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Payback
Dedicated to the Fools, Racists, and Ignorant
People who vote for the GOP and trump or don't vote because they claim it is not important
dec 6, 2019
400 years and they have learned nothing
8 disturbing trends that reveal the South’s battered psyche
From Salon: Across red-state America, especially in the Deep South, the latest statistics show that the cycle of poverty, in its many manifestations, is unchanged and holding firm. Why is this? It’s easy to say this is how Republicans like to run states—cutting budgets, not raising the minimum wage, opposing labor unions. They let the poor and working class stew in their hardscrabble juices. Meanwhile, they distract voters by accusing liberals of waging war on the few sources of personal power in Southerners’ difficult lives: their religious beliefs and owning guns. But go back several decades when segregationist Democrats ruled; for the most part, they weren’t very different from today’s Republicans.
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
So what is it that perpetuates decades of poverty in the Deep South? What follows are eight bundles of statistics tracking this latest cycle of poverty. Could it be that people who historically have been treated badly, who have little money in their pockets but look to the sky and pray, expect less from others—including the public and private sector? Does that explain why red-staters cling to God, gun ownership and a “leave-me-alone” ferocity?
They expect politicians to defend their values and their pride and little more?
What’s going on here isn’t entirely political, even if it is used by red-state Republicans in their personal drive for power and influence. Look at what the following statistics reveal about red-staters trapped in deep cycles of poverty. What is the thread that connects lousy governance, bad health, evangelical religion and firearms fervor?
1. Southern states have the most poor people.
2. Deep South states have no minimum wage.
3. Deep South has lowest economic mobility.
4. South has lowest per capita spending by state government.
5. Forget about decent preventative healthcare.
6. One result: people self-medicate in response.
7. Forget the lottery, just pray to Jesus.
8. And hold onto that gun!
payback headlines - how you are screwed!!
*PAUL KRUGMAN EXPLAINS THE DEPRESSING TRUTH ABOUT LIFE AND DEATH IN RED STATES
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Senate’s most famous anti-science member is OK with flooding his neighbors — if it keeps his lake view(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Yet another independent study just found Americans have been stuck paying Trump's tariffs(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Deep red town's only grocery closed, city hall opened its own store. Just don't call it 'socialism'(ARTICLE BELOW)
*STUDY: STATES THAT EXPANDED MEDICAID SAVED 19,000 LIVES, STATES THAT DIDN'T LOST 15,000
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘I’m very upset’: Furious Texas rancher says Trump is ‘secretly’ trying to steal land to build ‘the wall’(ARTICLE BELOW)
*DAVID CAY JOHNSTON EXPLAINS HOW TRUMP’S TRADE TARIFFS ARE REALLY A TAX ON HIS BASE
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The four Midwestern states that sealed Trump’s 2016 win projected to face economic downturn in 2020(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The U.S. deficit hit $984 billion in 2019, soaring during Trump era
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*The Midwest’s economy is ‘faltering’ — just over a year before Trump faces re-election: Wall Street Journal(ARTICLE BELOW)
*President Trump: I’m One of the Workers You Lied To
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*China agriculture delegation scraps U.S. farm visit to Montana
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO GUT FOOD STAMPS, HITTING RED STATES HARDEST
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*GOP Senators Who Backed Trump’s Emergency Declaration Lose Military Funding
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump’s crazed tweets are literally hurting your 401(k): Bank of America
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*'It's devastating'. End of GM in Ohio town as Trump fails to bring back midwest jobs
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump intervention triggered EPA's surprise biofuel waiver decision: sources
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*U.S. Farmers Stung by Tariffs Now Face a $3.5 Billion Corn Loss
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We were betrayed!’ Iraqi Christian who backed Trump in 2016 furious after president deports her uncle(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘We’re not doing great’: Furious farmers unleash on Trump’s Ag Secretary after he tells joke about whining farmers(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump tariff war victim: Minnesota farmer auctions off what little he has to keep century-old family farm(ARTICLE BELOW)
*American farmer: Trump trade war ‘took away all our markets’
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump shafted family farmers to give trade war bailouts to huge corporate farms instead: report
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*‘Don’t sell your homes – those plants are not closing’: Trump told voters who are now losing their jobs(ARTICLE BELOW)
*As the coal industry falls apart, miners face losing their pensions
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Trump's tariffs trip up the all-American RV industry
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Fiscal collapse of coal towns all but certain, new research shows
(ARTICLE BELOW)
*A major American steelmaker has lost 70% of its market value since Trump slapped steep tariffs on the metal last year(ARTICLE BELOW)
*Millions to lose benefits under Trump’s proposal to change how poverty is defined, new study shows(ARTICLE BELOW)
PAYBACK FUNNIES(at the end)
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GREEN PARTY FucK YOU! - THIS IS WHAT TRUMP HAS WROUGHT...SAME AS HILLARY
Cattledog - demo. underground
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29 rules have been overturned
Flood building standards Proposed ban on a potentially harmful pesticide Freeze on new coal leases on public lands Methane reporting requirement Anti-dumping rule for coal companies Decision on Keystone XL pipeline Decision on Dakota Access pipeline Third-party settlement funds Offshore drilling ban in the Atlantic and Arctic Ban on seismic air gun testing in the Atlantic Northern Bering Sea climate resilience plan Royalty regulations for oil, gas and coal Inclusion of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews Permit-issuing process for new infrastructure projects Green Climate Fund contributions Mining restrictions in Bristol Bay, Alaska Endangered species listings Hunting ban on wolves and grizzly bears in Alaska Protections for whales and sea turtles Reusable water bottles rule for national parks National parks climate order Environmental mitigation for federal projects Calculation for “social cost” of carbon Planning rule for public lands Copper filter cake listing as hazardous waste Mine cleanup rule Sewage treatment pollution regulations Ban on use of lead ammunition on federal lands Restrictions on fishing |
24 rollbacks are in progress
Clean Power Plan Paris climate agreement Wetland and tributary protections Car and truck fuel-efficiency standards Status of 10 national monuments Status of 12 marine areas Limits on toxic discharge from power plants Coal ash discharge regulations Emissions standards for new, modified and reconstructed power plants Emissions rules for power plant start-up and shutdown Sage grouse habitat protections Fracking regulations on public lands Regulations on oil and gas drilling in some national parks Oil rig safety regulations Regulations for offshore oil and gas exploration by floating vessels Drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge Hunting method regulations in Alaska Requirement for tracking emissions on federal highways Emissions standards for trailers and glider kits Limits on methane emissions on public lands Permitting process for air-polluting plants Offshore oil and gas leasing Use of birds in subsistence handicrafts Coal dust rule |
7 rollbacks are in limbo
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
Methane emission limits at new oil and gas wells
Limits on landfill emissions
Mercury emission limits for power plants
Hazardous chemical facility regulations
Groundwater protections for uranium mines
Efficiency standards for federal buildings
Rule helping consumers buy fuel-efficient tires
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/climate/trump-environment-rules-reversed.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
america's reward for voting for republicans!!!
The True Cost of Voodoo Economics
The Republican Debt is how much of the national debt of the United States
is attributable to
the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush,
George W. Bush, Donald J. Trump,
and
the Republican fiscal policy of Borrow-And-Spend.
As of Wednesday, December 04, 2019 at 3:52:54PM PT,
The Current Republican Debt is:
$14,406,062,364,384.10
which means that in a total of 22 years,
these four presidents have led to the creation of
93.90%
of the entire national debt
in only 9.0535% of the 243 years of the existence of the United States of America.
@ReaganBushDebt.org
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the ultimate payback: vote & live in red states and die quick!!!
Paul Krugman explains the depressing truth about life and death in red states
December 3, 2019
By Alex Henderson, AlterNet- Commentary
Over the years, Paul Krugman has come across his share of Republicans who claim that thanks to right-wing economic policies, the United States is #1 in life expectancy — and the liberal economist and New York Times columnist typically responds that in fact, the U.S. lags behind a long list of developed countries where life expectancy is concerned. Krugman, in his December 2 column for the Times, compares life expectancy rates within the U.S. — demonstrating that the redder the state, the more likely one is to die young.
“Back in the Bush years,” Krugman explains, “I used to encounter people who insisted that the United States had the world’s longest life expectancy. They hadn’t looked at the data, they just assumed that America was No. 1 on everything. Even then, it wasn’t true: U.S. life expectancy has been below that of other advanced countries for a long time.”
Krugman goes on to say, “What I haven’t seen emphasized is the divergence in life expectancy within the United States and its close correlation with political orientation.” And Krugman, drawing on data presented in a 2018 article for the Journal for the American Medical Association, notes that residents of GOP-controlled states are more likely to die younger.
“I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population,” Krugman notes. “In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.”
Krugman attributes this red state/blue state disparity on life expectancy to a variety of factors, including access to health care, obesity rates and education.
“Public policy certainly plays some role, especially in recent years, as blue states expanded Medicaid and drastically reduced the number of uninsured, while most red states didn’t,” Krugman observes. “The growing gap in educational levels has also surely played a role: better-educated people tend to be healthier than the less educated.”
Krugman also notes, “The prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.”
Krugman ends his column by noting that Attorney General William Barr has blamed “militant secularists” for suicide rates and substance abuse problems in the U.S., explaining why Barr’s claim is misleading.
“European nations, which are far more secularist than we are, haven’t seen a comparable rise in deaths of despair and an American-style decline in life expectancy,” Krugman stresses. “And even within America, these evils are concentrated in states that voted for Trump and have largely bypassed the more secular blue states. So, something bad is definitely happening to American society. But the conservative diagnosis of that problem is wrong — dead wrong.”
“Back in the Bush years,” Krugman explains, “I used to encounter people who insisted that the United States had the world’s longest life expectancy. They hadn’t looked at the data, they just assumed that America was No. 1 on everything. Even then, it wasn’t true: U.S. life expectancy has been below that of other advanced countries for a long time.”
Krugman goes on to say, “What I haven’t seen emphasized is the divergence in life expectancy within the United States and its close correlation with political orientation.” And Krugman, drawing on data presented in a 2018 article for the Journal for the American Medical Association, notes that residents of GOP-controlled states are more likely to die younger.
“I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population,” Krugman notes. “In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.”
Krugman attributes this red state/blue state disparity on life expectancy to a variety of factors, including access to health care, obesity rates and education.
“Public policy certainly plays some role, especially in recent years, as blue states expanded Medicaid and drastically reduced the number of uninsured, while most red states didn’t,” Krugman observes. “The growing gap in educational levels has also surely played a role: better-educated people tend to be healthier than the less educated.”
Krugman also notes, “The prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.”
Krugman ends his column by noting that Attorney General William Barr has blamed “militant secularists” for suicide rates and substance abuse problems in the U.S., explaining why Barr’s claim is misleading.
“European nations, which are far more secularist than we are, haven’t seen a comparable rise in deaths of despair and an American-style decline in life expectancy,” Krugman stresses. “And even within America, these evils are concentrated in states that voted for Trump and have largely bypassed the more secular blue states. So, something bad is definitely happening to American society. But the conservative diagnosis of that problem is wrong — dead wrong.”
voters keep voting republican and drowning!!!
The Senate’s most famous anti-science member is OK with flooding his neighbors — if it keeps his lake view
November 27, 2019
By Sarah Okeson, DCReport @ RawStory
Sen Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, tucked an amendment into the $750 billion defense spending bill that would benefit fellow wealthy homeowners at Grand Lake in northeast Oklahoma by keeping lake levels high but is expected to worsen flooding in nearby Miami, Okla.
The amendment, which starts on page 1,183 of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, would limit the ability of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to say how high the lake should be. The Grand River Dam Authority, which has board members who also own lake houses, is licensed by the commission to operate the dam.
“He’s helping his buddies to make sure the lake is full during summer so those very big boats do well,” said Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded which put up a billboard in Miami criticizing Inhofe.
Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees was created in 1940, when the federal government’s New Deal-era Public Works Administration built the Pensacola Dam on the Grand River. The 66-mile-long lake is so beloved by the wealthy and powerful of Oklahoma that one of its subdivisions is called Governors Retreat. Inhofe, a climate-change denier and vocal anti-environmentalist with an estimated net worth is $4.5 million, built a vacation house at Grand Lake in 1962. Former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and her husband bought a second home on Grand Lake in 2011. Dam authority board members Pete Churchwell, Jim Richie and Tom Kimball also have lake houses.
“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote the commission in 2016.
Law professor Richard Painter said the annual defense bill has been used before to try to get environmentally questionable projects through Congress. In 2018, the Senate defense bill included an amendment that would nullify lawsuits over a land exchange for PolyMet Mining Co. to build a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. That provision was removed before the bill went to the president.
“That’s something that should not be dealt with in a defense appropriations bill,” said Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
The federal financial conflict of interest law exempts members of Congress, the president and the vice president. Miami officials learned about Inhofe’s amendment just before the July 4 holiday from the press.
“It’s just as unfair as it can be,” said Miami City Manager Dean Kruithof.
Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, most recently in May. A 2015 study Miami paid for found that the dam worsened flooding.
“The economic and social fabric of the community is slowly being destroyed,” said Miami Mayor Rudy Schultz.
Natasha McKibben spent her oldest son’s eighth birthday packing up their house near Miami, shortly before it flooded in 2007, causing $30 million to $40 million in damage to Miami and the surrounding area. Some of her neighbors’ houses are still vacant.
“We had a FEMA trailer for probably two months before we could get back in the house,” McKibben said.
Miami officials had hoped to address flooding problems with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license for the dam runs through March 2022. The dam authority now wants to extend the license until Dec. 31, 2026.
The amendment, which starts on page 1,183 of the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act, would limit the ability of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to say how high the lake should be. The Grand River Dam Authority, which has board members who also own lake houses, is licensed by the commission to operate the dam.
“He’s helping his buddies to make sure the lake is full during summer so those very big boats do well,” said Rebecca Jim of Local Environmental Action Demanded which put up a billboard in Miami criticizing Inhofe.
Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees was created in 1940, when the federal government’s New Deal-era Public Works Administration built the Pensacola Dam on the Grand River. The 66-mile-long lake is so beloved by the wealthy and powerful of Oklahoma that one of its subdivisions is called Governors Retreat. Inhofe, a climate-change denier and vocal anti-environmentalist with an estimated net worth is $4.5 million, built a vacation house at Grand Lake in 1962. Former Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and her husband bought a second home on Grand Lake in 2011. Dam authority board members Pete Churchwell, Jim Richie and Tom Kimball also have lake houses.
“For the better part of my career in the United States Senate I have been working to maintain higher lake levels on Grand,” Inhofe wrote the commission in 2016.
Law professor Richard Painter said the annual defense bill has been used before to try to get environmentally questionable projects through Congress. In 2018, the Senate defense bill included an amendment that would nullify lawsuits over a land exchange for PolyMet Mining Co. to build a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota. That provision was removed before the bill went to the president.
“That’s something that should not be dealt with in a defense appropriations bill,” said Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.
The federal financial conflict of interest law exempts members of Congress, the president and the vice president. Miami officials learned about Inhofe’s amendment just before the July 4 holiday from the press.
“It’s just as unfair as it can be,” said Miami City Manager Dean Kruithof.
Since the early 1990s, Miami has flooded more than two dozen times, most recently in May. A 2015 study Miami paid for found that the dam worsened flooding.
“The economic and social fabric of the community is slowly being destroyed,” said Miami Mayor Rudy Schultz.
Natasha McKibben spent her oldest son’s eighth birthday packing up their house near Miami, shortly before it flooded in 2007, causing $30 million to $40 million in damage to Miami and the surrounding area. Some of her neighbors’ houses are still vacant.
“We had a FEMA trailer for probably two months before we could get back in the house,” McKibben said.
Miami officials had hoped to address flooding problems with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The license for the dam runs through March 2022. The dam authority now wants to extend the license until Dec. 31, 2026.
Yet another independent study just found Americans have been stuck paying Trump's tariffs
Gina Heeb - business insider
Nov. 25, 2019, 03:05 PM
The costs of punitive tariffs rolled out against China over the past year have largely fallen on US businesses and consumers, the New York Federal Reserve said Monday.
The central bank found in a new study that Chinese businesses have not significantly lowered prices on exports to the US in response to the trade dispute that began in early 2018. That signaled that Americans have instead had to absorb additional import taxes levied by the Trump administration, estimated at around $40 billion annually.
"The continued stability of import prices for goods from China means US firms and consumers have to pay the tariff tax," Fed economists Matthew Higgins, Thomas Klitgaard, and Michael Nattinger wrote in the study.
The findings added to a long string of research that has contradicted a repeated claim by President Donald Trump: that foreign exporters have paid the import taxes of up to 25% on thousands of products.
The White House has continued to assert that claim even after the same conclusion was reached in several other major independent studies, including from Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago.
"China is paying us tremendous — and they're paying for it," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting last week. "Those tariffs are not paid by us. Those tariffs are paid because they're devaluing their currency and pouring cash into their economy."
But the New York Fed said its findings suggested Chinese firms have not used exchange rates to maintain competitiveness through lower prices.
"Instead, they've accepted the loss in competitiveness in the US market and have used the weaker currency to pad profits on each unit of sales," Higgins, Klitgaard, and Nattinger wrote.
- The costs of punitive tariffs that rolled out against China over the past year have largely fallen on US businesses and consumers, the New York Fed said Monday.
- The findings added to a long string of independent research with the same results.
- That contradicts a repeated claim by President Donald Trump that China pays tariffs.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The costs of punitive tariffs rolled out against China over the past year have largely fallen on US businesses and consumers, the New York Federal Reserve said Monday.
The central bank found in a new study that Chinese businesses have not significantly lowered prices on exports to the US in response to the trade dispute that began in early 2018. That signaled that Americans have instead had to absorb additional import taxes levied by the Trump administration, estimated at around $40 billion annually.
"The continued stability of import prices for goods from China means US firms and consumers have to pay the tariff tax," Fed economists Matthew Higgins, Thomas Klitgaard, and Michael Nattinger wrote in the study.
The findings added to a long string of research that has contradicted a repeated claim by President Donald Trump: that foreign exporters have paid the import taxes of up to 25% on thousands of products.
The White House has continued to assert that claim even after the same conclusion was reached in several other major independent studies, including from Princeton, Yale and the University of Chicago.
"China is paying us tremendous — and they're paying for it," Trump said at a Cabinet meeting last week. "Those tariffs are not paid by us. Those tariffs are paid because they're devaluing their currency and pouring cash into their economy."
But the New York Fed said its findings suggested Chinese firms have not used exchange rates to maintain competitiveness through lower prices.
"Instead, they've accepted the loss in competitiveness in the US market and have used the weaker currency to pad profits on each unit of sales," Higgins, Klitgaard, and Nattinger wrote.
DEEP RED TOWN'S ONLY GROCERY CLOSED, CITY HALL OPENED ITS OWN STORE. JUST DON'T CALL IT 'SOCIALISM'
IronLionZion - demo underground
11/22/19
BALDWIN, Fla. — When Sean Lynch ran for mayor, he never anticipated that the job would involve hiring a butcher and tracking the sale of collard greens.
But in 2018, two years into his first term, the only grocery store in town shut down. People in Baldwin, Fla., a rural outpost in northeast Florida, were left with few options. They could leave town, driving 10 miles through road construction to nearby Macclenny or battling 20 miles of freeway traffic through Jacksonville’s suburban sprawl. Alternatively, they could cobble together a meal out of canned goods from the local Dollar General, or head to a nearby truck stop for greasy, deep-fried fast food.
For many of Baldwin’s roughly 1,600 residents, though, traveling for food wasn’t really a choice. The town’s median household income of $44,271 is well below the state average, and it’s not uncommon for families to juggle their schedules around sharing one car. Senior citizens also make up a significant percentage of the population, and many no longer drive.
So Lynch came to his colleagues with a proposal: What if the town opened its own grocery store?
Abandoned by mainstream supermarkets whose business models don’t have room for low profit margins, both urban and rural communities nationwide have turned to resident-owned co-ops or nonprofits to fill the gap. But Baldwin is trying something different. At the Baldwin Market, which opened its doors on Sept. 20, all of the employees are on the municipal payroll, from the butcher to the cashiers. Workers from the town’s maintenance department take breaks from cutting grass to help unload deliveries, and residents flag down the mayor when they want to request a specific type of milk.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/
But in 2018, two years into his first term, the only grocery store in town shut down. People in Baldwin, Fla., a rural outpost in northeast Florida, were left with few options. They could leave town, driving 10 miles through road construction to nearby Macclenny or battling 20 miles of freeway traffic through Jacksonville’s suburban sprawl. Alternatively, they could cobble together a meal out of canned goods from the local Dollar General, or head to a nearby truck stop for greasy, deep-fried fast food.
For many of Baldwin’s roughly 1,600 residents, though, traveling for food wasn’t really a choice. The town’s median household income of $44,271 is well below the state average, and it’s not uncommon for families to juggle their schedules around sharing one car. Senior citizens also make up a significant percentage of the population, and many no longer drive.
So Lynch came to his colleagues with a proposal: What if the town opened its own grocery store?
Abandoned by mainstream supermarkets whose business models don’t have room for low profit margins, both urban and rural communities nationwide have turned to resident-owned co-ops or nonprofits to fill the gap. But Baldwin is trying something different. At the Baldwin Market, which opened its doors on Sept. 20, all of the employees are on the municipal payroll, from the butcher to the cashiers. Workers from the town’s maintenance department take breaks from cutting grass to help unload deliveries, and residents flag down the mayor when they want to request a specific type of milk.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/11/22/baldwin-florida-food-desert-city-owned-grocery-store/
Study: States that expanded Medicaid saved 19,000 lives, states that didn't lost 15,000
Joan McCarter for Daily Kos
Saturday November 16, 2019 · 8:00 AM PST
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports on a new study of all the states in the nation, demonstrating that those that took Medicaid expansion "saved the lives of at least 19,200 adults aged 55 to 64 over the four-year period from 2014 to 2017." The flip side is that 15,600 older adults died prematurely in the states that didn't accept the expansion in those years.
Following on other studies which have found that more low-income adults in Medicaid expansion states have used medication to control chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes, researchers at the University of Michigan, National Institutes of Health, Census Bureau, and University of California Los Angeles have found clear evidence of a drop in mortality from these kinds of chronic conditions. The researchers focused on the group of pre-Medicare older Americans who have higher mortality rates and have a greater risk of premature death from treatable conditions. Using this group, they constructed a "novel dataset that links the American Community Survey—the largest federal survey with information on income, age, and other determinants of Medicaid eligibility—with administrative death records. The large sample lets them detect small changes in mortality that aren’t evident in other data." It also reaches a threshold that makes it statistically significant.
Their findings are significant: "In 2014 the annual mortality rate for low-income older adults in expansion states fell by about 9 deaths per 10,000 people, compared to similar adults in non-expansion states, with the impact growing each year to about 21 deaths per 10,000 people in year 4." That's how they determine the total numbers of avoided deaths and premature deaths in expansion and non-expansion states. They compared these numbers to National Highway Traffic Safety Commission data, and figured out that if all of the states had expanded Medicaid, as many lives would have been saved by coverage as by seatbelts.
That's 2,920 premature deaths in Texas that could have been prevented; 2,776 in Florida; 1,400 in North Carolina; and 1,336 in Georgia. What the study doesn't get into is how saving tens of thousands of lives by managing chronic conditions saved families and the states money that would have gone to critical or end-of-life care; how many people were able to remain active and in the work force; and how quality of life was affected for individuals and their families.
None of this matters to the Republican lawmakers who decided they had to refuse the expansion because Obama (or, for that matter, Chief Justice John Roberts, who engineered the whole debacle of states being able to turn it down under the law). Remember all of these numbers as the debate over Medicare for All heats up when we have a Democratic president again. And never forget that Republicans really don't give a damn if you live or die.
Following on other studies which have found that more low-income adults in Medicaid expansion states have used medication to control chronic conditions like heart disease and diabetes, researchers at the University of Michigan, National Institutes of Health, Census Bureau, and University of California Los Angeles have found clear evidence of a drop in mortality from these kinds of chronic conditions. The researchers focused on the group of pre-Medicare older Americans who have higher mortality rates and have a greater risk of premature death from treatable conditions. Using this group, they constructed a "novel dataset that links the American Community Survey—the largest federal survey with information on income, age, and other determinants of Medicaid eligibility—with administrative death records. The large sample lets them detect small changes in mortality that aren’t evident in other data." It also reaches a threshold that makes it statistically significant.
Their findings are significant: "In 2014 the annual mortality rate for low-income older adults in expansion states fell by about 9 deaths per 10,000 people, compared to similar adults in non-expansion states, with the impact growing each year to about 21 deaths per 10,000 people in year 4." That's how they determine the total numbers of avoided deaths and premature deaths in expansion and non-expansion states. They compared these numbers to National Highway Traffic Safety Commission data, and figured out that if all of the states had expanded Medicaid, as many lives would have been saved by coverage as by seatbelts.
That's 2,920 premature deaths in Texas that could have been prevented; 2,776 in Florida; 1,400 in North Carolina; and 1,336 in Georgia. What the study doesn't get into is how saving tens of thousands of lives by managing chronic conditions saved families and the states money that would have gone to critical or end-of-life care; how many people were able to remain active and in the work force; and how quality of life was affected for individuals and their families.
None of this matters to the Republican lawmakers who decided they had to refuse the expansion because Obama (or, for that matter, Chief Justice John Roberts, who engineered the whole debacle of states being able to turn it down under the law). Remember all of these numbers as the debate over Medicare for All heats up when we have a Democratic president again. And never forget that Republicans really don't give a damn if you live or die.
‘I’m very upset’: Furious Texas rancher says Trump is ‘secretly’ trying to steal land to build ‘the wall’
November 17, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - raw story
Ranchers in Laredo, Texas, are furious as they’re learning President Donald Trump is stealing their land away to build the “wall,” he says, has already been built.
During a campaign stop in Louisiana Thursday, Trump said that his wall is “going up faster than anyone thought possible.” But when probed about it, Trump’s own top border official confirmed none of the wall has been built, in fact, all that has been built replaced existing structures.
Only four miles of the area where the Trump “wall” is going is owned by the federal government already. So, the White House is now calling land-owners on the Texas border to beg them to cooperate with their landgrab.
Surveyors are being sent in to outline how much will be taken from Texans through eminent domain.
David Acevedo is a Texas rancher on the border that has owned the land for three generations of his family after his grandfather migrated to the U.S. after Pancho Villa’s revolution, over 100 years ago. His grandfather then purchased the land and began his own ranch there.
“We got a phone call to attend a meeting in their south station heading out to our property,” Acevedo said. “And I felt it was a little — 20 owners probably showed up to this meeting that they invited. I had communicated with other neighbors of mine to go out to the meeting because there was going to be a meeting discussing the border wall. And it was my surprise that whoever was on that list was allowed into the meeting, and no media was allowed in. And none of the neighbors were allowed in, only the people that they called which was about a group of 20.”
“When they gave us the survey and site assessments, they provided a little site-plan for the property, and they showed pretty much what area was going to be affected,” he continued. “In our case, it was probably about 20 percent of our property of the 180 acres. It all depends they were saying that it was all going to be referencing the river and how would it affect the floodplain in the area to depend on how much property was going to be affected.”
Acevedo said he was “very upset” and specifically bothered by all of the secrecy surrounding it.
“I wish people could come out and take a look at our place,” he said. “You know, it is a beautiful place. The scenery is great. Recreation is great. There is plenty of wildlife, you know we’ve been farming and growing hay for cattle production for many, many years now and I don’t see how they can say hey, we want to go over there and build a wall there.”
During a campaign stop in Louisiana Thursday, Trump said that his wall is “going up faster than anyone thought possible.” But when probed about it, Trump’s own top border official confirmed none of the wall has been built, in fact, all that has been built replaced existing structures.
Only four miles of the area where the Trump “wall” is going is owned by the federal government already. So, the White House is now calling land-owners on the Texas border to beg them to cooperate with their landgrab.
Surveyors are being sent in to outline how much will be taken from Texans through eminent domain.
