that makes us human.”
Lemon: “…Who are we? Who are we, as a people, to sit and judge people who are trying to come across for better lives and better conditions?”
Cuomo: Photo of dead migrant father and daughter 'kills every part of us that makes us human'
Don Lemon CNN: “That picture. I can’t even look at it.” Chris Cuomo: “You must. … Of course it kills you. It kills every part of you, every part of us that makes us human.”Lemon: “…Who are we? Who are we, as a people, to sit and judge people who are trying to come across for better lives and better conditions?” https://cnn.it/2Fxe9QY
Posted by CNN on Wednesday, June 26, 2019
Amid an epidemic of dairy closures around the country, some farmers are betting on the booming hemp market to balance out low milk prices.
For most of his life, Dale Grossen has milked cows on the Wisconsin dairy farm his grandparents bought. But these days, the payoff for milking his 55 Holsteins, which he does largely by himself, isn’t what it was.
“The prices are so bad that it’s not even worth being a dairy farmer anymore,” he said.
Now, as many small dairy farms are struggling to survive, Grossen is trying out a new crop on his farm: hemp.
Some of Dan Grossen’s dairy cows. (Photo courtesy of GroHubFarm.)
Sustained low milk prices and operational costs have been devastating for many family-sized dairies. Wisconsin, once the heart of the nation’s dairy industry, lost 638 herds in 2018. Meanwhile interest in hemp is booming; the number of applications for licenses to grow the new crop in the state’s ballooned from 250 in 2018, the first year, to more than 1,400 in 2019. Dairy farmers in need of some much-needed cash are prime candidates for the crop.
But some early experiences suggest that the transition will take some work.
Expectations of the young industry in the United States got a boost when a decades-old federal ban on growing hemp was lifted in last year’s farm bill. Limited cultivation had already started, after a 2014 federal policy change cracked the door open for some states to begin working with the crop—which can be used for food, fiber and, popularly, the compound cannabidiol, or CBD—on an experimental level.
Some forecasts say the nation’s hemp industry, which was estimated at $800 million last year, could skyrocket to $20 billion by 2022. Now, more states are opening up to the crop—at least 41 have created some kind of hemp program—and many are expecting it will infuse fresh vitality into the agricultural sector.
Potato farmers in Maine are looking at hemp as a side crop. Kentucky, where the agriculture sector has been hit by the decline of tobacco, is trying to mold itself into a hemp powerhouse. In Wyoming, historically a center for sugar beets, farmers are also eyeing hemp as an economic booster. And in areas where small dairy farms are flailing, many see hemp as a potential buffer against unstable milk prices.
In Pennsylvania, dairy farms of different scales are starting to work with new hemp companies, according to Rob Barley, the chair of the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board. Star Rock Farms, in which Barley is a partner, is beginning to grow hemp for fiber, while some smaller-scale operations are starting to grow the crop for CBD production. “I think there’s opportunity,” Barley said, “but it’s so young.”
Wisconsin Representative Tony Kurtz, a sponsor of the hemp pilot program enacted there in 2017, envisions the crop playing the same role in the state’s family-sized dairy farms that tobacco once did.
“It was a crop that was very lucrative; a lot of dairy farmers would have an acre or two for extra money,” Kurtz said. “And I do think hemp could have that potential.”
Dale Grossen and five other nearby farms in Green County, Wisconsin all got started growing hemp at the same time last year.
Grossen’s son, Ben, and cousin, Mark Hubbard, led the push to launch GroHubFarm. Hubbard, who has a background in Washington’s cannabis industry, brought in an assortment of hemp varietals to experiment with in the region. Across five farms near Monroe, they put in 36 acres of the crop, experimenting with factors like placement and irrigation. Grossen planted 16 acres on his land.
One of GroHubFarm’s hemp fields in southern Wisconsin. (Photo courtesy of GroHubFarm.)
“It’s an altogether different farm than I’m used to,” he said.
There were practical challenges, like keeping weeds down and preventing the plants from being pollinated, which lowers their value for CBD. To keep up with the workload—which piled up on top of Grossen’s usual routine running a dairy farm—they brought in workers.
Then, as harvest time approached, testing determined that most of their plants contained more than the state’s limit of 0.3 percent tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the psychoactive compound in marijuana. Many of the varietals they had selected turned out to exceed the legal THC content level, though that wasn’t clear until they were mature. Because the crops wouldn’t pass inspection, Grossen took his chopper to his plot and burned it.
Including investments in equipment, it cost about $400,000 to get the full 36-acre project started. Only six acres—or 17 percent—were salable. Still, on the plants that turned out, the financial return was high enough that Grossen remains optimistic. “If it had all been that way, we would be fairly good off,” he said.
Liz Binversie, an agriculture educator with the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Brown County Extension, urges cautious optimism for dairy farmers considering diversifying with hemp.
The infrastructure and the plants themselves can be very expensive, so start-up costs are substantial. There’s also a lot of labor involved in growing it, from managing weeds in the plot to harvesting it, which often must be done by hand if the hemp is for CBD. There’s also risk involving the quality of the plants farmers obtain—the market is young, and farmers can easily inadvertently purchase seeds that don’t meet state quality standards or won’t perform well in their location.
Binversie warns that hemp is not for everyone, particularly farms in financially precarious situations. At a recent information session the extension ran, one farmer described growing hemp as like having a second full-time job—a heavy burden for already overworked dairy farmers to take on.
