The Republicans’ deficit scam is exposed for all to see

The National Debt Clock, a billboard-size digital display showing the increasing US debt, on Sixth Avenue August 1, 2011 in New York.

Stan Honda / AFP / Getty Images

The Republicans’ deficit scam is exposed for all to see

02/01/18 10:03 AM

By Steve Benen

Up until fairly recently, federal officials believed the nation would have to raise the debt ceiling by late March or early April. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office said action will be required even sooner – because the Republican’s $1.5 trillion tax cut is already starting to affect U.S. finances.

According to the budget office, the borrowing limit will most likely need to be raised in early March after the “extraordinary measures” to extend borrowing employed by the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, are exhausted. The budget office previously projected that the debt limit would need to be raised beyond its current level of $20.5 trillion in late March or early April.

The reason for the change stems from the tax cuts, which went into effect in January and are expected to translate into less revenue for the federal government.

A separate New York Times report added this week that annual budget deficits “are creeping up to $1 trillion and the national debt has topped $20 trillion.” The Treasury Department “will need to borrow $441 billion in privately held debt this quarter,” which is the largest sum in eight years.

And yet, Republicans – ostensibly, the nation’s fiscal hawks and stalwarts of fiscal responsibility – have nothing to say about this. The issue has largely disappeared.

Consider this: in Barack Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress in early 2009, the Democratic president mentioned the budget deficit eight times. A year later, in his 2010 State of the Union, Obama went further, mentioning the deficit 13 times.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, delivered his first speech to a joint session last year, and while he briefly referenced the “trade deficit,” he made no mention of the budget deficit. This week, in his State of the Union address, the Republican mentioned the “infrastructure deficit,” but again, when it came to the annual budget shortfall, Trump was literally silent.

The underlying issue here is one of the most cynical political scams Americans have ever seen or will ever see.

As regular readers probably know, it’s one of the few constants in American politics. When George W. Bush was president, Republicans put two wars, two tax cuts, Medicare expansion, and a Wall Street bailout on the national credit card – and made no effort to pay for any of it. Dick Cheney declared that “deficits don’t matter” and Orrin Hatch said it was “standard practice not to pay for things” in the Bush era.

Then Barack Obama was elected and many of those same Republicans decided the fate of Western civilization was dependent on balancing the budget.

Remember the Tea Party movement? According to many of its leaders, one of its principal goals was deficit reduction: annual budget shortfalls, they said several years ago, threatened the future of the nation, its families, and its security.

And because Republicans have an amazing ability to dictate the public conversation, everyone played along, taking the deficit seriously throughout the Obama era. To reject the fiscal argument was to condemn our children and grandchildren to future misery.

Under Obama, however, the deficit shrunk in his first seven years by a trillion dollars – that’s “trillion” with a “t” – at which point the issue quietly lost its potency.

At least in theory, for those who care about the deficit, the issue should be back with a vengeance. But it’s not: even as the deficit gets significantly larger, due entirely to deliberate Republican choices, the public conversation largely ignores the issue. Recent polling from the Pew Research Center found that the deficit is steadily fading as a priority.

But we know from recent history those attitudes will shift back the moment Democrats have some power again, because this cynical game is nothing if not cyclical.

Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/finance/m/b2bab837-3955-3c13-877e-4637415fe085/ss_the-republicans%27-deficit-scam.html

Shown below some figures from:  https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp

While Trump Blames Immigrants for Low Wages, An Alternative Theory Gains Traction Among Economists

Hal Singer , Contributor

WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2018 -- U.S. President Donald Trump(L) delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., the United States, Jan. 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu via Getty Images)

“Since the election, we have created 2.4 million new jobs, including 200,000 new jobs in manufacturing alone. After years of wage stagnation, we are finally seeing rising wages.”

---Donald Trump, State of the Union, January 30, 2018

The President’s rising-wages claim from his State of the Union (SOTU) address sent the fact-checkers into overdrive, with the Washington Post’s Heather Long noting that average hourly earnings grew at the same rate (2.5 percent) as the end of Obama’s presidency, and the Post’s Glenn Kessler observing that real annual wage growth rose at a slower rate in 2017 relative to 2015 and 2016.

Not only are wage levels going sideways, but wages are falling when expressed as a percentage of national income. The share of national income captured by labor (“labor share”) has declined sharply since the early 2000s, falling from 66 percent in 2000 to 58 percent in 2017 according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The decline in the labor share over the past 30 years reflects the gap between labor productivity (which has continued to grow) and compensation (which has stagnated).

Notwithstanding Trump’s misdirection on the wage trajectory, the relevant economic questions are: What is causing wage growth to be so anemic? And what can be done from a policy perspective to accelerate it? The answer to the first question informs the policy implications.