David Acevedo is a Texas rancher on the border that has owned the land for three generations of his family after his grandfather migrated to the U.S. after Pancho Villa’s revolution, over 100 years ago. His grandfather then purchased the land and began his own ranch there.
“We got a phone call to attend a meeting in their south station heading out to our property,” Acevedo said. “And I felt it was a little — 20 owners probably showed up to this meeting that they invited. I had communicated with other neighbors of mine to go out to the meeting because there was going to be a meeting discussing the border wall. And it was my surprise that whoever was on that list was allowed into the meeting, and no media was allowed in. And none of the neighbors were allowed in, only the people that they called which was about a group of 20.”
“When they gave us the survey and site assessments, they provided a little site-plan for the property, and they showed pretty much what area was going to be affected,” he continued. “In our case, it was probably about 20 percent of our property of the 180 acres. It all depends they were saying that it was all going to be referencing the river and how would it affect the floodplain in the area to depend on how much property was going to be affected.”
Acevedo said he was “very upset” and specifically bothered by all of the secrecy surrounding it.
“I wish people could come out and take a look at our place,” he said. “You know, it is a beautiful place. The scenery is great. Recreation is great. There is plenty of wildlife, you know we’ve been farming and growing hay for cattle production for many, many years now and I don’t see how they can say hey, we want to go over there and build a wall there.”
David Cay Johnston explains how Trump’s trade tariffs are really a tax on his base
November 11, 2019
By David Cay Johnston, DC Report @ Raw Story- Commentary
Candidate Donald Trump railed against America’s chronic trade deficits, vowing to eliminate them if he became president.
So, how’s Trump doing? Awful. Trade deficits are growing on his watch.
The overall trade deficit in September was 21% larger than during his first full month in office.
In 2016, under President Barak Obama, America imported $502.9 billion more in goods and services than it sold in exports.
In 2018, under Trump, that ballooned to $627.7 billion, an increase of $124.7 billion, and the deficit is on pace to run even deeper in 2019. For the nine months ending in September, the overall trade deficit was $481.3 billion, up $24.8 billion for the same period of 2018.
Trump’s tariffs are a tax on Americans, paid by companies who import goods and then either passed on to consumers or absorbed as reduced profits.
Trump always rails about the trade in goods, ignoring services such as accounting, banking, and insurance.
Our deficit in goods traded with China grew through last year. Indeed, the 2018 deficit of $419.5 billion was the largest on record, up a whopping 21% over the $346.8 billion of Obama’s last calendar year as president. So far, 2019 looks like it will come in around $360 billion.
The deficit with China is smaller not because Trump’s policies haven’t so much altered the balance of trade as shrunk the volume of trade. That, in turn, means fewer jobs for Americans, close to 11 million of whom, the Commerce Department estimates, owe their jobs to trade with China.
Mexico, Too
And what of Mexico, another Trump trade bugaboo? In 2016, Obama’s last year, our trade deficit in goods was $63.3 billion. That rose to $80.7 billion in 2018. That’s a 27% increase under Trump.
In just the first nine months of this year, our Mexico goods deficit was $76.1 billion, meaning this year will easily set a new record deficit.
Trump’s disregard for trade in services is a most curious omission for a man who boasts, falsely, that he has an economics degree from Penn’s famous Wharton School of Finance. His degree, for which he mostly did independent studies while working for his father, is from a one-professor real estate department at Penn that was under Wharton, which is a graduate school.
Equally troubling is Trump’s mistaken belief that China and Mexico pay the tariffs he has placed on their goods.
Trump’s tariffs are not paid by China. Tariffs are a tax on Americans, paid by companies who import goods and then either passed on to consumers or absorbed as reduced profits. The Treasury Department, by the way, calls them “customs duties.”
Americans Pay the Price
Trump’s tariffs cost Americans $71 billion in the first nine months of the calendar year.
So far, Trump has spent $28 billion of your tax money in bailout money for soybean and other Midwest farmers whose major market he decimated with his anti-China trade policies. The damage may last years or decades because China switched to other countries for soybeans, promising to buy up to $50 billion a year from Brazil.
Think of that as a Trump “Put Brazilian Farmers First” policy.
During a Sept. 4 news conference on Hurricane Dorian, the one that he falsely said would hit Alabama, Trump veered off into China trade with assertions that were just as false:
“We have a lot of—we’ve taken in tens of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Prices have not gone up, or they’ve gone up very little. China has paid for most of that, and I say paid for all of it. China has now had the worst year that they’ve had in 57 years. This is the worst year they’ve had in 57 years. And they want to make a deal; we’ll see what happens.”
That was such nonsense that anyone who knows their Chinese history laughed. In 1962 China was a poor farm country with minimal industry. It was still under Mao, whose policies resulted in mass starvation that some historians estimate at 45 million people dying.
What is fact is that the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy has slowed to its lowest level in the last three decades.
Tariffs Wipe Out Income Tax Cuts
The Trump tariffs pretty much wipe out the modest income tax savings that went to the bottom 90% of Americans under the Trump/Radical Republican tax cut law enacted in December 2017. Most of its savings went to corporations and the top 1%.
So, while Trump has tricked millions of Americans into believing he cut their tax burdens, he has actually raised their total burden with his tariffs.
Trump’s tariffs are also slowing economic growth and in time will mean 512,000 fewer jobs than if the tariffs had never been imposed, Tax Foundation has noted.
Analysis by Trade Partnership, a consulting firm, asserted that the “biggest winners from tariffs on Chinese cell phones are other foreign producers. Manufacturers in Korea and Vietnam would see annual export revenues grow by about $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively. American consumers, on the other hand, would pay over $8.1 billion more for cell phones.”
Prices of laptops, video games and toy drones are also expected to rise significantly, costing American consumers billions more for those who do buy. The study predicted a 35% drop in laptop purchases.
Because there is virtually no laptop manufacturing in the United States, “American consumers would pay $785 in new out of pocket expenses for each $1 in new revenue for American manufacturers,” Trade Partnership estimated.
Remember that as an example of Trump’s ignorance of trade benefits.
So, how’s Trump doing? Awful. Trade deficits are growing on his watch.
The overall trade deficit in September was 21% larger than during his first full month in office.
In 2016, under President Barak Obama, America imported $502.9 billion more in goods and services than it sold in exports.
In 2018, under Trump, that ballooned to $627.7 billion, an increase of $124.7 billion, and the deficit is on pace to run even deeper in 2019. For the nine months ending in September, the overall trade deficit was $481.3 billion, up $24.8 billion for the same period of 2018.
Trump’s tariffs are a tax on Americans, paid by companies who import goods and then either passed on to consumers or absorbed as reduced profits.
Trump always rails about the trade in goods, ignoring services such as accounting, banking, and insurance.
Our deficit in goods traded with China grew through last year. Indeed, the 2018 deficit of $419.5 billion was the largest on record, up a whopping 21% over the $346.8 billion of Obama’s last calendar year as president. So far, 2019 looks like it will come in around $360 billion.
The deficit with China is smaller not because Trump’s policies haven’t so much altered the balance of trade as shrunk the volume of trade. That, in turn, means fewer jobs for Americans, close to 11 million of whom, the Commerce Department estimates, owe their jobs to trade with China.
Mexico, Too
And what of Mexico, another Trump trade bugaboo? In 2016, Obama’s last year, our trade deficit in goods was $63.3 billion. That rose to $80.7 billion in 2018. That’s a 27% increase under Trump.
In just the first nine months of this year, our Mexico goods deficit was $76.1 billion, meaning this year will easily set a new record deficit.
Trump’s disregard for trade in services is a most curious omission for a man who boasts, falsely, that he has an economics degree from Penn’s famous Wharton School of Finance. His degree, for which he mostly did independent studies while working for his father, is from a one-professor real estate department at Penn that was under Wharton, which is a graduate school.
Equally troubling is Trump’s mistaken belief that China and Mexico pay the tariffs he has placed on their goods.
Trump’s tariffs are not paid by China. Tariffs are a tax on Americans, paid by companies who import goods and then either passed on to consumers or absorbed as reduced profits. The Treasury Department, by the way, calls them “customs duties.”
Americans Pay the Price
Trump’s tariffs cost Americans $71 billion in the first nine months of the calendar year.
So far, Trump has spent $28 billion of your tax money in bailout money for soybean and other Midwest farmers whose major market he decimated with his anti-China trade policies. The damage may last years or decades because China switched to other countries for soybeans, promising to buy up to $50 billion a year from Brazil.
Think of that as a Trump “Put Brazilian Farmers First” policy.
During a Sept. 4 news conference on Hurricane Dorian, the one that he falsely said would hit Alabama, Trump veered off into China trade with assertions that were just as false:
“We have a lot of—we’ve taken in tens of billions of dollars in tariffs from China. Prices have not gone up, or they’ve gone up very little. China has paid for most of that, and I say paid for all of it. China has now had the worst year that they’ve had in 57 years. This is the worst year they’ve had in 57 years. And they want to make a deal; we’ll see what happens.”
That was such nonsense that anyone who knows their Chinese history laughed. In 1962 China was a poor farm country with minimal industry. It was still under Mao, whose policies resulted in mass starvation that some historians estimate at 45 million people dying.
What is fact is that the spectacular growth of the Chinese economy has slowed to its lowest level in the last three decades.
Tariffs Wipe Out Income Tax Cuts
The Trump tariffs pretty much wipe out the modest income tax savings that went to the bottom 90% of Americans under the Trump/Radical Republican tax cut law enacted in December 2017. Most of its savings went to corporations and the top 1%.
So, while Trump has tricked millions of Americans into believing he cut their tax burdens, he has actually raised their total burden with his tariffs.
Trump’s tariffs are also slowing economic growth and in time will mean 512,000 fewer jobs than if the tariffs had never been imposed, Tax Foundation has noted.
Analysis by Trade Partnership, a consulting firm, asserted that the “biggest winners from tariffs on Chinese cell phones are other foreign producers. Manufacturers in Korea and Vietnam would see annual export revenues grow by about $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively. American consumers, on the other hand, would pay over $8.1 billion more for cell phones.”
Prices of laptops, video games and toy drones are also expected to rise significantly, costing American consumers billions more for those who do buy. The study predicted a 35% drop in laptop purchases.
Because there is virtually no laptop manufacturing in the United States, “American consumers would pay $785 in new out of pocket expenses for each $1 in new revenue for American manufacturers,” Trade Partnership estimated.
Remember that as an example of Trump’s ignorance of trade benefits.
Trump "Accomplishments"
The four Midwestern states that sealed Trump’s 2016 win projected to face economic downturn in 2020
November 5, 2019
By Brad Reed - raw story
President Donald Trump owes his big 2016 victory to his wins in the Midwestern states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
However, Bloomberg reports that new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia show that those four key states are expected to experience economic contractions next year, even as the American economy as a whole will keep growing.
So while the economy may not harm the president on a national level, it may harm his prospects of keeping the states he needs to win the electoral college again.
“The information that people are going to get about the state of the economy is going to be different in different states,” Christopher Wlezien, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, tells Bloomberg. “They don’t rely on just what’s happening to them. They care about what’s happening around them.”
The data don’t show these states will enter a technical recession, which would require two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, although just one quarter of contraction could be enough to harm the president’s claim that Americans are living through the “best economy ever.”
Bloomberg also shows that the president’s trade war with China is a “likely” major reason for these states’ slowdowns, as they are major agricultural states that have had difficulty in seeing their exports to China slashed.
However, Bloomberg reports that new data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia show that those four key states are expected to experience economic contractions next year, even as the American economy as a whole will keep growing.
So while the economy may not harm the president on a national level, it may harm his prospects of keeping the states he needs to win the electoral college again.
“The information that people are going to get about the state of the economy is going to be different in different states,” Christopher Wlezien, a political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, tells Bloomberg. “They don’t rely on just what’s happening to them. They care about what’s happening around them.”
The data don’t show these states will enter a technical recession, which would require two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, although just one quarter of contraction could be enough to harm the president’s claim that Americans are living through the “best economy ever.”
Bloomberg also shows that the president’s trade war with China is a “likely” major reason for these states’ slowdowns, as they are major agricultural states that have had difficulty in seeing their exports to China slashed.
congratulations to all the geniuses who vote for republicans!!!
The U.S. deficit hit $984 billion in 2019, soaring during Trump era
Spending increases, tax cuts, and political apathy fueled the surge.
By Heather Long and Jeff Stein - washington post
Oct. 25, 2019 at 11:58 a.m. PDT
The U.S. government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, a $205 billion increase from a year earlier, as America’s fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth.
The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. The deficit is up nearly 50 percent in the Trump era. Since taking office, Trump has endorsed big spending increases and steered most Republicans to abandon the deficit obsession they held during the Obama administration.
In 2011, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives pushed to pass a constitutional amendment that would require balanced budgets. And the Obama administration created a deficit commission looking for ways to slow the growth of government debt. But those efforts have all fallen away, and now budget experts believe the country will see trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future.
The gap between spending and revenue, referred to as the deficit, grew to $984 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the highest dollar amount since 2012, according to the Treasury Department. The government spent $4.4 trillion on numerous programs and services and brought in $3.5 trillion through taxes and other revenue.
In releasing the higher deficit figure, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called on Congress “to cut wasteful and irresponsible spending.” But Trump has done little to cut spending since taking office, repeatedly backing away from his own budget proposals and demanding new spending for a border wall. He has recently told aides that he will focus on cutting spending if he is elected to a second term next year.
It is unusual for the government to run such a large budget deficit during a period of economic growth because spending on unemployment and other benefits tend to contract and tax revenue often grows. But the White House and Congress have contributed to the deficit’s surge by enacting large spending increases and passing the 2017 tax cut law. The budget deficit was $665 billion in 2017.
U.S. debt is considered one of the safest investments in the world and interest rates remain low, which is why the government has been able to borrow money at cheap rates to finance the large annual deficits. But the costs are adding up. The government spent around $380 billion in interest payments on its debt last year, almost as much as the entire federal government contribution to Medicaid.
Budget experts have also warned that a lack of focus on the deficit could make it much harder for the U.S. government to respond to the next economic crisis, because policymakers will have less flexibility to enact new spending programs if they are devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to interest payments on the debt.