“I just hate for anyone to think that it’s just this easy-going crop,” Binversie said. “That’s definitely not the case from what we’ve seen.”
Tending hemp. (Photo courtesy of GroHubFarm)
It can also be hard for hemp producers to sell their harvest, as there are not many processors in operation yet. But Kurtz, the state lawmaker, expects that as the nascent sector matures, it will become easier for farmers to find buyers. The number of applications for hemp processing licenses in Wisconsin jumped from 100 last year to nearly 700 this year.
A farmer himself, Kurtz planted his first fiber hemp crop this year, adding it to his rotation of soybeans and corn. But despite his optimism, when other farmers ask Kurtz about getting into the business, he sounds a note of caution.
“You need to take it slow,” he said. “Don’t go bet the farm on it.”
Attracted by the financial promise of hemp amid sustained low milk prices, second-generation dairy farmer Joel Pominville planted 13 acres of hemp for fiber at his Middlebury, Vermont, farm in 2017. The next year, he grew 22 acres for CBD production.
But Pominville won’t grow it again. With more producers entering the market, he believes that the bubble may soon burst. Vermont’s hemp industry has grown exponentially since its launch in 2013, when there were only 175 acres registered with the state. In 2018, that number had risen to nearly 3,300 acres.
Vermont Agency of Agriculture official Cary Giguere notes that dairy farmers in the state often experiment with side crops, like milkweed for fiber and sunflowers for oil. Giguere sees hemp as another promising option.
But Pominville disagrees. The cannabis plant, he recalled, was “miserable” to work with. The fibrous plant got tangled in his equipment, which meant time spent modifying his gear. The “tremendous” workload, on top of milking 200 cows, required him to bring in 30 workers at harvest time. He also had to dry the crop with a heater that cost thousands of dollars in propane to run. Pominville estimated he spent half a million. He’s sold off some of his equipment. Some of it, like an old combine, is so beat up he’ll just dismantle it for parts.
From Pominville’s viewpoint, hemp is an unrealistic side crop for dairy farmers. “That’s crazy talk,” he said.
But others are more optimistic. In Wisconsin, GroHubFarm is gearing up for its second season. They’re drawing on lessons from their first try; for example, they’re using clones, not seeds, which is a better guarantee of the plant’s quality. Hubbard expects better results: “This year’s a totally different situation,” he said.
Grossen, who recently decided to sell his herd this fall after 35 years of running the farm, advises other dairy farmers considering diversifying with hemp to start small. The best harvest GroHubFarm got last year came from a single-acre plot, he said. There’s a high learning curve, he explained.
“We’re trying it this year because, well, do we fold up? Or do we continue and do it better yet?” Grossen said. “We’re getting a little smarter every year, I’m hoping.”
U.S. consumer debt hit $14 trillion in the first quarter of 2019
By Mark DeCambre June 25, 2019
Students pull a mock “ball & chain” representing the $1.4 trillion outstanding student debt. Getty Images.
Consumer debt is growing to worrisome levels.
Ben Mohr, senior research analyst of fixed income at investment consultant Marquette Associates, calculated that total U.S. consumer debt hit $14 trillion in the first quarter of 2019, surpassing the roughly $13 trillion of leverage accumulated in credit cards, auto loans and mortgages and other debt back in 2008, when those souring loans and securities pegged to them helped to send global markets into a tailspin (see attached chart).
Mohr told MarketWatch that the increase in student loans — often cited as a source of consternation for economists and strategists — saw a notable increase. At the end of the first three months of 2019, student loan debt hit $1.486 trillion, according to credit data from the New York Federal Reserve. By comparison, student loan at the height of the financial crisis was $611 billion and has been mostly rising since, Mohr said. “It has ballooned and that’s a dramatic increase,” the fixed-income analyst said of the student-debt expansion.
Analyzing growing consumer leverage another way, Mohr said the ratio of debt compared against the U.S. population estimated at 327 million, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, translates to a record per-person debt ratio at $41.77, surpassing the ratio of $41.68 back in 2008.
Concerns about ballooning debt come as U.S. equity markets have been trading at or near records, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average 0.4% short of its all-time high, and the S&P 500 index notching its first record since April 30 on Thursday, while the benchmark 10-year Treasury note is hovering not far from its lowest levels in months at 2.06%.
Those market moves come against a backdrop of a Federal Reserve that is considering reducing borrowing costs for individuals and corporations from an already relatively benign range of 2.25%-2.50%.
So, should we be worried about rising consumer debt?
Mohr says there are some mitigating factors. Gross domestic product, the official scorecard of the U.S. economy, demonstrates an economy in far better shape than it was during the financial crisis. GDP, which includes all goods and services produced, expanded 3.1% in the first quarter of 2019, compared against 2008 when the overall economy contracted at an annual rate of 6.3%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The Marquette analyst also noted that defaults on debt are tame, suggesting that investors aren’t being overwhelmed by the growing obligations. A pickup in loan delinquencies was a telltale sign that the economy was beginning to crack under the weight of debt, but Mohr said consumer delinquencies today are trending near historic lows.
Defaults on first-mortgage loans also are lower than pre-2008 financial crisis.
Historically low interest rates have helped consumers to manage debt and the Fed may further help that cause soon by complying with market wishes for yet-lower borrowing costs.