The President is quick to advance an immigration-based hypothesis for sluggish wage growth, suggesting that open borders are to blame (and closed borders are the elixir). To wit, in his SOTU, Trump asserted that “For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They have allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans” (emphasis added). To say that there is lack of economic support for this claim is an understatement. Indeed, the economic literature reveals that immigration does not reduce wages for native-born workers. Ottaviano and Peri (2012) and Borjas (2014) find that foreign-born workers (that is, earlier immigrants) bore the brunt of the wage impact from immigration, with native-born workers actually experiencing a slight increase in wages owing to immigration.

Even if it were true that undocumented immigration had a noticeable effect on the wages of native-born workers, data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that the decline in these inflows has actually been quite modest under Trump. As in so many other areas (think unemployment), the President is taking credit for the culmination of trends that unfolded under his predecessors, years or even decades before he took office.

So if open borders aren’t to blame, as Trump asserts, what is a plausible alternative for stagnating wage growth? Several recent studies have focused on the role of industry concentration. The working theory is that as firms gain control in product markets, the opportunities for job mobility within a given industry are restricted, which permits these firms to exercise buying (or “monopsony”) power in the labor markets.

In Concentrating on the Fall of the Labor Share (2017), MIT economist David Autor and his co-authors use regression models to explain variation in the share of firms’ revenues captured by workers (a variant of the “labor share” mentioned above). They find that concentration of sales of the largest firms in an industry (and of employment) has risen from 1982 to 2012 in each of the six major sectors covered by the U.S. economic census. Controlling for other factors that move the labor share, they find a negative and significant relationship between concentration and the labor share—each percentage point rise in an industry’s concentration index (as measured by the share of shares accruing to the 20 largest firms) predicts a 0.4 percentage point fall in its labor share. In an effort to determine the causes of industry concentration, the authors further find that the fall in labor share is mainly due to a reallocation of labor toward larger and more productive (“superstar”) firms with “lower (and declining) labor shares, rather than due to declining labor shares within most firms.” Why their workers aren’t sharing the productivity gains of these “superstar” firms is an open question that deserves further research.

In Declining Labor and Capital Shares (2016), London Business School economist Simcha Barkai also estimates labor share regressions, with the aim of isolating the impact of industry concentration (a proxy for industry markups above cost). Barkai attributes most of the decline in the labor share to decreased competition, which has allowed firms to spend less on both labor and capital, and thus to keep more profit. He estimates that if competition increased to levels last observed in 1984, wages would increase by 24 percent. With respect to policy implications, he notes that “[it] may well be the case that the forces of technological change and globalization favor dominant firms and are causing the decline in competition. The causes of the decline in competition are left as an open question for future research.”

In The Decline of the U.S. Labor Share (2013), University of Edinburgh economist Michael Elsby and his co-authors study the determinants of payroll shares in a regression model. The authors find that the labor share declines the most in U.S. industries strongly affected by import shocks, which suggests that “offshoring of the labor-intensive component of the U.S. supply chain” (but not immigration) is putting downward pressure on wages. One of the key explanatory variables in their model is unionization-coverage rates. The authors find that “cross-industry variation in changes in unionization rates explains less than 5 percent of the variation in changes in payroll shares across industries.” Although the estimate is not statistically significant at conventional levels, the finding is consistent with the notion that greater worker bargaining power vis-à-vis employers would lead to higher wages.

Most recently, in Labor Market Concentration (2017), Roosevelt Institute economist Marshall Steinbaum and his co-authors analyzed the movements in wage levels (as opposed to wage shares) using a database of job listings in CareerBuilder.com. (I asked Steinbaum why he assessed wage levels as opposed to wage shares, and he told me that he lacked revenue data for the employers in his sample.) The authors find that America’s local labor markets are highly concentrated, and that employers also tended to advertise lower pay in cities and towns, as well as in occupations, where fewer businesses were posting jobs. Controlling for other factors such as “market tightness” (equal to the ratio of vacancies to applications), they estimate that moving from the 25th percentile of labor market concentration to the 75th percentile would lower (advertised) pay level in a metro area by 17 percent. Reflecting its import in policy circles, the one-month-old article already has been reviewed in the Economist, Slate, and the New York Times.

If these researchers are onto something—namely, that industry concentration dictates wage shares and wage levels—it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust enforcement and other labor policies (such as minimum wage, unionization, and state-based occupational licensing).

A bill proposed by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) in September 2017 would require the Government Accountability Office to assess wage impacts of mergers. Senator Corey Booker (D-New Jersey) recently called on the antitrust agencies to consider employment impacts in merger reviews. Perversely, the squeezing of input prices, including for labor, is considered a merger synergy under current antitrust doctrine. Beyond mergers, the antitrust agencies (or state attorneys general or private enforcers) could bring monopsony cases when a dominant firm unilaterally erects artificial restrictions to labor mobility (such as non-competes), or when a group of firms jointly agree not to compete for labor.