“This is the first time in our history that we are seeing a boom in the economy at the same time deficits are rapidly rising. It’s alarming,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which supports reducing the deficit.
The Obama administration and Republicans in Congress enacted a series of measures to reduce the deficit starting in 2011, and those measures -- and a growing economy -- led the deficit to fall by almost 50 percent. But those gains have been lost by a recent apathy among policy makers about addressing the fiscal imbalance.
“There is very little discussion among Republicans about the deficit, and virtually no serious outreach to Democrats for any sort of bipartisan deal,” said Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think-tank, and former chief economist for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “The parties are not talking on this issue.”
The government recorded four straight years of budget deficits that exceeded $1 trillion around the time of the Great Recession, with the worst overrun occurring in 2009 when the deficit reached nearly 10 percent of the U.S. economy, the highest level since World War II. A growing economy and steps taken by the Obama administration and Congress shrank the deficit to just 2.4 percent of the economy in 2015, but it slowly began expanding again largely because of spending increases. In 2019, the deficit was 4.6 percent of the economy.
Budget experts also say that the GOP tax cut law has weakened the typical levels of higher tax revenue that come in during economic expansion. The legislation is projected to increase the annual deficit by about $200 billion, or close to $2 trillion over 10 years when factoring in interest payments, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Tax revenues remained roughly flat the first year the law was in effect, despite economic growth of near 3 percent. Tax revenues were modestly higher in fiscal year 2019, aided in part by a 70 percent increase in tariff revenue. White House officials said the GOP tax cuts would create so much new revenue that it would offset any money lost from lower rates, but there are signs the economy is beginning to slow markedly now.
Overall spending is projected to rise by about 16 percent between 2017 and 2020, largely due to bipartisan deals struck by Congress including a 2018 law that lifted spending limits and disaster relief funding, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Military spending has risen dramatically under Trump, from about $550 billion annually to more than $700 billion in 2019, and Democrats successfully pushed for increases to other parts of the budget in exchange for their support to boost money for defense.
The leading Democratic presidential candidates are running on plans for enormous new spending programs that would likely add to the deficit, though some have said they will offset the costs with tax increases. Meanwhile, Republicans have demonstrated little appetite for raising tax revenues after dramatically slashing them in 2017.
America’s fiscal outlook could deteriorate even further should interest rates rise. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates relatively low during this recovery, reducing the cost of borrowing and easing concerns that the deficit could trigger runaway inflation. But Trump has repeatedly urged the Fed to reduce rates close to zero.
America’s expanding federal deficit is an anomaly among developed nations around the world. Nearly all other advanced economy countries are on track to see their debt shrink as a share of their economy over the next five years, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Some economists, particularly on the left, warn against expressing alarm over the widening deficit, arguing that because inflation remains low there is little reason to fear higher deficits.
In January, former Obama administration economists Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers penned an op-ed calling for Washington to “end its debt obsession,” casting doubt on the nightmarish predictions of some deficit hawks.
“If the deficit is helping to support demand, and that support is keeping us moving forward, then I see no reason to complain about the fact that the deficit has increased,” said Stephanie Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University who has served as an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Republican policymakers have made little noise about the deficit under Trump, a contrast with their dire predictions about rising red ink under President Obama.
In 2013, when federal debt totaled $16.7 trillion, Trump tweeted: “Obama is the most profligate deficit & debt spender in our nation’s history.” The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, according to the White House.
Mike Pence called the debt increases under the Obama administration “atrocious.” Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, held a series of “Spending, Debt and Deficit” town halls during the Obama administration and repeatedly criticized lawmakers of both parties for increasing the deficit, including funding relief for Hurricane Sandy.
The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. The deficit is up nearly 50 percent in the Trump era. Since taking office, Trump has endorsed big spending increases and steered most Republicans to abandon the deficit obsession they held during the Obama administration.
In 2011, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives pushed to pass a constitutional amendment that would require balanced budgets. And the Obama administration created a deficit commission looking for ways to slow the growth of government debt. But those efforts have all fallen away, and now budget experts believe the country will see trillion-dollar annual deficits far into the future.
The gap between spending and revenue, referred to as the deficit, grew to $984 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the highest dollar amount since 2012, according to the Treasury Department. The government spent $4.4 trillion on numerous programs and services and brought in $3.5 trillion through taxes and other revenue.
In releasing the higher deficit figure, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called on Congress “to cut wasteful and irresponsible spending.” But Trump has done little to cut spending since taking office, repeatedly backing away from his own budget proposals and demanding new spending for a border wall. He has recently told aides that he will focus on cutting spending if he is elected to a second term next year.
It is unusual for the government to run such a large budget deficit during a period of economic growth because spending on unemployment and other benefits tend to contract and tax revenue often grows. But the White House and Congress have contributed to the deficit’s surge by enacting large spending increases and passing the 2017 tax cut law. The budget deficit was $665 billion in 2017.
U.S. debt is considered one of the safest investments in the world and interest rates remain low, which is why the government has been able to borrow money at cheap rates to finance the large annual deficits. But the costs are adding up. The government spent around $380 billion in interest payments on its debt last year, almost as much as the entire federal government contribution to Medicaid.
Budget experts have also warned that a lack of focus on the deficit could make it much harder for the U.S. government to respond to the next economic crisis, because policymakers will have less flexibility to enact new spending programs if they are devoting hundreds of billions of dollars to interest payments on the debt.
“This is the first time in our history that we are seeing a boom in the economy at the same time deficits are rapidly rising. It’s alarming,” said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which supports reducing the deficit.
The Obama administration and Republicans in Congress enacted a series of measures to reduce the deficit starting in 2011, and those measures -- and a growing economy -- led the deficit to fall by almost 50 percent. But those gains have been lost by a recent apathy among policy makers about addressing the fiscal imbalance.
“There is very little discussion among Republicans about the deficit, and virtually no serious outreach to Democrats for any sort of bipartisan deal,” said Brian Riedl, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think-tank, and former chief economist for Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “The parties are not talking on this issue.”
The government recorded four straight years of budget deficits that exceeded $1 trillion around the time of the Great Recession, with the worst overrun occurring in 2009 when the deficit reached nearly 10 percent of the U.S. economy, the highest level since World War II. A growing economy and steps taken by the Obama administration and Congress shrank the deficit to just 2.4 percent of the economy in 2015, but it slowly began expanding again largely because of spending increases. In 2019, the deficit was 4.6 percent of the economy.
Budget experts also say that the GOP tax cut law has weakened the typical levels of higher tax revenue that come in during economic expansion. The legislation is projected to increase the annual deficit by about $200 billion, or close to $2 trillion over 10 years when factoring in interest payments, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
Tax revenues remained roughly flat the first year the law was in effect, despite economic growth of near 3 percent. Tax revenues were modestly higher in fiscal year 2019, aided in part by a 70 percent increase in tariff revenue. White House officials said the GOP tax cuts would create so much new revenue that it would offset any money lost from lower rates, but there are signs the economy is beginning to slow markedly now.
Overall spending is projected to rise by about 16 percent between 2017 and 2020, largely due to bipartisan deals struck by Congress including a 2018 law that lifted spending limits and disaster relief funding, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Military spending has risen dramatically under Trump, from about $550 billion annually to more than $700 billion in 2019, and Democrats successfully pushed for increases to other parts of the budget in exchange for their support to boost money for defense.
The leading Democratic presidential candidates are running on plans for enormous new spending programs that would likely add to the deficit, though some have said they will offset the costs with tax increases. Meanwhile, Republicans have demonstrated little appetite for raising tax revenues after dramatically slashing them in 2017.
America’s fiscal outlook could deteriorate even further should interest rates rise. The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates relatively low during this recovery, reducing the cost of borrowing and easing concerns that the deficit could trigger runaway inflation. But Trump has repeatedly urged the Fed to reduce rates close to zero.
America’s expanding federal deficit is an anomaly among developed nations around the world. Nearly all other advanced economy countries are on track to see their debt shrink as a share of their economy over the next five years, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Some economists, particularly on the left, warn against expressing alarm over the widening deficit, arguing that because inflation remains low there is little reason to fear higher deficits.
In January, former Obama administration economists Jason Furman and Lawrence Summers penned an op-ed calling for Washington to “end its debt obsession,” casting doubt on the nightmarish predictions of some deficit hawks.
“If the deficit is helping to support demand, and that support is keeping us moving forward, then I see no reason to complain about the fact that the deficit has increased,” said Stephanie Kelton, an economist at Stony Brook University who has served as an adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Republican policymakers have made little noise about the deficit under Trump, a contrast with their dire predictions about rising red ink under President Obama.
In 2013, when federal debt totaled $16.7 trillion, Trump tweeted: “Obama is the most profligate deficit & debt spender in our nation’s history.” The federal government is now more than $22 trillion in debt, according to the White House.
Mike Pence called the debt increases under the Obama administration “atrocious.” Mick Mulvaney, the president’s acting chief of staff, held a series of “Spending, Debt and Deficit” town halls during the Obama administration and repeatedly criticized lawmakers of both parties for increasing the deficit, including funding relief for Hurricane Sandy.
Mawkish, at least when Republicans are in charge
they still support trump, suckers!!!
The Midwest’s economy is ‘faltering’ — just over a year before Trump faces re-election: Wall Street Journal
October 1, 2019
By Brad Reed - raw story
While impeachment is the most immediate danger facing President Donald Trump, the state of the economy is also looking increasingly worrisome.
The Wall Street Journal reports that President Donald Trump’s trade war is still hammering the economy in the Midwestern United States, as both agricultural and manufacturing industries are feeling the pinch from tariffs imposed as retaliatory measures by China.
“Regional economic indicators suggest that the financial health of the Midwest is waning,” reports the Journal. “One heartbeat of the Midwestern economy, farming, has been under serious pressure throughout the spring and summer. Agricultural exports to China have plummeted over the past two years, particularly soybeans.”
The result of this is that farmers’ loan delinquencies and bankruptcies are rising heading just a little over a year before the president is up for reelection next year.
And the economic pain being felt by farmers is now spreading out to other sectors of the Midwestern economy as well.
“The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago tracks nonfarm business activity in five states—Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin—through its Midwest Economy Index. The index was in negative territory for the fifth straight month in August, the Chicago Fed said Monday,” WSJ reports. “Readings below zero indicate that growth is less than the historical average rate. The July reading, at minus 0.37, was the worst since early 2010.”
Read the whole report here.
The Wall Street Journal reports that President Donald Trump’s trade war is still hammering the economy in the Midwestern United States, as both agricultural and manufacturing industries are feeling the pinch from tariffs imposed as retaliatory measures by China.
“Regional economic indicators suggest that the financial health of the Midwest is waning,” reports the Journal. “One heartbeat of the Midwestern economy, farming, has been under serious pressure throughout the spring and summer. Agricultural exports to China have plummeted over the past two years, particularly soybeans.”
The result of this is that farmers’ loan delinquencies and bankruptcies are rising heading just a little over a year before the president is up for reelection next year.
And the economic pain being felt by farmers is now spreading out to other sectors of the Midwestern economy as well.
“The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago tracks nonfarm business activity in five states—Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin—through its Midwest Economy Index. The index was in negative territory for the fifth straight month in August, the Chicago Fed said Monday,” WSJ reports. “Readings below zero indicate that growth is less than the historical average rate. The July reading, at minus 0.37, was the worst since early 2010.”
Read the whole report here.
President Trump: I’m One of the Workers You Lied To
by Tracey Aikman | the smirking chimp
September 22, 2019 - 5:16am
My entire working life has been dictated by offshoring. I’ve spent my career jumping from one factory closing to another.
When President Trump was elected, he said: “Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences.” His promises ring hollow to me after I got my latest layoff notice.
My first job out of high school was at a factory owned by United Technologies in Wabash, Indiana. I showed up to work in March 1991 and a sign on the door read: “Moved to Mexico.” My mother, who worked for a sister factory, also lost her job when her factory was sent south of the border.
I eventually got a union job at Chrysler in Kokomo, Indiana, which allowed me to give my family a middle-class life and build our dream house on five acres of land. In 2008, I got laid off. I lost my house and had to start over financially.
When I got my job at Schneider Electric’s “Square D” plant in Peru, Indiana five years ago, making electrical boxes and equipment, I hoped that this job would sustain me until I was ready to retire.
Unfortunately, the multinational corporation that owns our plant announced this summer that they would be moving our work to Mexico and other plants. Once our plant closes, all of Schneider Electric’s North American factories will be non-union.
Now I’m facing another layoff, even though our Peru plant was profitable. In fact, the same week I was laid off, Schneider Electric announced profits of $2.2 billion for the first half of 2019.
I’m not alone. Workers across the Midwest are suffering the same fate. And President Trump continues to fail us. Instead of punishing companies like Schneider Electric, he has rewarded them with $120 million in federal contracts and a massive tax break. The closure of my factory is sad proof that Trump’s lies have consequences.
Trump’s broken promises have become a broken record destroying our communities, even though here in Miami County, we gave him the vast majority of our votes in 2016.
Right now, Our Revolution, a political advocacy organization inspired by Sen. Bernie Sander’s historic presidential run in 2016, is helping to organize a miracle effort to save our plant. Joined by workers from the shuttered GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio and workers from the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, we are calling on Trump to sign an executive order that would prevent taxpayer dollars from going to companies that are shipping American jobs overseas.
With the next round of layoffs scheduled for September 27, there is no time to waste.
We have one request for President Trump: Use the power of the government over federal contracts to stop our jobs from leaving the United States. Show us that you mean what you said when you promised to be a workers’ champion.
We need your help now — and we’ll remember if we don’t get it.
When President Trump was elected, he said: “Companies are not going to leave the United States anymore without consequences.” His promises ring hollow to me after I got my latest layoff notice.
My first job out of high school was at a factory owned by United Technologies in Wabash, Indiana. I showed up to work in March 1991 and a sign on the door read: “Moved to Mexico.” My mother, who worked for a sister factory, also lost her job when her factory was sent south of the border.
I eventually got a union job at Chrysler in Kokomo, Indiana, which allowed me to give my family a middle-class life and build our dream house on five acres of land. In 2008, I got laid off. I lost my house and had to start over financially.