That said, if the economy does begin to contract into recession as some economists fear, the debt load could be a more pressing matter. “We are starting to see some chinks in the armor,” Mohr said.
At issue is USDA’s longstanding practice of shielding how much money retailers, including big box stores like Walmart, make from SNAP.
By Cassie M. Chew, Food Policy, Nutrition June 24, 2019
(Update, on June 24, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against the Argus-Leader, limiting public and media access to government records such as store-level SNAP sales data.)
Open for business every Sunday between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., the Takoma Park farmers’ market makes it easy for recipients of food-assistance benefits—including Maryland’s Independence Card, and Washington, D.C.’s DC EBT card—to shop for healthy food.
At the center of market, surrounded by farmers’ stands, a high school student runs table where shoppers can swipe their cards to convert Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars into tokens that they can use to buy locally grown produce and pasture-raised meats from the market’s dozen or more vendors.
Although the market will match SNAP users’ first $5, less than 1 percent of its 2,000 or more Sunday visitors are SNAP shoppers. Even at larger markets that match more SNAP funds, in Maryland and around the country, farmers’ markets are distant competitors to the roughly 250,000 big food retailers authorized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) to accept SNAP funds for purchases. While the 3,600 authorized farmers’ markets nationwide redeemed nearly $16 million in SNAP benefits in 2017, the nearly 51,000 authorized grocery stores, supermarkets, and superstores redeemed nearly $52.7 billion in SNAP benefits through the program.
Photo CC-licensed by Seacoast Eat Local.
The USDA has refused to share with the public the individual SNAP sales data from those food retailers, although the outcome of arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court this session could raise the curtain on that information. Some advocates hope to shine a light on just how much companies like Kroger and Walmart are benefiting financially from the SNAP program, while also employing many SNAP users. If made public, this data might offer a clearer picture of the challenges associated with food access across the country.
The case, Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, pits the trade association for chain and independent food retailers against the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Argus Leader newspaper. The case has been brewing since 2011, and in its oral arguments the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) asked the Supreme Court to reverse a November 2016 district court decision that, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), required the USDA to disclose individual store sales data on its retailers authorized to accept SNAP funds for purchases.
In the wake of two decisions in favor of the Argus Leader, the USDA in January 2017 announced that it would comply with the court ruling and promptly begin releasing the data to the public. The FMI then intervened, first taking the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals, then appealing its loss there to the Supreme Court. In its opening statement, the FMI asked the Court to reverse the decision and keep its members’ SNAP food sales confidential.
“Our injury in fact is the disclosure of our members’ store-level sales information that they keep secret,” argued Evan Young, an attorney for the FMI, which represents 33,000 retail food stores and 12,000 pharmacies. Young, along with an attorney for the Department of Justice, told the nation’s highest court that retail sales from taxpayer-funded SNAP should be considered trade secrets and confidential financial data that the USDA, in their more than four-decade long partnership with retailers, has to date agreed not to disclose.
“We are exercising our discretion in a matter of good government,” Anthony Yang, Department of Justice (DOJ) assistant to the solicitor general, told the court. “The government is trying to keep its word, given over 40 years, in the most official form possible, that we’re going to keep this information confidential.”
Meanwhile, the Argus Leader argued that SNAP sales data are agency records under FOIA and presumptively open records.
“How the government spends its own money is critical information that the press and the public need to know,” Richard Loeb, attorney for the newspaper told the Court. “It’s the type of information that FOIA has been used for decades to reveal.”
The USDA has said that FOIA exemptions prohibit it from disclosing data that retailers have shared with the agency in confidence. But since the information the newspaper has requested is automatically stored in USDA’s Store Tracking and Redemption database, the Argus Leader says USDA’s argument is misleading.
“USDA’s imprecise use of the term ‘redemption data’ … creates the mis-impression that USDA must depend on retailers to furnish SNAP payment information,” the Argus Leader wrote in court filings. Further, the newspaper’s lawyers say the agency’s claims are “disingenuous” since it already has the data.
The difference between using SNAP for purchases at farmers’ markets and using them at a Walmart Supercenter are significant—farmers’ markets rarely offer much in the way of processed, packaged foods. And while the overarching goal of SNAP is to reduce food insecurity, there’s a growing interest in simultaneously improving people’s health. Governments and health advocates at all levels are increasingly advocating the design of food assistance programs that will boost nutrition, improve health, and maybe even reduce the cost of healthcare associated with the chronic illnesses that arise from an unhealthy diet.
To food access advocates, keeping secret the data about where SNAP dollars are being spent doesn’t make sense.
Takoma Park and other Maryland farmers’ markets receive funding through statewide grants, partnerships with private business and fundraisers at individual markets like Takoma Park’s annual pie contest. Despite the fact that Maryland has among the highest per capita household income in the country, as many as one out of eight residents experience food insecurity. Food access advocates have been active in developing programming that promotes greater consumption of healthier foods by creating incentives for SNAP shoppers at individual farmers’ markets and say they don’t keep their work a secret.
“It’s very unfortunate when we have a program that’s fairly transparent [while] large food retailers don’t have to share the same amount of information,” said Amy Crone, founder and executive director of the Maryland Farmers Market Association(MDFMA).
At the Takoma Park farmers’ market. (Photo by Cassie Chew)
Since 2014, Crone and the MDFMA have raised more than $700,000 in funding, which they’ve used to increase food access and farmer sales through its statewide farmers’ market matching program for SNAP shoppers.