So far it seems the industry-concentration hypothesis has not shown up on Trump’s radar. But if the President is seriously concerned about the distribution of income between employers and labor, as opposed to merely increasing the size of the pie via short-term stimulus (think corporate tax cut), he might consider abandoning (or at least supplementing) his immigration-based theories in favor of something with a real basis in economics.

Twitter: @HalSinger

Above is from:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2018/02/01/while-trump-blames-immigrants/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#711b5b1c41ed

San Francisco will wipe out thousands of marijuana convictions dating to 1975

By Sarah Parvini, Rong-Gong Lin II and Cindy Chang

Jan 31, 2018 | 4:40 PM

| SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions dating back to 1975, the district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

San Francisco will retroactively apply California's new marijuana legalization laws to prior convictions, expunging or reducing misdemeanors and felonies dating to 1975, the district attorney's office announced Wednesday.

Nearly 5,000 felony marijuana convictions will be reviewed, recalled and resentenced, and more than 3,000 misdemeanors that were sentenced prior to Proposition 64's passage will be dismissed and sealed, Dist. Atty. George Gascón said. The move will clear people's records of crimes that can be barriers to employment and housing.

San Francisco's move could be the beginning of a larger movement to address old pot convictions, though it's still far from clear how many other counties will follow the famously liberal city's lead.

Proposition 64 legalizes, among other things, the possession and purchase of up to an ounce of marijuana and allows individuals to grow up to six plants for personal use. The measure also allows people convicted of marijuana possession crimes eliminated by Proposition 64 to petition the courts to have those convictions expunged from their records as long as the person does not pose a risk to public safety.

They also can petition to have some crimes reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, including possession of more than an ounce of marijuana by a person who is 18 or older.

"While drug policy on the federal level is going backwards, San Francisco is once again taking the lead to undo the damage that this country's disastrous, failed drug war has had on our nation and on communities of color in particular," Gascón said in a statement. "Long ago we lost our ability to distinguish the dangerous from the nuisance, and it has broken our pocketbooks, the fabric of our communities, and we are no safer for it."

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About 75% of San Franciscans voted to legalize marijuana, the highest margin among all of California's 58 counties. But only 23 petitions for Proposition 64 reduction, dismissal or expungement have been filed over the last year, the district attorney's office said, adding that it does not have any active marijuana prosecutions.

As of September, 4,885 Californians have petitioned the courts to have marijuana convictions expunged or reclassified, but many people don't know about the process, which can be difficult, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, which supported Proposition 64.

"So instead of waiting for the community to take action, we're taking action for the community," Gascón said.

Gascón's announcement came with special resonance in the city's Castro District, a center of efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes in California. One of the biggest advocates of medical marijuana, Dennis Peron, died Saturday; Peron was considered a central figure in promoting the use of marijuana for AIDS patients.

"I'm totally in favor of that," Paul Greenbaum, 72, said of automatic expungement after he walked out of the Apothecarium, a medical and recreational cannabis dispensary in the Castro. "If it's not a crime now, what's the sense in continuing to stigmatize people?"

Greenbaum said he has been regularly smoking pot since he moved to San Francisco when he was 30 years old.

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said there is historical meaning in San Francisco taking this step.

The Castro "was so deeply impacted by the AIDS epidemic. So many people were getting sick and dying, and medical cannabis was a lifeline for many people living with AIDS — a way for people to help with the side effects of the medication, to help with nausea, to help improve their appetite," Wiener said.

Some noted that the district attorney's move could help people with prior convictions improve their livelihoods.

Convictions "really can hold you back from getting a good job," said Redding-area resident Tom Savasta, 32, adding that the move would help people "become more proactive members of society."

A 2016 study by New Frontier Data, a data analytics firm focused on the cannabis industry, found "stark racial disparities in Califor­nia's marijuana-related jail population." Black, Latino and white people all consume and sell marijuana at similar rates, the research found, but black Californians are jailed for marijuana-only offenses at much higher rates — nearly one-quarter of people jailed for those offenses are black.

In a statement, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom said San Francisco's move provides "new hope and opportunities to Californians, primarily people of color, whose lives were long ago derailed by a costly, broken and racially discriminatory system of marijuana criminalization."

Gascón said the disparities outlined in the study "weighed very heavily" in his decision to review people's convictions.

"We know there were tremendous failures in the war on drugs, and we criminalized large sections of our community," he told The Times. "The African American and Latino communities were the most harmed by this."

The district attorney said he hopes other counties will follow in San Francisco's footsteps. Some lawmakers have already started to pursue or support similar measures, including state Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland), who has proposed legislation that would require criminal convictions for marijuana-related offenses to be automatically expunged, placing the burden on the courts.