When I got my job at Schneider Electric’s “Square D” plant in Peru, Indiana five years ago, making electrical boxes and equipment, I hoped that this job would sustain me until I was ready to retire.
Unfortunately, the multinational corporation that owns our plant announced this summer that they would be moving our work to Mexico and other plants. Once our plant closes, all of Schneider Electric’s North American factories will be non-union.
Now I’m facing another layoff, even though our Peru plant was profitable. In fact, the same week I was laid off, Schneider Electric announced profits of $2.2 billion for the first half of 2019.
I’m not alone. Workers across the Midwest are suffering the same fate. And President Trump continues to fail us. Instead of punishing companies like Schneider Electric, he has rewarded them with $120 million in federal contracts and a massive tax break. The closure of my factory is sad proof that Trump’s lies have consequences.
Trump’s broken promises have become a broken record destroying our communities, even though here in Miami County, we gave him the vast majority of our votes in 2016.
Right now, Our Revolution, a political advocacy organization inspired by Sen. Bernie Sander’s historic presidential run in 2016, is helping to organize a miracle effort to save our plant. Joined by workers from the shuttered GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio and workers from the Carrier plant in Indianapolis, we are calling on Trump to sign an executive order that would prevent taxpayer dollars from going to companies that are shipping American jobs overseas.
With the next round of layoffs scheduled for September 27, there is no time to waste.
We have one request for President Trump: Use the power of the government over federal contracts to stop our jobs from leaving the United States. Show us that you mean what you said when you promised to be a workers’ champion.
We need your help now — and we’ll remember if we don’t get it.
hey farmers, the idiot you elected who started the trade war is bankrupting you!!!
China agriculture delegation scraps U.S. farm visit to Montana
Karl Plume - reuters
SEPTEMBER 20, 2019
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Chinese agriculture officials who were due to visit U.S. farm states next week have canceled their trip to Montana as the officials will return to China sooner than originally scheduled, the Montana Farm Bureau told Reuters on Friday.
The cancellation came as U.S.-Chinese trade talks were held in Washington and U.S. President Donald Trump said he wanted a complete trade deal with the Asian nation, not just an agreement for China to buy more U.S. agricultural goods.
It was not immediately clear if visits to other U.S. farm areas were also canceled.
A Chinese Embassy official informed the Montana Farm Bureau that the delegation is returning to China sooner than expected so its goodwill visit, expected as early as Monday, was canceled, said Nicole Rolf, Montana Farm Bureau director of national affairs.
The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The trip had been scheduled for next week as part of an effort to build goodwill during trade negotiations, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters on Thursday.
CNBC reported on Thursday that the group was slated to visit Montana and Nebraska.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and state officials in Nebraska did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The cancellation came as U.S.-Chinese trade talks were held in Washington and U.S. President Donald Trump said he wanted a complete trade deal with the Asian nation, not just an agreement for China to buy more U.S. agricultural goods.
It was not immediately clear if visits to other U.S. farm areas were also canceled.
A Chinese Embassy official informed the Montana Farm Bureau that the delegation is returning to China sooner than expected so its goodwill visit, expected as early as Monday, was canceled, said Nicole Rolf, Montana Farm Bureau director of national affairs.
The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The trip had been scheduled for next week as part of an effort to build goodwill during trade negotiations, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters on Thursday.
CNBC reported on Thursday that the group was slated to visit Montana and Nebraska.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and state officials in Nebraska did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The Trump administration plans to gut food stamps, hitting red states hardest
3.6 million Americans will lose food stamps under a regulatory maneuver nobody in Congress likes. 1.9 million of them live in Trump country.
ALAN PYKE - thinkprogress
SEP 5, 2019, 8:00 AM
President Donald Trump’s latest attack on working families will hit especially hard in the states that voted for him: More than half of the people who are set to lose access to food stamps under regulations proposed this summer live in states that went for Trump in 2016.
One in every twelve people who receives food stamps nationwide will lose them under the policy — some 3.6 million people, according to new analysis by Mathematica, the private policy analysis firm the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has relied upon for the past 40 years.
“I was surprised by the extent of the impact in some of the southern states, such as Texas,” Mathematica senior research programmer Sarah Lauffer said. The impact was always going to be severe in states that apply the current rules in the most generous fashion, but southern states have generally not extended their eligibility lines quite as far. Despite that, Lauffer said, her team found “34% of elderly Texans receiving benefits will lose them through this rule.”
Almost 400,000 people in Texas currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would lose them. Another 328,000 in Florida, 200,000 in New York, 97,000 in Georgia, and 176,000 in Washington state face cuts, to name just a few standouts.
Almost one in five Wisconsin households currently getting help with their groceries will lose the benefit, as well as 16% of such households in Oregon, Nevada, Iowa, and Delaware. Two of every 13 SNAP households in Minnesota and Texas will have to find food money elsewhere.
The administration plans to slash benefits by ending a popular, bipartisan policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE). That policy protects low-wage workers from a quirk of poverty-assistance law known as the “benefits cliff,” whereby earning or saving slightly too much money can trigger a low-income family’s eviction from public assistance programs.
Ending the expanded eligibility system for SNAP will also boot roughly half a million kids out of free school meal programs nationwide. The administration has insisted those kids could all hop right back in by filling out application forms currently mooted by the BBCE system, but experts have warned it doesn’t necessarily work that way.
The administration forecasts a $10 billion total draw-down in SNAP spending over the next five years once the policy is enacted. It didn’t estimate the long-term costs of making families hungrier and more desperate.
“Allowing families whose gross income is a little over the poverty level to receive food assistance helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat,” said Lisa Davis, Senior Vice President at the poverty policy center No Kid Hungry. “Children that don’t get the nutrition that they need end up with worse health-care outcomes, worse physical and cognitive development, they have poorer outcomes in school, they find it harder to concentrate, they don’t do as well on tests, there are more behavioral issues.”
The administration has always known it would be yanking food assistance away from millions. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said as much when they announced the new regulations in August.
“It doesn’t make any sense to us,” Food Research Action Center’s Ellen Vollinger said. “Taking food away from people is just going to make their food security situation worse, make them hungrier. It will have a negative effect on the economy at a time when some economists are warning us we would be in for another downturn.”
Non-profit groups across the country are dutifully filing public comments criticizing the rule and pointing out all the ways the USDA appears to have ignored evidence, congressional intent, and practical facts in issuing its proposal. The 60-day window for such comments closes later in the fall, and the administration will likely face legal challenges if it attempts to handle the objections with a pro-forma sweep of the hand.
But USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has been determined to kill BBCE for months, ever since Congress decided to retain the policy in last year’s Farm Bill. There’s a strong chance the cut – in some form – will have kicked in by this time next year.
These families earn a little more than the statutory maximum income for SNAP eligibility. But that doesn’t mean they can afford to see even the modest food assistance they currently receive disappear from their monthly budgets.
“They’re making trade-offs between what bills to pay. Do they pay the rent, or get a car fixed so they can keep going to work, or keep the lights on?” Davis said. “We see those families cut back on food first. [BBCE] helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat.”
Trump’s policies hit barely-red states hardest
As Thursday’s state-level figures suggest, the categorical eligibility smackdown is going to hit especially hard in four states where very narrow Trump wins in 2016 tilted the electoral college irrevocably in his favor.
Trump won Wisconsin by less than 23,000 votes last time. He’ll have dumped 118,000 Wisconsin residents off of food stamps by Election Day if the rule goes through as planned.
One in every nine people currently benefiting from SNAP in Michigan will be booted under the rule – roughly 165,000 men, women, and children in total. Trump won the state by just 10,704 votes last go round.
In Pennsylvania, which Trump carried by just under 47,000 votes, his food stamps cut will dump more than five times that many people off the food-aid rolls.
The potential economic and electoral self-sabotage is particularly striking given that bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly rejected this precise policy, as recently as last year. The right-wing crusade against broad-based categorical eligibility has never won a majority of Republican hearts and minds. Like the vast majority of voters who oppose cutting food stamps, the rump of GOP elected understand that BBCE is an effective investment in children’s long-term futures, local economies’ short-term health, and working families’ progress up the income ladder.
“For the most part the attacks on SNAP in recent years have not been successful. Congress has decided not to weaken snap in the 2018 farm bill, rejected multiple crazy assaults on it,” Vollinger said.
“We’re hopeful that there will be enough comment and insight brought to bear during this comment period that the administration would reconsider.”
Hunger’s ripple effect
It’s not just SNAP recipients who will feel the impact: The suffering the administration plans to inflict on working-poor families will likely also be felt in higher-income households, too, in the form of a broader economic slowdown. Consumer spending drives the whole economy. Cutting SNAP benefits means consumers have less to spend.
USDA staff issued updated estimates on the economic multiplier effects of SNAP spending earlier this summer. Though the Trump administration team’s official guesstimate is slightly lower than past multipliers, the report includes a variety of models. Each additional dollar of SNAP benefit paid out generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in total economic activity when the economy is struggling, their tables show.
The agency also broke the economic impacts out by sector, with some surprising results. The trade and transportation industry takes the largest hit from SNAP cuts. But across nine major industrial sectors the agency analyzed, the level of cuts to be imposed by the new eligibility restrictions stand to kill between 27,000 and 32,000 jobs per year over the next half-decade.
Forecasters who make their livings predicting what the economy will do next are already starting to worry that a nationwide recession looms. Multiple states have experienced recessions within their own borders in the past two years, and at least two appear to be on the brink of entering new contractions based on sudden jumps in local unemployment rates.
The national economy is still growing, but at a slower pace over the past two quarters than previously. The investor class is souring on long-term U.S. government bonds, producing the dreaded yet tediously named a “yield-curve inversion” – a phenomenon that does not guarantee a recession, but which has occurred prior to every U.S. recession in the last half-century.
The country’s manufacturing sector had been expanding for three straight years, but in August, it contracted – again, not a surefire sign of an overall downturn, but certainly an unhealthy indicator.
Presidents almost always get too much credit for good economies and too much blame for bad ones, as the financier and policy expert Barry Ritholtz noted in a recent column.
But Trump is doing more to actively poke the markets in the eye than your average president. And while the economist and investor classes grow alarmed about the sorts of sophisticated technical indicators that make the business pages, the administration is also planning to jab the working poor with a sharp stick.
Whether the SNAP cuts Trump seeks would help tip the country into a recession or not, they are certain to make life harder for people ill-positioned to absorb such a pinch. Presidents seeking re-election generally rise or fall with the health of the economy they’re credited – fairly or unfairly – with creating.
One in every twelve people who receives food stamps nationwide will lose them under the policy — some 3.6 million people, according to new analysis by Mathematica, the private policy analysis firm the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has relied upon for the past 40 years.
“I was surprised by the extent of the impact in some of the southern states, such as Texas,” Mathematica senior research programmer Sarah Lauffer said. The impact was always going to be severe in states that apply the current rules in the most generous fashion, but southern states have generally not extended their eligibility lines quite as far. Despite that, Lauffer said, her team found “34% of elderly Texans receiving benefits will lose them through this rule.”
Almost 400,000 people in Texas currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits would lose them. Another 328,000 in Florida, 200,000 in New York, 97,000 in Georgia, and 176,000 in Washington state face cuts, to name just a few standouts.
Almost one in five Wisconsin households currently getting help with their groceries will lose the benefit, as well as 16% of such households in Oregon, Nevada, Iowa, and Delaware. Two of every 13 SNAP households in Minnesota and Texas will have to find food money elsewhere.
The administration plans to slash benefits by ending a popular, bipartisan policy known as broad-based categorical eligibility (BBCE). That policy protects low-wage workers from a quirk of poverty-assistance law known as the “benefits cliff,” whereby earning or saving slightly too much money can trigger a low-income family’s eviction from public assistance programs.
Ending the expanded eligibility system for SNAP will also boot roughly half a million kids out of free school meal programs nationwide. The administration has insisted those kids could all hop right back in by filling out application forms currently mooted by the BBCE system, but experts have warned it doesn’t necessarily work that way.
The administration forecasts a $10 billion total draw-down in SNAP spending over the next five years once the policy is enacted. It didn’t estimate the long-term costs of making families hungrier and more desperate.
“Allowing families whose gross income is a little over the poverty level to receive food assistance helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat,” said Lisa Davis, Senior Vice President at the poverty policy center No Kid Hungry. “Children that don’t get the nutrition that they need end up with worse health-care outcomes, worse physical and cognitive development, they have poorer outcomes in school, they find it harder to concentrate, they don’t do as well on tests, there are more behavioral issues.”
The administration has always known it would be yanking food assistance away from millions. Department of Agriculture (USDA) officials said as much when they announced the new regulations in August.
“It doesn’t make any sense to us,” Food Research Action Center’s Ellen Vollinger said. “Taking food away from people is just going to make their food security situation worse, make them hungrier. It will have a negative effect on the economy at a time when some economists are warning us we would be in for another downturn.”
Non-profit groups across the country are dutifully filing public comments criticizing the rule and pointing out all the ways the USDA appears to have ignored evidence, congressional intent, and practical facts in issuing its proposal. The 60-day window for such comments closes later in the fall, and the administration will likely face legal challenges if it attempts to handle the objections with a pro-forma sweep of the hand.
But USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has been determined to kill BBCE for months, ever since Congress decided to retain the policy in last year’s Farm Bill. There’s a strong chance the cut – in some form – will have kicked in by this time next year.
These families earn a little more than the statutory maximum income for SNAP eligibility. But that doesn’t mean they can afford to see even the modest food assistance they currently receive disappear from their monthly budgets.
“They’re making trade-offs between what bills to pay. Do they pay the rent, or get a car fixed so they can keep going to work, or keep the lights on?” Davis said. “We see those families cut back on food first. [BBCE] helps make sure that both the kids and adults in the family are able to eat.”
Trump’s policies hit barely-red states hardest
As Thursday’s state-level figures suggest, the categorical eligibility smackdown is going to hit especially hard in four states where very narrow Trump wins in 2016 tilted the electoral college irrevocably in his favor.