“We found that 90 percent of SNAP shopper purchases go toward fruits and vegetables,” Crone said. “We know our incentive program is making a difference.”
With a $65 billion budget supporting food purchases of 40 million people in 2018, roughly one out of every seven Americans, food access advocates and scholars at the intersection of agriculture, economics, and policy have long wanted to use SNAP to improve health status among individuals at the lower end of the economy.
Getting more data on nationwide SNAP purchases could help achieve that goal. In its 2011 FOIA request, the Argus Leader asked for five years of store-level data; two years prior, the USDA’s own research suggested more data on consumers’ connection to stores would improve analysis of the availability of nutritious food.
“The data would definitely help, so that we can incentivize healthy eating,” said Crone.
Experts at the intersection of food access and health say there needs to be greater innovation in food assistance policy.
“SNAP is an effective program for reducing hunger in the United States … Yet, compared with both income-eligible nonparticipants and higher-income individuals, SNAP beneficiaries have significant disparities in diet quality and diet-related health outcomes,” wrote cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian and two of his colleagues at Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy in a March 2019 paper published in JAMA.
Expressing disappointment with what he says is a lack of SNAP policy innovation in the 2018 Farm Bill, Mozaffarian wrote that the current $1 per person per year food insecurity nutrition incentive (FINI) grant program that subsidizes low-income Americans’ produce purchases is too low.
“Expanding FINI to allow a 30 percent subsidy for all SNAP fruit and vegetable purchases would have cost $11.5 billion over five years—a far larger expenditure, but one that is estimated, based on a modeling study, to be cost-effective over a lifetime for reducing cardiometabolic diseases.”
Agricultural economist Parke Wilde, also at Tufts’ Friedman School, says that SNAP sales data might be useful to help identify food desserts, understand how SNAP contributes to healthy food environments and determine whether policy innovations in retail could increase the beneficial impact of SNAP.
“It seems to me it is useful to understand all of the retailers in the vicinity of where people live. We spend a lot of time thinking about how far it is to the closest supermarket, but I often find myself curious about how far do people travel to the supermarket that’s actually getting a lot of their business. So you can see how knowing the SNAP sales is potentially helpful,” said Wilde, who focuses on U.S. food and nutrition policy, consumer economics, and federal food assistance programs.
With the disclosure of SNAP retailer sales data hinging on how the court interprets FOIA exemptions, it is unclear how the Court, with its conservative majority, might rule on the case.
Conservative justices on the Court were less active in their questioning. Justice Neil Gorsuch asked the attorney for the Argus Leader for greater insight into how the word “confidential” has been interpreted in the prior cases and Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked the DOJ attorney about the legal threshold for keeping the sales data from disclosure.
“Can it be deemed confidential even in cases without government assurance?” Kavanaugh asked, exploring the potentially broader implications of the Court’s decision.
In one of her questions to Young, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg discussed whether the USDA can avoid sharing the data just because of its agreement with retailers. “To say the government can control this by making a promise that it won’t disclose, that seems to run counter to the whole idea of FOIA,” she said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most active in questioning the attorneys, reminded the attorney for FMI and DOJ that the USDA has lost two prior cases for keeping retail data confidential, and asked whether FMI had standing in the case—the requirement to bring a lawsuit in court based upon a stake in the outcome—especially after the USDA announced that it would comply with the district court’s November 2016 decision.
When Yang told the Court that USDA would not release the data as a matter of good governance, Sotomayor responded, “Mr. Yang, you are going to tell me that you were going to be in contempt on the order?”
More questions came when the attorneys discussed whether the FOIA exemption required retailers to show releasing the data would have a “competitive harm”—or negative impact—on their business.
Loeb argued that courts in the past have ruled that companies must demonstrate harm in order to request an exemption from disclosing information under FOIA. “We know trade secrets required under the common law a showing of competitive harm,” Loeb said, adding, “confidential business information also required a showing of competitive harm.”
But unlike the attorneys from the two prior court proceedings, who argued on behalf of the USDA that revealing store sales information would lead to “substantial competitive harm,” the FMI asserted that that food retailers didn’t have to demonstrate competitive harm to prevail in this case.
The line of questioning from the justices hinted at the case’s larger implications: Should the Court decide that businesses can withhold data without showing competitive harm, it could set a precedent for companies across industries to withhold any and all data.
While the Court is expected to announce its decision at the end of June, food policy analysts reiterate that, in keeping with the spirit of the goals of the SNAP program, the information should become available.
“This is really a public investment,” Wilde said. “The public has made an investment in preventing hunger through the SNAP program. I think of this as being not so much the government sharing [companies’] trade secrets but really about sharing the government’s own investment in food retail by location.”
Unfortunately, none of what Axios got hold of is at all surprising.
By Charles P. Pierce June 24, 2019
GETTY IMAGES
Axios got a leak of documents like you dream about over the weekend. Hell, they got a leak like Seymour Hersh would dream about. Somebody handed over the vetting materials prepared by the transition team at Camp Runamuck, which rhymes with clusterfck, which is what it was.
“To be honest, the process was such a disaster and such a shit-show and there were so many unqualified people coming through that the issues with [future HUD Secretary Ben] Carson don’t really stick out to me,” said one RNC vetter. “You know, I’m like, ‘Oh gentle Ben is unqualified and thinks that pyramids store grain or whatever. Great. At least he’s not beating his wife and his wife’s not appearing on Oprah.'”