Proposition 64 was opposed by many law enforcement groups in California, including the California Police Chiefs Assn., the California District Attorneys Assn., the California Narcotic Officers' Assn., the California Peace Officers Assn. and the California State Sheriffs' Assn. They expressed concern about the impact of legalization and question whether the state was prepared for all the implications the law would bring.

In Colorado, where voters legalized pot, prosecutors have been reluctant to erase prior marijuana convictions, said Sam Kamin, professor of marijuana law and policy at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law.

Often, defendants have pleaded guilty to a lesser crime, and prosecutors do not want to wipe their records clean when they may have committed more severe offenses than marijuana possession, Kamin said.

Eric Shevin, a Los Angeles defense attorney who specializes in marijuana law, said many people don't know they can wipe out their convictions or can't afford a lawyer to help with the process.

Shevin has already done a few hundred Proposition 64 petitions, which require preparing a motion and appearing in court several times. He said that process would go much more quickly with prosecutors taking the lead.

"District attorneys certainly have the right to research their own records and dismiss these cases on their own, en masse," Shevin said. "I applaud this D.A. for taking the initiative, and I hope others will follow."

Lin reported from San Francisco; Parvini and Chang from Los Angeles.

sarah.parvini@latimes.com

ron.lin@latimes.com

Above is from:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-san-francisco-marijuana-20180131-story.html

cindy.chang@latimes.com

The full 'Putin list' of Russian oligarchs and political figures released by the US Treasury

.

By Sheena McKenzie, Nicole Gaouette and Donna Borak, CNN

Updated 12:46 PM ET, Tue January 30, 2018

US releases list of Russian oligarchs, political figures

The list, which the US administration had been required by law to release, includes 114 senior political figures and 96 oligarchs, all of whom rose to prominence under Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The administration was required to name the companies and individuals and consider whether to sanction them under legislation meant to punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 US election, as well as its human rights violations, annexation of Crimea and ongoing military operations in eastern Ukraine.

The list, which includes senior members of Putin's Cabinet and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich, reads like the US has "simply rewritten Kremlin's phone book," said Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev in a Facebook Post.

Here it is in full. (Note: Names, spellings and titles are those provided by the US Treasury Department.)

Senior Political Figures

Presidential Administration

1. Anton Vayno: Head, Presidential Administration

2. Aleksey Gromov: First Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

3. Sergey Kiriyenko: First Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

4. Magomedsalam Magomedov: Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

5. Vladimir Ostrovenko: Deputy Head, Presidential Administration

6. Dmitriy Peskov: Deputy lead, Presidential Administration; Presidential Press Secretary

7. Vladislav Kitayev: Chief of Presidential Protocol

8. Andrey Belousov: Aide to the President

9. Larisa Brycheva: Aide to the President

10. Vladislav Surkov: Aide to the President

11. Igor Levitin: Aide to the President

12. Vladimir Kozhin: Aide to the President

13. Yuriy Ushakov: Aide to the President

14. Andrey Fursenko: Aide to the President

15. N ikolay Tsukanov: Aide to the President

16. Konstantin Chuychenko: Aide to the President

17. Yevgeniy Shkolov: Aide to the President

18. Igor Shchegolev: Aide to the President

19. Aleksandr Bedritskiy: Adviser to the President, Special Presidential Representative on Climate Issues

20. Sergey Glazyev: Adviser to the President

21. Sergey Grigorov: Adviser to the President

22. German Klimenko: Adviser to the President

23. Anton Kobyakov: Adviser to the President

24. Aleksandra Levitskaya: Adviser to the President

25. Vladimir Tolstoy: Adviser to the President

26. Mikhail Fedotov: Adviser to the President, Chairman of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights

27. Venyamin Yakovlev: Adviser to the President

28. Artur Muravyev: Presidential Envoy to the Federation Council

29. Garry Minkh: Presidential Envoy to the State Duma

30. Mikhail Krotov: Presidential Envoy to the Constitutional Court

31. Anna Kuznetsova: Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights

32. Boris Titov: Presidential Commissioner for Entrepreneurs' Rights

33. Mikhail Babich: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Volga Federal District

34. Aleksandr Beglov: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Northwestern Federal District

35. Oleg Belaventsev: Plenipotentiary Representative to the North Caucasus Federal District

36. Aleksey Gordeyev: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Central Federal District

37. Sergey Menyaylo: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Siberian Federal District

38. Yuriy Trutnev: Deputy Prime Minister, Plenipotentiary Representative to the Far Eastern Federal District

39. Vladimir Ustinov: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Southern Federal District

40. Igor Kholrnanskikh: Plenipotentiary Representative to the Urals Federal District

41. Aleksandr Manzhosin: Head, Foreign Policy Directorate

42. Vladimir Chemov: Head, Directorate for Interregional and Cultural Ties to Foreign Countries

43. Oleg Govorun: Head, Directorate for Social and Economic Relations with the Commonwealth of Independent States, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia

Cabinet Ministers

44. Drnitriy Medvedev: Prime Minister

45. Igor Shuvalov: First Deputy Prime Minister

46. Sergey Prikhodko: Deputy Prime Minister and Head of the Government Apparatus

47. Aleksandr Khloponin: Deputy Prime Minister

48. Vitaliy Mutko: Deputy Prime Minister

49. Arkadiy Dvorkovich: Deputy Prime Minister

50. Olga Golodets: Deputy Prime Minister

51. Dmitriy Kozak: Deputy Prime Minister

52. Drnitriy Rogozin: Deputy Prime Minister

53. Mikhail Abyzov: Minister for Liaison with Open Government

54. Aleksandr Tkachev: Minister of Agriculture

55. Vladimir Puchkov: Minister of Civil Defense, Emergencies, and Natural Disasters

56. Nikolay Nikiforov: Minister of Communications and Mass Media

57. Mikhail Men: Minister of Construction, Housing, and Public Utilities

58. Vladimir Medinskiy: Minister of Culture

59. Sergey Shoygu: Minister of Defense

60. Maksim Oreshkin: Minister of Economic Development

61. Olga Vasilyeva: Minister of Education and Science

62. Aleksandr Novak: Minister of Energy

63. Aleksandr Galushka: Minister of Far East Development

64. Anton Siluanov: Minister of Finance

65. Sergey Lavrov: Minister of Foreign Affairs

66. Veronika Skvortsova: Minister of Health

67. Denis Manturov: Minister of Industry and Trade

68. Vladimir Kolokoltsev: Minister of Internal Affairs

69. Aleksandr Konovalov: Minister of Justice

70. Maksim Topilin: Minister of Labor and Social Protection

71. Sergey Donskoy: Minister of Natural Resources and Ecology

72. Lev Kuznetsov: Minister of North Caucasus Affairs

73. Pavel Kolobkov: Minister of Sports

74. Maksim Sokolov: Minister of Transportation

Other senior political leaders

75. Valentina Matviyenko: Chairwoman, Federation Council

76. Sergey Naryshkin: Director, Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)

77. Vyacheslav Volodin: Chairman, State Duma

78. Sergey Ivanov: Presidential Special Representative for the Environment, Ecology, and Transport

79. Nikolay Patrushev: Secretary, Security Council

80. Vladimir Bulavin: Head, Federal Customs Service

81. Valery Gerasimov: First Deputy Minister of Defense and Chief of the General Staff

82. Igor Korobov: Chief, Main Intelligence Directorate General Staff (GRU), Ministry of Defense

83. Rashid Nurgaliyev: Deputy Secretary, Security Council

84. Georgiy Poltavchenko: Governor of Saint Petersburg

85. Sergey Sobyanin: Mayor of Moscow

86. Yuriy Cbayka: Prosecutor General

87. Aleksandr Bastrykin: Head, Investigative Committee

88. Viktor Zolotov: Director, Federal National Guard Service

89. Dmitriy Kochnev: Director, Federal Protection Service

90. Aleksandr Bortnikov: Director, Federal Security Service (FSB)

91. Audrey Artizov: Head, Federal Archive Agency

92. Yuriy Chikhanchin: Head, Financial Monitoring Federal Service

93. Aleksandr Linets: Head, Presidential Main Directorate for Special Programs

94. Aleksandr Kolpakov: Head, Presidential Property Management Directorate

95. Valeriy Tikhonov: Head, State Courier Service

96. Aleksey Miller: Chief Executive Officer, Gazprom

97. Igor Sechin: Chief Executive Officer, Rosneft

98. German Gref: Chief Executive Officer, Sberbank

99. Oleg Belozerov: General Director, Russian Railways

100. Andrey Kostin: Chainnan Management Board, VTB

101. Sergey Chemezov: Chief Executive Officer, Rostec

102. Oleg Budargin: Chief Executive Officer, Rosseti

103. Boris Kovalchuk: Chief Executive Officer, Inter RAO

104. Aleksey Likhachcv: General Director, Rosatom

105. Nikolay Tokarev: Chief Executive Officer, Transneft

106. Andrey Akimov: Chief Executive Officer, Gazprombank

107. Nail Maganov: General Director, Tatneft

108. Vitaliy Savelyev: Chief Executive Officer, Aeroflot

109. Andrey Shishkin: Chief Executive Officer, ANK Bashneft

110. Ymiy Slyusar: Chief Executive Officer, United Aircraft Corporation

111. Nikolay Shulginov: Chief Executive Officer, RusHydro

112. Sergey Gorkov: Chief Executive Officer, Vneshekonombank

113. Sergey Ivanov (Jr): Chief Executive Officer, ALROSA

114. Roman Dashkov: Chief Executive Officer, Sakhalin Energy

Trump: 'Ice Caps Were Going to Be Gone, But Now They're Setting Records'

 

President Trump, notorious for his views on climate change, again said something about the topic that's the opposite of what's actually happening.