Trump won Wisconsin by less than 23,000 votes last time. He’ll have dumped 118,000 Wisconsin residents off of food stamps by Election Day if the rule goes through as planned.
One in every nine people currently benefiting from SNAP in Michigan will be booted under the rule – roughly 165,000 men, women, and children in total. Trump won the state by just 10,704 votes last go round.
In Pennsylvania, which Trump carried by just under 47,000 votes, his food stamps cut will dump more than five times that many people off the food-aid rolls.
The potential economic and electoral self-sabotage is particularly striking given that bipartisan majorities in Congress have repeatedly rejected this precise policy, as recently as last year. The right-wing crusade against broad-based categorical eligibility has never won a majority of Republican hearts and minds. Like the vast majority of voters who oppose cutting food stamps, the rump of GOP elected understand that BBCE is an effective investment in children’s long-term futures, local economies’ short-term health, and working families’ progress up the income ladder.
“For the most part the attacks on SNAP in recent years have not been successful. Congress has decided not to weaken snap in the 2018 farm bill, rejected multiple crazy assaults on it,” Vollinger said.
“We’re hopeful that there will be enough comment and insight brought to bear during this comment period that the administration would reconsider.”
Hunger’s ripple effect
It’s not just SNAP recipients who will feel the impact: The suffering the administration plans to inflict on working-poor families will likely also be felt in higher-income households, too, in the form of a broader economic slowdown. Consumer spending drives the whole economy. Cutting SNAP benefits means consumers have less to spend.
USDA staff issued updated estimates on the economic multiplier effects of SNAP spending earlier this summer. Though the Trump administration team’s official guesstimate is slightly lower than past multipliers, the report includes a variety of models. Each additional dollar of SNAP benefit paid out generates between $1.50 and $1.80 in total economic activity when the economy is struggling, their tables show.
The agency also broke the economic impacts out by sector, with some surprising results. The trade and transportation industry takes the largest hit from SNAP cuts. But across nine major industrial sectors the agency analyzed, the level of cuts to be imposed by the new eligibility restrictions stand to kill between 27,000 and 32,000 jobs per year over the next half-decade.
Forecasters who make their livings predicting what the economy will do next are already starting to worry that a nationwide recession looms. Multiple states have experienced recessions within their own borders in the past two years, and at least two appear to be on the brink of entering new contractions based on sudden jumps in local unemployment rates.
The national economy is still growing, but at a slower pace over the past two quarters than previously. The investor class is souring on long-term U.S. government bonds, producing the dreaded yet tediously named a “yield-curve inversion” – a phenomenon that does not guarantee a recession, but which has occurred prior to every U.S. recession in the last half-century.
The country’s manufacturing sector had been expanding for three straight years, but in August, it contracted – again, not a surefire sign of an overall downturn, but certainly an unhealthy indicator.
Presidents almost always get too much credit for good economies and too much blame for bad ones, as the financier and policy expert Barry Ritholtz noted in a recent column.
But Trump is doing more to actively poke the markets in the eye than your average president. And while the economist and investor classes grow alarmed about the sorts of sophisticated technical indicators that make the business pages, the administration is also planning to jab the working poor with a sharp stick.
Whether the SNAP cuts Trump seeks would help tip the country into a recession or not, they are certain to make life harder for people ill-positioned to absorb such a pinch. Presidents seeking re-election generally rise or fall with the health of the economy they’re credited – fairly or unfairly – with creating.
the kiss-ass cowards voted to take benefits from their own voters!!!
GOP Senators Who Backed Trump’s Emergency Declaration Lose Military Funding
Who could have seen this coming when the president chose to divert defense money to build his border wall?
By Igor Bobic - huff post
09/04/2019 05:57 pm ET
Republicans who supported an emergency declaration on the U.S.-Mexico border are discovering the cost of standing with President Donald Trump: millions of dollars in federal funds diverted away from planned military construction projects in their states.
Trump declared the emergency earlier this year to secure funds for a border wall after failing to persuade Congress to allocate money for its construction ― the same wall he initially promised Mexico would pay for. Only 12 Republican senators objected to the move in a Senate floor vote in March, with most of the GOP conference sticking with the president.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), one of those who voted in support of the declaration, announced early Wednesday that the Trump administration was diverting $30 million in funds from an Army base in her state to construction of the wall ― even though she previously received assurances from an acting secretary of defense that her state would be spared.
The Arizona Republican, who is looking at a tough reelection fight next year, downplayed the move in her statement, saying the ground transportation project at Fort Huachuca was already facing delay due to “unforeseen environmental issues” at the construction site. Those issues are expected to continue until next year, her office said.
Top Arizona Democrats, however, criticized McSally in the wake of the announcement.
Former astronaut Mark Kelly, who is running to be the Democrats’ Senate nominee next year, accused McSally of failing “her most basic responsibility to put Arizona first.” He added that the senator “told Arizonans she had protected funding for Arizona military bases, and the fact is that she didn’t keep her word.”
Other Republican senators whose states are impacted by Trump’s diversion of military construction funds to build the wall include Thom Tillis of North Carolina ($80 million), Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ($62 million), John Cornyn of Texas ($48 million), Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ($11 million) and Cory Gardner of Colorado ($8 million).
All of the above senators are also up for reelection in 2020, and they all similarly voted in support of Trump’s emergency declaration in March.
The Defense Department on Tuesday approved a total of $3.6 billion in military construction funds to build 175 miles of border wall with Mexico. Officials said 127 military construction projects ― at home and around the world ― will be impacted. A complete list can be found here.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was among the first lawmakers on Tuesday to say his state will be affected by the funding cuts ― in his case, money diverted from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Schumer called the Trump administration’s move a “slap in the face” to the troops and accused the president of “trying to usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse.”
Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Virginia Democrats, said in a joint statement that four military projects in their state will lose $72 million in funding to Trump’s border wall. These include a cyber facility at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, a Navy ship maintenance center in Portsmouth, and projects replacing hazardous materials warehouses in Norfolk and Portsmouth.
“The well-being of American troops is the core responsibility of every commander in the military, yet the Commander-in-Chief is shirking that duty so he can advance his own political agenda,” Kaine said.
Defense Department officials have suggested that the construction of the affected military projects need not be delayed if Congress “backfills” and approves their funding again in the near future. But Democrats in the House and Senate have vowed not to do so.
“I’m not voting to appropriate the same money to the same project twice because what they are doing is illegal and I’m not an idiot,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.
Trump’s emergency declaration is also facing a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to “block Trump’s latest effort to raid military funds for his xenophobic wall.”
Trump declared the emergency earlier this year to secure funds for a border wall after failing to persuade Congress to allocate money for its construction ― the same wall he initially promised Mexico would pay for. Only 12 Republican senators objected to the move in a Senate floor vote in March, with most of the GOP conference sticking with the president.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), one of those who voted in support of the declaration, announced early Wednesday that the Trump administration was diverting $30 million in funds from an Army base in her state to construction of the wall ― even though she previously received assurances from an acting secretary of defense that her state would be spared.
The Arizona Republican, who is looking at a tough reelection fight next year, downplayed the move in her statement, saying the ground transportation project at Fort Huachuca was already facing delay due to “unforeseen environmental issues” at the construction site. Those issues are expected to continue until next year, her office said.
Top Arizona Democrats, however, criticized McSally in the wake of the announcement.
Former astronaut Mark Kelly, who is running to be the Democrats’ Senate nominee next year, accused McSally of failing “her most basic responsibility to put Arizona first.” He added that the senator “told Arizonans she had protected funding for Arizona military bases, and the fact is that she didn’t keep her word.”
Other Republican senators whose states are impacted by Trump’s diversion of military construction funds to build the wall include Thom Tillis of North Carolina ($80 million), Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ($62 million), John Cornyn of Texas ($48 million), Lindsey Graham of South Carolina ($11 million) and Cory Gardner of Colorado ($8 million).
All of the above senators are also up for reelection in 2020, and they all similarly voted in support of Trump’s emergency declaration in March.
The Defense Department on Tuesday approved a total of $3.6 billion in military construction funds to build 175 miles of border wall with Mexico. Officials said 127 military construction projects ― at home and around the world ― will be impacted. A complete list can be found here.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was among the first lawmakers on Tuesday to say his state will be affected by the funding cuts ― in his case, money diverted from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Schumer called the Trump administration’s move a “slap in the face” to the troops and accused the president of “trying to usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse.”
Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, both Virginia Democrats, said in a joint statement that four military projects in their state will lose $72 million in funding to Trump’s border wall. These include a cyber facility at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, a Navy ship maintenance center in Portsmouth, and projects replacing hazardous materials warehouses in Norfolk and Portsmouth.
“The well-being of American troops is the core responsibility of every commander in the military, yet the Commander-in-Chief is shirking that duty so he can advance his own political agenda,” Kaine said.
Defense Department officials have suggested that the construction of the affected military projects need not be delayed if Congress “backfills” and approves their funding again in the near future. But Democrats in the House and Senate have vowed not to do so.
“I’m not voting to appropriate the same money to the same project twice because what they are doing is illegal and I’m not an idiot,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs.
Trump’s emergency declaration is also facing a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union, which has pledged to “block Trump’s latest effort to raid military funds for his xenophobic wall.”
Trump’s crazed tweets are literally hurting your 401(k): Bank of America
September 3, 2019
By Brad Reed - raw story
President Donald Trump last month tanked the American stock market when he sent out a series of unhinged tweets ordering American companies to come up with new places to manufacture their goods outside of China.
And according to new research from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the president’s angry tweeting is having a negative impact on the stock market, and thus millions of Americans’ 401(k) funds.
MarketWatch reports that the bank recently “studied daily returns for the S&P 500 on days when Trump writes more than 35 tweets in a day, versus those where he types fewer than five of them.”
The difference between high-volume tweeting days and low-volume tweeting days was stark, and MarketWatch said that the researchers observed “a 9 basis point drag on days where Trump is pounding out tweets fast and furious versus a 5 basis point tailwind on days where he mostly stays off the platform.”
The Bank of America researchers say that there is no way to predict when the president will unleash an angry, market-rattling tweet storm, so they advise investors to “trade cautiously” as long as he’s in the White House.
And according to new research from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the president’s angry tweeting is having a negative impact on the stock market, and thus millions of Americans’ 401(k) funds.
MarketWatch reports that the bank recently “studied daily returns for the S&P 500 on days when Trump writes more than 35 tweets in a day, versus those where he types fewer than five of them.”
The difference between high-volume tweeting days and low-volume tweeting days was stark, and MarketWatch said that the researchers observed “a 9 basis point drag on days where Trump is pounding out tweets fast and furious versus a 5 basis point tailwind on days where he mostly stays off the platform.”
The Bank of America researchers say that there is no way to predict when the president will unleash an angry, market-rattling tweet storm, so they advise investors to “trade cautiously” as long as he’s in the White House.
'It's devastating'. End of GM in Ohio town as Trump fails to bring back midwest jobs
Closing of Chevrolet plant is latest blow in a slow, painful decline in Lordstown – an area that has suffered more than most from the outsourcing of jobs overseas
Adam Gabbatt in Lordstown, Ohio
The Guardian
Fri 23 Aug 2019 02.00 EDT
American flags fly in front of the General Motors production plant complex in Lordstown, Ohio. Photograph: Allison Farrand/Bloomberg via Getty Images
For years, the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, employed 8,000 workers in the Mahoning valley.
In a rust belt region that has become synonymous with industrial decline, following the closure of its once mighty steel mills in the 1970s, the presence of the Chevrolet factory in Lordstown, and its well-paid manufacturing jobs, was particularly important.
Then, late last year, GM abruptly shut the plant. The company had already scaled back workers at the Lordstown plant, and this closure saw 1,500 workers, the last of the once huge workforce, out of their jobs.
“I think it’s devastating,” said Mark Sweetwood, the managing editor of the Vindicator newspaper, which serves the Mahoning valley.
“I think it was the last holdout of our industrial age.”
The news was just the latest blow in a slow, painful decline in this area. The rust belt was a boom area at the start of the last century, but has suffered more than most from the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
Stories of places like Lordstown abound in the midwest, and the angst and anger here is something Donald Trump was able to tap into in 2016 and that helped propel him into the White House.
The closing of the Lordstown factory came after GM said it would cut 14,700 jobs across four plants in the midwest and Canada. That announcement, in November 2018, was in stark contrast to Trump’s election pledge to bring back auto jobs to the region.
Today the plant, which looms behind a “Welcome to Lordstown” sign at the entry to the village, stands as a testament to the hollowness of that promise. In mid-August it was possible to drive into the complex, where huge parking lots – once full of new cars, but now completely empty, with brown weeds growing from cracks in the concrete – stretch as far as the eye can see.
On one side of the factory was a huge sign declaring: “Lordstown, home of the Cruze”. The plant was clad in dull yellow corrugated metal panels, adding to a sense of gloom on a grey, drizzly day.
Lordstown is a small place, essentially a village with a gas station. Warren, five miles north, is more what one would traditionally think of as a town, with a main street, businesses and an impressive 19th-century county courthouse. Away from the pretty town center, however, some of the narrow roads are lined with abandoned homes, while buildings are in varying states of disrepair.
It’s a far cry from the golden years of the 20th century, when the Mahoning valley was colloquially known as Steel valley as the steel industry boomed.
“You could walk up and get a job. All my family worked in the steel mills. Everybody worked in the steel mills. You could go to any of those places any day and get a job,” said Patricia Galgozy, who has lived in the area for over 80 years.
Galgozy is the executive director of the Turnbull Art Gallery, in downtown Warren. The Foo Fighters rock star Dave Grohl, who was born in the town, recently attended a show there, and large framed photographs of him adorn the walls. The gallery, a non-profit, was in good shape, but Galgozy has seen how the area has changed.
“I see that impact constantly,” Galgozy said. “People can’t find jobs, in my own family. You cannot find jobs around here many times. It does concern me. It makes me sad.”
Despite that, Galgozy says she is positive about the future.
“It doesn’t mean the quality of life doesn’t stay with us,” she said. “I see that we’re fighters. We step up and say what can we do.”
The Lordstown plant manufactured the Chevrolet Cruze, a cost-friendly compact car. It ceased production, with little warning, in March. Some workers were given the option to transfer to other GM plants, either by commuting or leaving the Mahoning valley entirely.