“We’d be sitting around and Trump would be like, ‘Oh, hey, I’m bringing like Joe Shmoe up to Bedminster for Department of Interior,’ and then we were like, ‘F—, we need to run a vet on this guy to make sure he’s not a kid-toucher,'” said one source involved in the vetting. “It was just a clown show.”
“I think I truly understood what less than half of the people were being vetted for,” said another source involved in the vetting. “Totally inadequate resources for the overall process. … We would probably run through dozens [of contenders] a day.”
And from this shitshow, we got:
One red flag for Gen. David Petraeus, who was under consideration for Secretary of State and National Security Adviser: “Petraeus Is Opposed to Torture.”
Mick Mulvaney, who became Trump’s Budget Director and is now his acting chief of staff, has a striking assortment of “red flags,” including his assessment that Trump “is not a very good person.”
One heading in the document about Kris Kobach, in the running for Homeland Security Secretary, listed “white supremacy” as a vulnerability. It cited accusations from past political opponents that he had ties to white supremacist groups.
Seema Verma, who Trump appointed as the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, had this paragraph near the top of her vetting form: “Verma was simultaneously advising Indiana ($3.5 million in contracts) on issues impacting how it would spend Medicaid funds while she was also being paid by a client that received Medicaid funds. Ethics experts have called the arrangement a conflict of interest that potentially put Indiana taxpayers at risk.”
Sonny Perdue, Trump’s pick for Agriculture Secretary, had a vetting form with sections labeled “Business conflicts of interest” and “Family conflicts of interest.” It noted that “Perdue is the owner of Houston Fertilizer and Grain, a company that has received contracts from the Department of Agriculture.”
A lot of the “red flags” in the documents refer to the applicant’s previous doubts about the president*’s character, his qualifications, and his general unfitness for office. A lot of the people being vetted got jobs anyway because, a) they were willing to swallow whatever vestigial consciences they had, or b) that the Camp Runamuck team didn’t have any better ideas.
Nobody could have watched Betsy DeVos’s calamitous hearing and believed she had any business running anything more complicated than a yard sale. Mnuchin’s vetting file is fat with horror stories about his career with OneWest, the foreclosure mill he helped run. But there were hearings with his actual victims, and those people meant no more to the Senate than they had meant to Mnuchin and OneWest. He practically spit in the Senate’s eye when they asked him about $95 million in real-estate Mnuchin had neglected to list on his disclosure forms. He said he was confused by the term “investment assets.” And everyone who believes that, please stand on your head until further notice.
Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.
Lizzo continued her domination of summer 2019 with an incredible performance of her song “Truth Hurts” at the BET Awards Sunday night, where she appeared atop a wedding cake in a veil, bridal lingerie, and a killer pair of sunglasses, and twerked while playing the flute. This comes on the heels of her MTV Movie & TV Awards performance of “Juice,” which featured a tribute to the movie Sister Act.
Basically, Lizzo is giving us all the viral performance clips we need and even Rihanna—and her new red hair—could not deny her excellence last night, giving her a standing ovation. Could anything feel better than a RiRi standing O? We’re guessing not.
But praise from Rihanna aside, Lizzo’s motivation for the performance was much deeper. “There’s nothing I’d rather see than black girls falling in love with themselves on T.V.,” she tweeted. “Big girls—you are IT! YOU ARE ALWAYS the bride in a marriage of SELF-LOVE!”
The social media reactions from fans watching on television was incredibly positive. “Ok @lizzo you did that shit!! When you pull that flute bitch I jump out my chair!!!” Saturday Night Live‘s Leslie Jones tweeted. “MY GIRL @LIZZO WILL GIVE YOU A PRODUCTION! THE ENERGY! THE NARRATIVE! THE COSTUMES! THE THIGHS! THE BUNDLES! THE DAGGONE FLUTE PLAYING WHILE TWERKING!” another Twitter user wrote. “@RIHANNA knows what it is everyone should be standing. The category issssss 100% THAT BISH!”
Do you think it’s too much to ask for a Lizzo and Rihanna collaboration—perhaps for RiRi’s new album?
Watch the performance for yourself below:
.@Lizzo slayed "Truth Hurts"!! 😍👰🏾 #BETAwards pic.twitter.com/BxtjsgzuWG
— BET (@BET) June 24, 2019
Corporate zombies, that is. Kept alive by easy-money policies, companies that should have gone out of business keep staggering around.
By Brett Arends, Columnist June 24, 2019
Long-term interest rates just fell off a cliff.
And if you think they can’t keep falling, think again.
Albert Edwards, a strategist at SG Securities, pointed out in a recent note that none of the experts surveyed by the Wall Street Journal at the start of the year predicted 10-year Treasury yields would fall below 2.5%.
Current level: 2%.
No fewer than 12% of non-financial companies on major developed stock markets could be “zombie” companies.
I guess we can toss those forecasting models out the window.
He adds that mainstream economists have been saying for years that long-term rates would never end up at zero percent.
Yet rates in Europe are now negative. People are paying half a percent a year for the privilege of lending money to the government of Switzerland. Even in the U.S., 10-year rates adjusted for inflation are only 0.29%. A generation ago, they were typically 2% or better.