"The ice caps were going to melt, they were going to be gone by now, but now they're setting records," POTUS told host Piers Morgan during an interview on UK television network ITV broadcast Sunday.

Well, the polar ice caps are indeed setting records—for melting. Here's a GIF showing the extent of the frightening sea ice loss in the Arctic from 1979-2016.

And here's a graph that NASA released last year showing how sea ice extent has sunk to record lows at both poles.

These line graphs plot monthly deviations and overall trends in polar sea ice from 1979 to 2017 as measured by satellites. The top line shows the Arctic; the middle shows Antarctica; and the third shows the global, combined total. The graphs depict how much the sea ice concentration moved above or below the long-term average. (They do not plot total sea ice concentration.) Arctic and global sea ice totals have moved consistently downward over 38 years. Antarctic trends are more muddled, but they do not offset the great losses in the Arctic.Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

After the ITV interview, ten different climate scientists contacted by the Associated Press said Trump was wrong about climate change.

"Clearly President Trump is relying on alternative facts to inform his views on climate change. Ice on the ocean and on land are both disappearing rapidly, and we know why: increasing greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels that trap more heat and melt the ice," Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis explained.

Trump's comment was similar to one he tweeted in 2014: "the POLAR ICE CAPS are at an all time high, the POLAR BEAR population has never been stronger. Where the hell is global warming?"

Trump is a well known climate change denier who infamously said that global warming is a "hoax" invented by the Chinese. Since taking office, he and his administration have rolled back critical environmental protections and pushed for fossil fuels.

When ITV host Morgan asked Trump if he thinks climate change is even happening, the president replied, "There is a cooling, and there's a heating. I mean, look, it used to not be climate change, it used to be global warming. Right? That wasn't working too well because it was getting too cold all over the place."

Of course, 2017 was the hottest year on record without an El Niño. The global ocean was the hottest on record, too.

Trump's remark was consistent with the one he tweeted last month during a cold snap in the East Coast, when he confused temperature with climate. "Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!"

Morgan did not follow up by telling the president that his statements were scientifically untrue.

However, Trump did tell Morgan that he believes in "clean air. I believe in crystal-clear, beautiful water. I believe in just having good cleanliness in all."

Also in the interview, Trump suggested he's open to keeping the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement—even though he's said before that landmark pact of keeping global average temperatures from rising 2°C "was a bad deal for the U.S."

The reason being? He likes French President Emmanuel Macron, who has centered environmental action as a key presidential policy.

"The Paris accord, for us, would have been a disaster," Trump said. "Would I go back in? Yeah, I'd go back in. I like, as you know, I like Emmanuel."

"I would love to, but it's got to be a good deal for the United States," he added.

2017, wasn't just one of the hottest years in modern history, it was also extremely costly. According to a recent report from the National Centers for Environmental Information, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "the U.S. experienced 16 weather and climate disasters with losses exceeding $1 billion, with total costs of approximately $306 billion—a new U.S. annual record."

Above is from:  https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-climate-change-2529631788.html

Puerto Rico Is A Man-Made Disaster

U.S.

Puerto Rico Is A Man-Made Disaster

Charles R. Venator-Santiago,HuffPost 12 hours ago

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Months after hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico, what should have been an example of how one of the most powerful nations in the world could rebuild a territory is instead an example of a man-made catastrophe now moving to the mainland.

Today, about 60 percent of Puerto Rico’s population has access to reliable electric power. Access to potable water is compromised. Food and jobs are scarce, and houses are uninhabitable. More than 40 percent of schools do not have electricity. Thousands of police officers are not showing up to work, and violent crime is rampant.

President Donald Trump’s inability to effectively manage the federal agencies tasked with helping U.S. citizens in need has only compounded the problems created by Congress’ historically discriminatory policies toward Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican government’s ineptitude at addressing local corruption.

One of the roles of the president is managing federal agencies. If the response to this year’s hurricanes has taught us anything, it’s that the agencies charged with assisting the Puerto Ricans are underfunded, understaffed and overextended. Take, for example, the federal response to the housing problem on the island. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers collected tarps under Operation Blue Roof, but five months into the crisis, thousands of them are in storage. The USACE has fulfilled a little more than half of the requests, leaving upwards of 30,000 households without roofs.

Congress should stop treating Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens and step up to finance and supervise the rebuilding of the island.