There is a chance that people could be employed at the factory again, with Workhorse, a small company which manufactures “high performance battery-electric vehicles”, linked with buying the Lordstown plant. But Workhorse is beset by its own problems. The company recorded sales of just $6,000 in the second quarter of this year and lost $36.9m.
The consequences of the GM closure are serious. Cleveland State University’s Center for Economic Development estimates that the plant shutting down will have a negative impact of $8bn in the region. It doesn’t help that other big employers have also recently left the area.
“We also lost Allegiance Airlines in 2018. So we lost our airport … and the hospital shut down in 2018 as well,” Sweetwood said.
For longtime residents, the end of the GM era is all too familiar. When the US steel industry collapsed in the late 1970s, the area was decimated. As mills closed in nearby Youngstown and elsewhere, people left the area. The population of Youngstown has halved since 1970, while Warren has lost almost a third of its residents.
“The impact is going to hurt everybody in the community, little by little,” said Al Tate, an 86-year-old who sells fruit and vegetables at the Warren farmer’s market.
Three of Tate’s brothers lost their jobs when the mills closed in the late 1970s. Two of them left to find work, and never returned.
“Others did the best they can, trying to make it,” Tate said. He said people who have lost their jobs at GM now face difficult choices.
“They’re hurt now and they’re going to hurt worse later after their [unemployment] benefits stop,” Tate said.
“If you ain’t got nothing coming in, you’ve got nothing to spend. If you’ve never had to live week-to-week, from month-to-month, it’s hard to understand.”
In a rust belt region that has become synonymous with industrial decline, following the closure of its once mighty steel mills in the 1970s, the presence of the Chevrolet factory in Lordstown, and its well-paid manufacturing jobs, was particularly important.
Then, late last year, GM abruptly shut the plant. The company had already scaled back workers at the Lordstown plant, and this closure saw 1,500 workers, the last of the once huge workforce, out of their jobs.
“I think it’s devastating,” said Mark Sweetwood, the managing editor of the Vindicator newspaper, which serves the Mahoning valley.
“I think it was the last holdout of our industrial age.”
The news was just the latest blow in a slow, painful decline in this area. The rust belt was a boom area at the start of the last century, but has suffered more than most from the outsourcing of jobs overseas.
Stories of places like Lordstown abound in the midwest, and the angst and anger here is something Donald Trump was able to tap into in 2016 and that helped propel him into the White House.
The closing of the Lordstown factory came after GM said it would cut 14,700 jobs across four plants in the midwest and Canada. That announcement, in November 2018, was in stark contrast to Trump’s election pledge to bring back auto jobs to the region.
Today the plant, which looms behind a “Welcome to Lordstown” sign at the entry to the village, stands as a testament to the hollowness of that promise. In mid-August it was possible to drive into the complex, where huge parking lots – once full of new cars, but now completely empty, with brown weeds growing from cracks in the concrete – stretch as far as the eye can see.
On one side of the factory was a huge sign declaring: “Lordstown, home of the Cruze”. The plant was clad in dull yellow corrugated metal panels, adding to a sense of gloom on a grey, drizzly day.
Lordstown is a small place, essentially a village with a gas station. Warren, five miles north, is more what one would traditionally think of as a town, with a main street, businesses and an impressive 19th-century county courthouse. Away from the pretty town center, however, some of the narrow roads are lined with abandoned homes, while buildings are in varying states of disrepair.
It’s a far cry from the golden years of the 20th century, when the Mahoning valley was colloquially known as Steel valley as the steel industry boomed.
“You could walk up and get a job. All my family worked in the steel mills. Everybody worked in the steel mills. You could go to any of those places any day and get a job,” said Patricia Galgozy, who has lived in the area for over 80 years.
Galgozy is the executive director of the Turnbull Art Gallery, in downtown Warren. The Foo Fighters rock star Dave Grohl, who was born in the town, recently attended a show there, and large framed photographs of him adorn the walls. The gallery, a non-profit, was in good shape, but Galgozy has seen how the area has changed.
“I see that impact constantly,” Galgozy said. “People can’t find jobs, in my own family. You cannot find jobs around here many times. It does concern me. It makes me sad.”
Despite that, Galgozy says she is positive about the future.
“It doesn’t mean the quality of life doesn’t stay with us,” she said. “I see that we’re fighters. We step up and say what can we do.”
The Lordstown plant manufactured the Chevrolet Cruze, a cost-friendly compact car. It ceased production, with little warning, in March. Some workers were given the option to transfer to other GM plants, either by commuting or leaving the Mahoning valley entirely.
There is a chance that people could be employed at the factory again, with Workhorse, a small company which manufactures “high performance battery-electric vehicles”, linked with buying the Lordstown plant. But Workhorse is beset by its own problems. The company recorded sales of just $6,000 in the second quarter of this year and lost $36.9m.
The consequences of the GM closure are serious. Cleveland State University’s Center for Economic Development estimates that the plant shutting down will have a negative impact of $8bn in the region. It doesn’t help that other big employers have also recently left the area.
“We also lost Allegiance Airlines in 2018. So we lost our airport … and the hospital shut down in 2018 as well,” Sweetwood said.
For longtime residents, the end of the GM era is all too familiar. When the US steel industry collapsed in the late 1970s, the area was decimated. As mills closed in nearby Youngstown and elsewhere, people left the area. The population of Youngstown has halved since 1970, while Warren has lost almost a third of its residents.
“The impact is going to hurt everybody in the community, little by little,” said Al Tate, an 86-year-old who sells fruit and vegetables at the Warren farmer’s market.
Three of Tate’s brothers lost their jobs when the mills closed in the late 1970s. Two of them left to find work, and never returned.
“Others did the best they can, trying to make it,” Tate said. He said people who have lost their jobs at GM now face difficult choices.
“They’re hurt now and they’re going to hurt worse later after their [unemployment] benefits stop,” Tate said.
“If you ain’t got nothing coming in, you’ve got nothing to spend. If you’ve never had to live week-to-week, from month-to-month, it’s hard to understand.”
Iowa corn growers, you got fucked again!!!
But they are stupid and will vote to reelect him!!!
Trump intervention triggered EPA's surprise biofuel waiver decision: sources
Humeyra Pamuk - Reuters
AUGUST 16, 2019 / 4:06 AM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A phone call from U.S. President Donald Trump last week ended a nearly two-month-long review of the nation’s biofuels program, three sources familiar with the matter said, with the White House siding in favor of oil refiners over corn growers.
Trump gave Andrew Wheeler, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the green light for the regulator to announce it had granted 31 small refinery exemptions out of the 40 applications, saying he wanted the issue off his desk, the sources said.
Trump’s call triggered a flurry of action within the EPA, leading up to a surprise Friday afternoon announcement, after weeks of negotiations between U.S. government agencies failed to make progress in addressing farmers’ concerns.
“The president has heard from all sides and in the end he has had enough of it. He called Wheeler and gave him the green light,” a source familiar with knowledge of the matter said.
The White House has sought to make changes to the nation’s biofuels laws since the beginning of Trump’s administration in early 2017, but found themselves caught between the powerful oil and corn lobbies, both of whom have allies in Washington in Trump’s Republican Party.
The debate underscores the rising political importance of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, a more than a decade-old federal policy that requires refineries to blend corn-based ethanol into their gasoline or buy credits from those that do.
Since Trump took office, the EPA has more than quadrupled the number of waivers it has granted to refineries, including some operated by giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp, saving the oil industry hundreds of millions of dollars, but enraging farmers who claim the exemptions threaten demand for one of their staple products.
Refiners dismiss the argument, saying ethanol demand has not been affected.
The White House declined to comment for this story.
The EPA referred Reuters to an Aug. 9 press release on small refinery waivers in which it repeated the criteria on how to qualify for an exemption.
Trump had ordered the revamp of the waiver program in June, after hearing from angry farmers during a trip to Iowa, the nation’s top ethanol producing state. Even though the corn lobby seemed to have the upper hand in early talks, the oil industry’s efforts eventually gained more traction, industry sources have told Reuters.
Iowa is a swing state that Trump carried in 2016 and is potentially crucial for his re-election efforts next year. Farmers in the state have also chafed under Trump’s trade war with China that has sapped demand for agriculture products.
Farmers slammed last Friday’s decision, saying the Trump administration was bailing out the oil industry at a time when U.S. farmers were suffering due to his trade war with China. The refining industry welcomed the move, saying the waivers are lawful and help shield small refiners from the burdensome cost of compliance with RFS.
Trump gave Andrew Wheeler, head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the green light for the regulator to announce it had granted 31 small refinery exemptions out of the 40 applications, saying he wanted the issue off his desk, the sources said.
Trump’s call triggered a flurry of action within the EPA, leading up to a surprise Friday afternoon announcement, after weeks of negotiations between U.S. government agencies failed to make progress in addressing farmers’ concerns.
“The president has heard from all sides and in the end he has had enough of it. He called Wheeler and gave him the green light,” a source familiar with knowledge of the matter said.
The White House has sought to make changes to the nation’s biofuels laws since the beginning of Trump’s administration in early 2017, but found themselves caught between the powerful oil and corn lobbies, both of whom have allies in Washington in Trump’s Republican Party.
The debate underscores the rising political importance of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, a more than a decade-old federal policy that requires refineries to blend corn-based ethanol into their gasoline or buy credits from those that do.
Since Trump took office, the EPA has more than quadrupled the number of waivers it has granted to refineries, including some operated by giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron Corp, saving the oil industry hundreds of millions of dollars, but enraging farmers who claim the exemptions threaten demand for one of their staple products.
Refiners dismiss the argument, saying ethanol demand has not been affected.
The White House declined to comment for this story.
The EPA referred Reuters to an Aug. 9 press release on small refinery waivers in which it repeated the criteria on how to qualify for an exemption.
Trump had ordered the revamp of the waiver program in June, after hearing from angry farmers during a trip to Iowa, the nation’s top ethanol producing state. Even though the corn lobby seemed to have the upper hand in early talks, the oil industry’s efforts eventually gained more traction, industry sources have told Reuters.
Iowa is a swing state that Trump carried in 2016 and is potentially crucial for his re-election efforts next year. Farmers in the state have also chafed under Trump’s trade war with China that has sapped demand for agriculture products.
Farmers slammed last Friday’s decision, saying the Trump administration was bailing out the oil industry at a time when U.S. farmers were suffering due to his trade war with China. The refining industry welcomed the move, saying the waivers are lawful and help shield small refiners from the burdensome cost of compliance with RFS.
U.S. Farmers Stung by Tariffs Now Face a $3.5 Billion Corn Loss
By Isis Almeida , Mike Dorning , and Mario Parker - Bloomberg
August 13, 2019, 8:34 AM PDT
American farmers already stung by President Donald Trump’s trade wars now face billions of dollars in potential losses as controversial data from the U.S. government snuffs out a rally in corn.
The Agriculture Department on Monday said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since 2013. That was a blow to growers who were holding back supplies, hoping a rally that started in May due to delayed sowing would extend through the fall.
The decline represents a potential loss of almost $3.5 billion for U.S. farmers, according to the American Farm Bureau, and is another setback for them after prices fell following the USDA’s previous acreage report, which was widely criticized for containing outdated data.
The latest data is compounding the pain from the trade war between Washington and Beijing, which has significantly reduced purchases from the world’s largest soybean buyer. Policy uncertainty has also hit the farm economy as a new U.S. deal with Mexico and Canada is yet to be passed. What’s more, the government is allowing 31 oil refineries to go without blending ethanol into fossil fuels, hurting demand for corn.
“This is a huge disappointment for farmers that have already been struggling with a lot of uncertainty with this corn crop, trade wars and what have you,” said Tanner Ehmke, manager of the research team at CoBank, a $138 billion lender to the agriculture industry. “A lot of people were banking on the opportunity to sell at much higher prices. This report now really brings that into question.”
Crashing corn prices are an additional stress for growers facing huge farm debt, which the USDA estimates will rise 3.9% this year to $427 billion. Last year, farm debt-to-income was at the highest level since 1984.
Farm Income
While farm income remained weak in the second quarter in the tenth district, the pace of declines had slowed partly as the slowest corn plantings on record boosted prices, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
The USDA pegged planted corn acres at 2.6% higher than expected while yields came in 2.8% above. Growers who were already disappointed by the price declines after the last acreage report had hoped the agency’s rare re-survey of plantings would deliver a number that better reflects one of the wettest planting seasons on record. Soybean acres were below forecasts, though yields were higher.
“I still don’t think anyone has a good, firm handle on acreage yields, and demand, especially not USDA,” said Charles Williams, who farms 13,000 acres with his father and cousin in Marion, Arkansas. “There’s a lot of calendar left to go on this crop, and I don’t know if the market will know what we have until we throw it in a pile, so to speak, at harvest.”
Data Discrepancy
Some growers also questioned the report due to the discrepancy between the figures published by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, or NASS, and those by the Farm Service Agency, or FSA.
“We need to disregard this report, we won’t know actual acreage until this winter, I guess,” said Monte Peterson, a farmer in Valley City, North Dakota. “Makes me wonder, if our system isn’t a little broken. Harvested acreage will be a surprise at some point.”
To be sure, some market veterans agree with the USDA acreage forecast. Scott Irwin, a University of Illinois agricultural economist, said President Trump’s trade aid plan may have encouraged farmers to sow more corn since the agency had initially announced payouts would be tied to acreage planted.
Dan Basse, president of AgResource, said the USDA report showed growers took advantage of the rally earlier this year and planted more than the market expected during a window in the first 10 days of June.
Farmer Stress
Still, lower prices could add to grower stress at a time Farm Aid’s hotline has seen increasingly numbers reaching out on everything from financial counseling to crisis assistance. Angie Setzer, vice president of grain at Charlotte, Michigan-based Citizens Elevator, called on farmers in her Twitter account to reach out to her if they needed anything or “even just a place to vent.”
Concerns about a further squeeze to farmers’ financial health sent shares of tractor makers tumbling Monday, with AGCO Corp. down by the most in over a year and Deere & Co. declining by as much as 5.2%.