Western economists used to say that zero percent rates were a weird and unique thing you only saw in Japan — like people eating raw puffer fish and hoping not to die. It would never catch on over here, they said.
But they already have. Today European rates are even lower than those in Japan.
When U.S. rates first collapsed in 2011-2012, we were assured it was a freak one-off event and was never going to happen again.
When it happened again in 2016, we were told it was, well, a “two-off” event that was certainly never going to happen a third time.
Now it’s happening a third time, and I guess we’re waiting for the official line on why, once again, this is just a temporary derangement and nothing to worry about.
But the Bank for International Settlements — the central banks’ central banks — says there is something to worry about, and it’s the reason that economic growth, inflation and interest rates can’t get off the ground: zombies.
No, I’m not making this up.
The BIS says there are way too many zombies around, and they’re killing the economy, and it’s all the fault of low interest rates.
We’re talking “corporate zombies,” of course.
The BIS found that, ever since the 1980’s, falling interest rates have made it easier and easier for bad companies with lousy management and terrible products and dismal prospects to stay in business long after they should have gone the way of all flesh.
These “zombie” companies can stay alive — or whatever the correct term is for zombies — if they can just keep borrowing. Bankers call this “extend and pretend” (as in, “extend the term of the loan, and pretend it’s ever going to be repaid.”)
And when money gets cheaper, that’s great for zombies. Lower interest rates are correlated with rising numbers of zombie companies, the BIS found.
And there are a lot of zombies around. The BIS reckons no fewer than 12% of the non-financial companies on major developed stock markets could be “zombie” companies, at least by a loose definition.
This is an epidemic. In the early 1990’s, the figure was about 2%.
Zombie companies are bad for the rest of the economy. Forget about being an economist: Think about the worst company you ever worked for. Think about all the waste that took place — all the money, time, effort and potentially valuable real estate wasted by idiot managers and self-serving bureaucracies and terrible technology and all the rest.
Replicate that to make up 12% of the economy. There. Now you understand why economic growth has been so sluggish for a generation. Now you know why the stock market is so hooked on the Federal Reserve.
Hey, don’t blame me. Blame the BIS.
We’d all be better off if badly run companies were put out of their misery, economists agree. But as long as interest rates are low and debt is cheap, they keep staggering around.
Zombies have never had it so good. As the interest rate on 10-year Treasuries has fallen, so have rates on junk bonds. In other words, the rate paid by zombie companies.
Since the start of the year, the typical high-yield bond yield has fallen by a quarter, from 8% to 6%, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Albert Edwards says we’re in an economic Ice Age. The BIS says we’ve got too many zombies. The U.S. president is a clown. There’s a horror movie in this somewhere.
But look on the bright side. Wall Street’s having another party.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen nearly 2,000 points since investors began expecting falling interest rates earlier this month. The S&P 500 Index has climbed 7.5%. What could possibly go wrong?
Brett Arends is a MarketWatch columnist.
May, 2019
Wildlife: ⬇️
Biodiversity: ⬇️
Human population: ⬆️
📕 Read more: https://wef.ch/2U32fU6
Here are 3 terrifying facts that show how much we’re damaging the earth
Wildlife: ⬇️ Biodiversity: ⬇️ Human population: ⬆️ 📕 Read more: https://wef.ch/2U32fU6
Posted by Video – World Economic Forum on Thursday, April 25, 2019
By Marie Ines Zamudio
This story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Miguel Pérez Jr. locked himself in a hotel room for an entire weekend in one of the most dangerous cities along the border between the United States and Mexico.
A Mexican native, Pérez, 41, grew up in Chicago. He enlisted in the military and served two tours in Afghanistan. When he returned home, he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.
Those struggles led to a drug-related conviction that landed him in state prison for seven years. While there, he received treatment for his condition, both therapy and medication. But that conviction also triggered deportation proceedings. After a year in an immigrant detention center, Pérez was deported to Matamoros, Mexico.
In that hotel room, as he waited for his friend to pick him up and take him to Tijuana, Pérez began to feel the weight of his new reality.
Pérez held his documents and two days worth of medication close to him. He was alone and overcome with anxiety, as he tried to figure out a way to live in a country he’d left when he was a boy.
“That night, I don’t really think I slept either. And … it was a big room, and I spent all night in one corner fixing my paperwork, separating everything. And then you hear gunshots down the street right outside,” Pérez said.
While veterans with service-related injuries have access to medical care, since his deportation Pérez has struggled to find mental health professionals and medication.
He suffered a traumatic brain injury from combat. He’s battled depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts for years. But living alone and thousands of miles away from his family in Chicago, suicide has felt like a solution for Pérez. Last year, on two occasions, he attempted to take his own life.
“I think it was when I was just feeling really, really bad. And … I just started shaking and sweating. And I couldn’t really do anything,” Pérez said. “That’s when it first happened and I was just like … maybe I’d be better off dead.”
Pérez is among hundreds of veterans who have been deported in recent years. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report revealed that an estimated 92 veterans were deported from 2013 to 2018. But the numbers are far higher, according to groups of deported veterans.
The GAO report also found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement “did not consistently follow its policies involving veterans who were placed in removal proceedings.”
Those policies include considering a veteran’s military service during removal proceedings. But Nicole Alberico, an ICE spokeswoman, said Pérez’s military service was taken into consideration when he was deported.