But the executive branch is only part of the problem.

For more than a century, Congress, with the support of the Supreme Court, has governed Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory ― that is, a territory that can be treated as a foreign country when it is convenient for the federal government. As a result, Congress has frequently authorized less funding for the development of Puerto Rico’s economy and federal assistance programs than it gives to states; it has also provided insufficient funds for infrastructure repair.

Federal lawmakers, again with the support of the Supreme Court, responded to the financial crisis in Puerto Rico by passing the Promesa Act. It declared that Puerto Rico was not a commonwealth with any degree of sovereignty, but was merely a territorial possession of Congress. The legislation created a financial overview board to manage the local economy in order to guarantee that the Puerto Rican government would pay an unpayable debt.

Even before two major hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico’s infrastructure last year, its government wasn’t able to generate sufficient revenue to pay its public debt obligations (some estimates place the debt at over $150 billion). Yet Congress, while it assumed control over Puerto Rico’s economy and while its financial oversight board sought to impose some of the failed austerity measures used in Kansas and Greece, has simultaneously refused to assume responsibility over the economic woes afflicting its territory.

And just last month, while it was clear that hurricanes had devastated the Puerto Rican economy, the tax reform bill Congress passed imposed new tariffs or taxes on U.S. companies that held foreign subsidiaries in Puerto Rico. The tariffs could force companies to choose between operating in Puerto Rico and leaving the island ― and could cost the Puerto Rican economy billions of dollars in local taxes and significant job losses.

What happens when a state does not have the necessary resources to absorb a traumatized migrant and provide for him and his family?

Unfortunately, some local politicians have also hindered efforts to help Puerto Ricans. During the hurricanes, Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Roselló failed to activate the island’s emergency management plan, and his administration’s response was poorly coordinated. It took him 40 days to assess damages and ask for federal money for rebuilding projects.

Roselló’s administration initially refused to hire the established American Public Power Association and instead granted multimillion-dollar contracts to shoestring companies like Whitefish Energy and Cobra Acquisitions to raise power lines across the island. Local media report almost every day that mayors and agencies on the island are embezzling federal relief money, and relying on partisan clientelism to provide or deny local services across the island.

The governor consistently refused to provide a transparent audit of the Puerto Rican government’s finances, and is busy trying to distract resident with a dead-end campaign for statehood.

Roselló proposed a fiscal plan last week that depends heavily on Congress’ commitment to give Puerto Rico more than $50 billion over the next five years. The plan operates on deficit spending and doesn’t promise to balance the government’s budget for another five years. It also doesn’t include payments to bondholders, which has been a nonstarter for the financial oversight board in the past. The board agreed to make a decision on the fiscal plan by Feb. 23.

As for Puerto Rican citizens, some are now being moved to the mainland without the necessary financial support. Under current practices, the Federal Emergency Management Agency assists in bringing Puerto Ricans to the mainland, providing temporary assistance with housing and a small amount of money to help rebuild homes on the island.

However, as we are experiencing in Connecticut, the state government is expected to assume responsibility for the well-being of the migrant once he or she arrives. Earlier this month, for instance, 36 families living at a Red Roof Inn in Hartford were abruptly told that they would have to leave earlier than expected after there was an error with FEMA paperwork. (The state stepped up to cover the cost of lodging at that hotel and others.)

The humanitarian crisis on the island is being moved to the mainland. What happens when there is no available work, housing or medicine? What happens when a state does not have the necessary resources to absorb a traumatized migrant and provide for him and his family?

Private charitable giving is not going to be enough to help Puerto Ricans. Trump should direct federal agencies to work together and with states, and have the government assume financial responsibility over the lives of these U.S. citizens. Congress should stop treating Puerto Ricans as second-class citizens and step up to finance and supervise the rebuilding of the island.

Yes, the people of Puerto Rico can and should take this opportunity to conduct a referendum on their own government. But we shouldn’t expect them to take on the challenge of recovering from these terrible disasters alone.

Charles R. Venator-Santiago is an associate professor with a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and El Instituto, University of Connecticut. His most recent book is Hostages of Empire: A Short History of the Extension of U.S. Citizenship to Puerto Rico, 1898-Present.

• This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
• Above is from:  https://www.yahoo.com/news/puerto-rico-man-made-disaster-104656503.html

Is There A Ticking Time Bomb Under The Arctic?

January 24, 20184:37 AM ET

Heard on Morning Edition

Michaeleen Doucleff

Twitter

The Permafrost Tunnel Research Facility, dug in the mid-1960s, allows scientists a three-dimensional look at frozen ground.

Kate Ramsayer/NASA

A short drive north of Fairbanks, Alaska, there's a red shed stuck right up against a hillside. The shed looks unremarkable, except for the door. It looks like a door to a walk-in freezer, with thick insulation and a heavy latch. Whatever is behind that door needs to stay very cold.

"Are you ready to go inside?" asks Dr. Thomas Douglas, a geochemist at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Behind the door is a geological time bomb, scientists say. No one knows exactly how big the bomb is. It may even be a dud that barely detonates. But the fallout could be so large that it's felt all around the world. Now there's evidence that, in the past few years, the bomb's timer has started ticking.

Douglas opens the shed door, and we step inside. Immediately, we're standing 40 feet below ground, inside a tunnel carved into the hillside.

"That's a mammoth leg right there," Douglas says as he points to a giant femur protruding from the tunnel wall.

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All around are signs of extinct creatures. Tusks poke out of the ceiling and skulls stick up from the floor. But it's the material between the bones that interests Douglas the most: the permafrost.

In the 1960s, the Army dug the tunnel so it could study this unique surface, which covers about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. In some places, the frozen soil extends downward more than 1,000 feet, or about the height of the Empire State Building.

A mammoth bone sticks out of the wall of the tunnel in the permafrost.

Kate Ramsayer/NASA

Technically, permafrost is frozen soil. But it's helpful to think of it in terms of chocolate cake. Typically, cake is soft, moist and spongy. Now if you take that cake, dip it into water and freeze it, the cake becomes hard or stiff. That's exactly what happens to soil when you freeze it: Moist, soft soil turns hard and stiff. That's permafrost.

For the first time in centuries, the Arctic permafrost is beginning to change — rapidly. It's warming up. Some places are softening like a stick of butter left out on the kitchen counter.

In northern Alaska, the temperature at some permafrost sites has risen by more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in November. And in recent years, many spots have reached record temperatures.

"Arctic shows no sign of returning to reliably frozen region of recent past decades," NOAA wrote in its annual Arctic Report Card last year.

The consequences of this warming could have ripple effects around the world.To explain why, Douglas takes me deeper down into the tunnel.

"This is really an amazing feature," he says, shining his flashlight up to the ceiling. Crispy grass is dangling upside-down above our heads.

"It's green grass — from 25,000 years ago," he exclaims. "It has been preserved that way for 25,000 years."

The permafrost is packed with the remains of ancient life. From prehistoric grass and trees to woolly mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, just about every creature that lived on the tundra over the past 100,000 years is buried and preserved down in the permafrost.

And all this life is made of carbon. So there's a massive amount of carbon buried down here. "The permafrost contains twice as much carbon as is currently in Earth's atmosphere," Douglas says. "That's 1,600 billion metric tons."

In fact, there's more carbon in the permafrost, Douglas says, than all the carbon humans have spewed into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution — first with steam trains, then with coal plants, cars and planes.

Ice wedges form over centuries, creating polygonal patterns in the permafrost.

Kate Ramsayer/NASA

Right now the permafrost carbon is inert and trapped in the frozen soil. But what happens when the soil thaws? That's the question Douglas and his colleagues are trying to figure out.

A few years ago, they ran a simple experiment. They brought big drills into the tunnel and cut out chunks of ice. "We collected pieces about the size of Coca-Cola cans," he says, as he points out holes in the tunnel's wall.

They took the ice back to the lab and let it slowly come up to room temperature. Then they looked for signs of life. A few days later, something started growing — slowly at first, but then like gangbusters.

The tunnel turned up a variety of ice age mammal bones — including the giant leg bone of a mammoth.

Kate Ramsayer/NASA

"This is material that stayed frozen for 25,000 years," Douglas says. "And given the right environmental conditions, it came back alive again vigorously."

They were ancient bacteria. And once they warmed up, they were hungry. The bacteria started converting the carbon that's in dead plants and animals into gases that cause climate change: carbon dioxide and methane.

That experiment was in the lab. But imagine these bacteria waking up, all around the Arctic, across Canada, Greenland and Russia. Last year, scientists started seeing signs of this happening in northern Alaska.

"We have evidence that Alaska has changed from being a net absorber of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to a net exporter of the gas back to the atmosphere," says Charles Miller, a chemist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who measures gas emissions from Arctic permafrost.

Scientists don't know yet how much carbon will get released from thawing permafrost or how fast it will happen. Some of the carbon — maybe a big percentage of it — will get washed into the ocean by erosion. Some of the carbon will also get sucked back into the ground by new trees and plants popping up across the warming tundra.

But once carbon begins to percolate up through the thawing soil, it could form a feedback loop "over which we would have zero control," Miller says. The gas, coming from the ground, warms the Earth, which in turn causes more gas to be released and more warming to occur.

Thawing permafrost is a big wild card of climate change.

Above is from:  https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/24/575220206/is-there-a-ticking-time-bomb-under-the-arctic