“Any action taken by ICE that may result in the removal of an individual with military service must be authorized by the senior leadership in the field office following an evaluation by local counsel,” Alberico said in a written statement. “Still, applicable law requires ICE to mandatorily detain and process for removal individuals who have been convicted of aggravated felonies.”
The U.S. Army declined to comment. A spokesperson said they don’t comment on specific cases.
Once deported, these veterans have been forced to organize and to help each other. Many say they’ve been forced to live in exile without medical care for the injuries they sustained in war. They’ve been deported to countries that feel foreign to them. It’s been decades since they’ve lived there, and some don’t even know the language.
“The main way we’ve been able to cope is by covering for each other and looking out for each other. There’s really nothing else we can do here,” said Hector López, director of United Deported Veterans, which has 40 members.
They are also united by their shared sense of longing for the United States, the country they served.
“Regardless of where we’re born, we all feel like this is not our home. This is not our country,” said Joaquin “Jack” Aviles, co-director of Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana. “Our ties are so strong. And our commitment to our country is stronger than where you were born. We don’t belong to the country we were deported to.” The support house, known by many deported veterans as “the bunker,” has tracked at least 400 deported veterans since it opened in 2014, said Aviles.
In all, about 40 deported veterans live in Tijuana. Another 24 deported veterans started a support house in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, right across the bridge from El Paso, Texas. Another three deported veterans live in central Mexico. And veterans have also been deported to other parts of the world, including India, Costa Rica, the Philippines and Kenya.
WBEZ interviewed more than a dozen deported veterans currently living in Tijuana, Mexico; India; and Kenya. They shared similar stories. They came to the U.S. as children with their families and as legal permanent residents. As adults, they enrolled in the military with the promise of expedited citizenship, which never happened. After serving, they got in trouble with the law. It’s a common story for veterans returning home from battle. However, unlike citizen veterans who run afoul of the law, legal permanent residents can be deported, if they’re convicted of certain felonies.
They also have one thing in common: they want to return to the country they served or, at the very least, they want to receive access to medical care from the U.S. government.
Rudy Melson with Consultants For America’s Veterans has connected dozens of deported veterans with benefits. Melson says deported veterans have few options for healthcare outside the U.S., and it’s harming the most vulnerable.
“Many veterans are totally heavily depressed using substances to cope with their depression. Most may have not been given service connection for depression or PTSD or both. And so they are utilizing substances, drugs and what have you … as a way to cope with service-related mental health issues,” he said. “And as a result of that, we are looking at veterans becoming sicker, more likely to become suicidal because they are not receiving any care — or the care that they’re receiving is not care that has been acknowledged or vetted as care that they would receive in the United States.”
These are some of their stories:
Felipe de Jesús Pérez is a quiet 36-year-old veteran of the Iraq war. He avoids eye contact when he speaks. He’s been deported from California twice, once in 2014 following a domestic violence felony and again in 2018. De Jesús Pérez said he wasn’t aggressive before he went to war. “I never got in trouble before,” he said.
De Jesús Pérez said he couldn’t understand why he was so different when he came back from war.
He feels betrayed by the country he loves, the country he defended, and the country that deported him despite his military service.
“I joined after 9/11 because of what I saw. I loved the country. I did. They didn’t consider anything I did for the country. I got out of the Marines honorably, decorated, went to war and everything. Just to throw me out like that?” he asked.
De Jesús Pérez said he was diagnosed with PTSD and that he’s self-medicating with marijuana. There are limited medical and mental health care options for deported veterans. And that makes him feel like the country he loves doesn’t care about him.
“I’m a veteran. You’re just going to kick us out? To me it’s like, how dare you? I felt used. You’re good enough to send you to war, but now you’re all messed up, let’s get rid of you,” he said.
Edwin Salgado, 37, is also a veteran of the Iraq war and now lives in Ensenada, Mexico, about 60 miles south of Tijuana. Salgado was deported in 2016 from Orange County, California following a drug and weapons conviction. He was honorably discharged, but Salgado found “normal life” difficult. After his divorce, Salgado started using drugs. And since he was having a hard time finding work, he started selling them.
“I felt a little better when I was using,” he said. “It mostly helped me not to think.”
When Salgado was in the Marines, he tried to become a U.S. citizen. But he wasn’t able to finish the process because he was deployed.
Salgado is trying to view his deportation in a positive way. He describes it as a fresh start.
“I’m not trying to go back,” he said. “I would like access to medical treatment at the VA.”
Jiji Kurian, 43, was deported to India in 2012. And while he’s made a new life for himself there, he wants to return home to Kankakee, Illinois, where he grew up.
“I feel lost here,” Kurian said. “I’m married, and I have kids. That’s it. I have no friends. I have no social life. I can’t talk to anyone. Everything that I had before I don’t have. I can’t get used to how they do things here.”
Kurian moved to Illinois with his parents when he was nine years old. He joined the national guard after high school. After serving in the military for six years, he became addicted to cocaine.That’s when he started getting arrested. After multiple felonies ranging from drug possession to distributing cocaine, Kurian was deported.
When he got to India, his father helped him get stable. Since he didn’t speak the language well and didn’t know anyone, his father suggested getting married.
“Here in India, they have arranged marriages. They do it really weird here. They put an ad in the newspaper. I didn’t want to do that, but after a while I was like ok,“ Kurian said. “I went and met some girls that I could marry. Finally, I found one, and I got married.”
Kurian said it took eight months to find his wife. He’s started a new life, but he still doesn’t make enough money in India. He relies on his parents, who live in Kankakee and are both in their 70’s.
“I think the reason they haven’t retired is because they have to help me,” Kurian said.
Joaquin “Jack” Aviles, 43, was brought to California as a baby. He joined the Marines after high school. Aviles was ordered deported in 2001 following a firearm possession felony, but he didn’t understand what that meant.
“I wasn’t conscious of what it meant to be deported,” Aviles said.
At 25, Aviles was deported to Mexico, a country he didn’t know. He spent the rest of his 20s trying to get back home.
“I tried to cross, and I served a two-year federal prison sentence for attempting to enter,” he said. “Since I hadn’t lived [in Mexico], I didn’t really speak the language. I attempted to re-enter [the U.S.] again because that’s my home. That’s my country. “
He was arrested and sentenced to another three years in federal prison for trying to enter the country illegally. By that point, he decided to stop trying to cross the border and to try and find a way to live in Mexico.
“The only thing I’m grateful for is that the Marines did teach me a lot, especially skills to survive,” he said.
He used those skills to learn Spanish, find a wife and a job to support her and their children. He also started advocating for deported veterans living in the bunker.
Alex Murillo, 40, served in the Gulf War, code named Operation Shield and Operation Desert Storm. When he got back, it was hard to adjust to civilian life.
“It’s a similar story for a lot of veterans. Whether it’s alcoholism, or pills or whatever. It’s a self-medication issue that a lot of veterans have. And I was one of those veterans,” Murillo said. “The problems I had, mostly, were life problems. I wasn’t able to get myself together after the military. I had a problem with alcohol abuse. Now, it’s PTSD. But I didn’t know about that stuff until I was diagnosed.”
After serving three years in federal prison following a marijuana conviction, he was deported in 2012. Murillo said non-citizen veterans should be treated like other veterans.
“When a veteran gets in trouble and does his time, the veteran gets to go home to their family. We don’t. Why don’t we get to go home?” he said. “We’re that same veteran that served. We’re the same veteran that was willing to die and put everything on the line for flag and country.”
When he was deported, Murillo was forced to leave his four children in Phoenix. His two girls were ages eight and four. His two boys were ages 12 and 10. His absence deeply impacted his sons. They both became addicted to opioids, Murillo said. Last year, his sons went missing. From his apartment just outside of Tijuana, Murillo looked for ways to search for his boys.
“It’s hard to be a parent over the phone. I tried, but it’s not the same as being there with them, helping them,” he said. “They’ve suffered because of my absence. That weighs on me.”
Murillo spent months looking for them. He finally found them, and they are now living with him in Mexico.
“My kids are going to grow up angry at the system that did this to them,” he said. “I’m one of the few that joins the military. I have PTSD like so many other soldiers. I am a victim of the war on drugs because I was incarcerated for cannabis for three years. I am a victim of mass incarceration. And now my kids are addicted to fentanyl.”
Hector López, 55, moved to California’s Central Valley when he was a toddler. He joined the military in 1982. He was convicted of several marijuana charges. He was deported in 2006. He’s fighting to go back to California with his family.
“I haven’t seen my kids in 12 years. I have grandchildren I haven’t met,” López said.
His father and sister died after he was deported, López said. “I didn’t get to say goodbye to them.”
He says he’s hopeful his marijuana convictions will be expunged now that marijuana is legal in California.
“I’m an American down to the core,” López said. “Apple pie, baseball, football, basketball, you name it. I don’t like flan, and I don’t like soccer.”
Mario Rangel, 56, served in the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division. He’s been stuck living outside Tijuana since 2008. He is a naturalized citizen but can’t prove it. Rangel said he became a citizen at a military base in South Carolina. He lost his naturalization documents and several attempts to recover his military file have failed, Rangel said.
His covert work in the military might be the reason why he hasn’t been able to get proof he was naturalized, Rangel said.
“I didn’t know what I was getting into. That’s the whole Oliver North thing that happened and the Contra hearings. So I don’t know if that has anything to do with my records,” he said.
Rangel was only able to get his medical records. He said he was shot while serving in Colombia.
“Basically what we were doing … we were getting areas that had cocaine that were manufacturing cocaine. And we would raid those. I didn’t understand why we were packaging this shit. Why aren’t we burning it?” Rangel said. “But I found out later about Oliver North and all that stuff. That they were selling arms for drugs.”
José Velasco, 74, was deported a year ago. The Vietnam War veteran was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Velasco said the charges were dropped, but he was still deported.
Velasco tried fighting the deportation until he ran out of money paying for lawyers. He sold his limousine business and moved to Tijuana.
The deportation has left him feeling devastated and betrayed on many levels.
“Have you ever seen a 70-year-old cry? Well, I did,” he said.
Velasco said he was told by military personnel that he was a U.S. citizen. That was a lie. And he doesn’t understand why he was deported since he was never convicted of a crime. He spent all of his savings to fight his deportation case, and he doesn’t know what else to do. Still, he remains committed to getting back to the U.S.
“I will go back. Because that’s my country. I’m more American than the average American. At least I served,” he said. “I’m Mexican by birth. By heart, I’m an American citizen.”
María Inés Zamudio is a reporter for WBEZ’s Race, Class and Communities desk.