Lower prices could also push Trump to announce further aid to farmers as he seeks re-election next year. The president has already announced $28 billion worth of financial help for growers facing lower exports due to trade wars.
“The financial stress is there and this isn’t going to help farmers that are struggling,” CoBank’s Ehmke said, referring to corn’s decline. “Is this going to be the nail in the coffin for the farm economy? I doubt it. Because we keep throwing the kitchen sink at the farm economy and it just keeps hanging in there.”
The Agriculture Department on Monday said farmers planted a bigger corn area than analysts estimated and pegged crop yields that also exceeded expectations, sparking the biggest rout in futures since 2013. That was a blow to growers who were holding back supplies, hoping a rally that started in May due to delayed sowing would extend through the fall.
The decline represents a potential loss of almost $3.5 billion for U.S. farmers, according to the American Farm Bureau, and is another setback for them after prices fell following the USDA’s previous acreage report, which was widely criticized for containing outdated data.
The latest data is compounding the pain from the trade war between Washington and Beijing, which has significantly reduced purchases from the world’s largest soybean buyer. Policy uncertainty has also hit the farm economy as a new U.S. deal with Mexico and Canada is yet to be passed. What’s more, the government is allowing 31 oil refineries to go without blending ethanol into fossil fuels, hurting demand for corn.
“This is a huge disappointment for farmers that have already been struggling with a lot of uncertainty with this corn crop, trade wars and what have you,” said Tanner Ehmke, manager of the research team at CoBank, a $138 billion lender to the agriculture industry. “A lot of people were banking on the opportunity to sell at much higher prices. This report now really brings that into question.”
Crashing corn prices are an additional stress for growers facing huge farm debt, which the USDA estimates will rise 3.9% this year to $427 billion. Last year, farm debt-to-income was at the highest level since 1984.
Farm Income
While farm income remained weak in the second quarter in the tenth district, the pace of declines had slowed partly as the slowest corn plantings on record boosted prices, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
The USDA pegged planted corn acres at 2.6% higher than expected while yields came in 2.8% above. Growers who were already disappointed by the price declines after the last acreage report had hoped the agency’s rare re-survey of plantings would deliver a number that better reflects one of the wettest planting seasons on record. Soybean acres were below forecasts, though yields were higher.
“I still don’t think anyone has a good, firm handle on acreage yields, and demand, especially not USDA,” said Charles Williams, who farms 13,000 acres with his father and cousin in Marion, Arkansas. “There’s a lot of calendar left to go on this crop, and I don’t know if the market will know what we have until we throw it in a pile, so to speak, at harvest.”
Data Discrepancy
Some growers also questioned the report due to the discrepancy between the figures published by the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service, or NASS, and those by the Farm Service Agency, or FSA.
“We need to disregard this report, we won’t know actual acreage until this winter, I guess,” said Monte Peterson, a farmer in Valley City, North Dakota. “Makes me wonder, if our system isn’t a little broken. Harvested acreage will be a surprise at some point.”
To be sure, some market veterans agree with the USDA acreage forecast. Scott Irwin, a University of Illinois agricultural economist, said President Trump’s trade aid plan may have encouraged farmers to sow more corn since the agency had initially announced payouts would be tied to acreage planted.
Dan Basse, president of AgResource, said the USDA report showed growers took advantage of the rally earlier this year and planted more than the market expected during a window in the first 10 days of June.
Farmer Stress
Still, lower prices could add to grower stress at a time Farm Aid’s hotline has seen increasingly numbers reaching out on everything from financial counseling to crisis assistance. Angie Setzer, vice president of grain at Charlotte, Michigan-based Citizens Elevator, called on farmers in her Twitter account to reach out to her if they needed anything or “even just a place to vent.”
Concerns about a further squeeze to farmers’ financial health sent shares of tractor makers tumbling Monday, with AGCO Corp. down by the most in over a year and Deere & Co. declining by as much as 5.2%.
Lower prices could also push Trump to announce further aid to farmers as he seeks re-election next year. The president has already announced $28 billion worth of financial help for growers facing lower exports due to trade wars.
“The financial stress is there and this isn’t going to help farmers that are struggling,” CoBank’s Ehmke said, referring to corn’s decline. “Is this going to be the nail in the coffin for the farm economy? I doubt it. Because we keep throwing the kitchen sink at the farm economy and it just keeps hanging in there.”
Can't explain stupid!!!
‘We were betrayed!’ Iraqi Christian who backed Trump in 2016 furious after president deports her uncle
August 12, 2019
By Brad Reed - Raw Story
Many Christian Iraqi immigrants backed President Donald Trump in 2016 because he regularly decried the killings of Christians in the Middle East.
Three years later, however, some of them are feeling betrayed as the president deports members of their community back to the country that he once accused of failing to protect its Christian population.
The Los Angeles Times reports that America’s largest community of Iraqi immigrants in Michigan is feeling a wave of anxiety after the recent deportation of 41-year-old Jimmy Aldaoud, who grew up in a refugee camp in Greece and had never been to Iraq until he was sent there earlier this year.
Aldaoud, a diabetic man who also struggled with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, died shortly after arriving in the country.
Eva Shamou, an Iraqi Christian who backed Trump in 2016 and whose uncle was recently sent back to Iraq despite living in the U.S. since the 1980s, tells the Los Angeles Times that many members of her community have become disillusioned with the president.
“Our church was pushing us to vote for Trump, but he sold us empty promises,” she explains. “We feel like we were betrayed… I honestly thought Trump would protect this community.”
Shamou also says that she fears for her uncle’s safety.
“He’s living in a dangerous place, and he has no money and no place to stay,” she tells the LA Times. “He told me he’s ready to commit suicide.”
Three years later, however, some of them are feeling betrayed as the president deports members of their community back to the country that he once accused of failing to protect its Christian population.
The Los Angeles Times reports that America’s largest community of Iraqi immigrants in Michigan is feeling a wave of anxiety after the recent deportation of 41-year-old Jimmy Aldaoud, who grew up in a refugee camp in Greece and had never been to Iraq until he was sent there earlier this year.
Aldaoud, a diabetic man who also struggled with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, died shortly after arriving in the country.
Eva Shamou, an Iraqi Christian who backed Trump in 2016 and whose uncle was recently sent back to Iraq despite living in the U.S. since the 1980s, tells the Los Angeles Times that many members of her community have become disillusioned with the president.
“Our church was pushing us to vote for Trump, but he sold us empty promises,” she explains. “We feel like we were betrayed… I honestly thought Trump would protect this community.”
Shamou also says that she fears for her uncle’s safety.
“He’s living in a dangerous place, and he has no money and no place to stay,” she tells the LA Times. “He told me he’s ready to commit suicide.”
‘We’re not doing great’: Furious farmers unleash on Trump’s Ag Secretary after he tells joke about whining farmers
August 7, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
President Donald Trump’s promises to rural America haven’t worked out well. He promised farmers that he would fight for them and get better trade deals. He failed. He then promised farmers that he would bail them out with a subsidy saving them from the trade war. He failed, giving the overwhelming majority of the subsidies to corporate farms, most of which aren’t even in rural American. Now farmers are striking back.
Bloomberg News reported a meeting between farmers and Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue did not go well Wednesday.
”Farmers’ discontent over President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China erupted into the open,” the site reported.
Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, unleashed on Perdue calling out the administration for causing “devastating damage not only to rural communities.”
He trashed Trump’s $28 billion “trade aid,” saying that the public already views it “as a welfare program” or “bailouts.”
Chris Clayton, the ag policy editor for DTN, noted that Perdue tried to lighten the mood by telling a joke: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.” The joke drew boos from a crowd for trying to label angry farmers as whiners.
Brian Thalmann, who serves as the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, lamented that Trump’s claim that farmers are doing “great,” was a lie.
“We are not starting to do great again,” he said. “We are starting to go down very quickly.”
American Soybean Association’s Joel Schreurs explained that they’re in real danger of losing “long-term” because of the trade war with China, because the country is their largest importer.
Perdue went on the attack.
“If your solution is to forget about what China has done and sell and trade with them anyway with cheating, then I just fundamentally disagree with you,” he told farmers.
In June, Trump enjoyed 54 percent approval rating of rural voters.
Bloomberg News reported a meeting between farmers and Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue did not go well Wednesday.
”Farmers’ discontent over President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war with China erupted into the open,” the site reported.
Gary Wertish, president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, unleashed on Perdue calling out the administration for causing “devastating damage not only to rural communities.”
He trashed Trump’s $28 billion “trade aid,” saying that the public already views it “as a welfare program” or “bailouts.”
Chris Clayton, the ag policy editor for DTN, noted that Perdue tried to lighten the mood by telling a joke: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.” The joke drew boos from a crowd for trying to label angry farmers as whiners.
Brian Thalmann, who serves as the president of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, lamented that Trump’s claim that farmers are doing “great,” was a lie.
“We are not starting to do great again,” he said. “We are starting to go down very quickly.”
American Soybean Association’s Joel Schreurs explained that they’re in real danger of losing “long-term” because of the trade war with China, because the country is their largest importer.
Perdue went on the attack.
“If your solution is to forget about what China has done and sell and trade with them anyway with cheating, then I just fundamentally disagree with you,” he told farmers.
In June, Trump enjoyed 54 percent approval rating of rural voters.
Trump tariff war victim: Minnesota farmer auctions off what little he has to keep century-old family farm
August 3, 2019
By Bob Brigham - Raw Story
The Krocak family in Montgomery, Minnesota had to auction off their equipment due to President Donald Trump’s trade wars, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
“The feed chopper was the only machine Bob Krocak ever bought new, back when he was starting out as an ambitious young dairy farmer,” the paper reported. “Now, on a chilly Saturday morning, Krocak, 64, was standing next to the chopper in the parking lot of Fahey Sales Auctioneers and Appraisers, trying to sell what he had always prized.”
Krocak paid $6,700 for the chopper in 1977, but only received $150 for it at the auction.
“Krocak needed the money to stave off bankruptcy and hold on to the land that has been in his family since 1888. Hundreds of other farmers around the country, grappling with rising debt, dismal commodity prices and the fallout of the Trump administration’s trade wars, are facing the same fate,” the paper noted. “Net farm income has dropped by nearly half in the past five years, from $123 billion to $63 billion.”
“Dairy farmers have lost at least $2.3 billion in revenue since the trade wars began, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. The Krocaks were one of 313 dairy operations in Minnesota to fold in 2018, a 10 percent drop,” The Post noted.
Bob Krocak’s son, Marty, worries he won’t be able to take over the farm.
“It’s on our minds all time. We could lose the whole farm,” Marty said.
“The feed chopper was the only machine Bob Krocak ever bought new, back when he was starting out as an ambitious young dairy farmer,” the paper reported. “Now, on a chilly Saturday morning, Krocak, 64, was standing next to the chopper in the parking lot of Fahey Sales Auctioneers and Appraisers, trying to sell what he had always prized.”
Krocak paid $6,700 for the chopper in 1977, but only received $150 for it at the auction.
“Krocak needed the money to stave off bankruptcy and hold on to the land that has been in his family since 1888. Hundreds of other farmers around the country, grappling with rising debt, dismal commodity prices and the fallout of the Trump administration’s trade wars, are facing the same fate,” the paper noted. “Net farm income has dropped by nearly half in the past five years, from $123 billion to $63 billion.”
“Dairy farmers have lost at least $2.3 billion in revenue since the trade wars began, according to the National Milk Producers Federation. The Krocaks were one of 313 dairy operations in Minnesota to fold in 2018, a 10 percent drop,” The Post noted.
Bob Krocak’s son, Marty, worries he won’t be able to take over the farm.
“It’s on our minds all time. We could lose the whole farm,” Marty said.
American farmer: Trump trade war ‘took away all our markets’
Written by Alex Henderson - Alternet
August 1, 2019
Defenders of President Donald Trump’s trade war with China have insisted that American farmers will be better off in the longrun, and the White House recently announced it would be giving farmers an additional $16 billion in aid to help them cope with the trade war’s effects. But in a report for Yahoo Finance this week, journalist Adriana Belmonte stresses that American farmers have a problem that farm aid isn’t going to cure: they’re lost their markets.
China, Belmonte notes, purchased a lot of American farm products in the past, from wheat to soybeans. In 2016 and 2017, for example, China imported 61 million bushels of wheat from the United States. But thanks to the trade war, Belmonte reports, China is importing from other countries instead, including wheat from Russia and soybeans from Brazil.
Bob Kuylen, a North Dakota wheat farmer, told Yahoo Finance, “This trade thing is what’s brought on by the president, and it’s really frustrating because he took away all of our markets. We live in an area where we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. It costs us a lot of money: over $1 a bushel to get our grain to markets.”
Kuylen observed, “All these countries went to different countries to get their grain. How are we going to get the relations back with them to buy our grain again and be our customers?”
Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Yahoo Finance that while farm aid is “welcome help for the bottom line of Missouri farmers,” the trade war is still painful.
Hurst asserted, “Farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war, embarrassed that ad hoc government subsidies are all that stands between many of us and financial ruin — and ready for the return of more normal times.”
China, Belmonte notes, purchased a lot of American farm products in the past, from wheat to soybeans. In 2016 and 2017, for example, China imported 61 million bushels of wheat from the United States. But thanks to the trade war, Belmonte reports, China is importing from other countries instead, including wheat from Russia and soybeans from Brazil.
Bob Kuylen, a North Dakota wheat farmer, told Yahoo Finance, “This trade thing is what’s brought on by the president, and it’s really frustrating because he took away all of our markets. We live in an area where we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. It costs us a lot of money: over $1 a bushel to get our grain to markets.”
Kuylen observed, “All these countries went to different countries to get their grain. How are we going to get the relations back with them to buy our grain again and be our customers?”
Blake Hurst, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, told Yahoo Finance that while farm aid is “welcome help for the bottom line of Missouri farmers,” the trade war is still painful.
Hurst asserted, “Farmers are profoundly wary of the trade war, embarrassed that ad hoc government subsidies are all that stands between many of us and financial ruin — and ready for the return of more normal times.”
Trump shafted family farmers to give trade war bailouts to huge corporate farms instead: report
July 30, 2019
By Matthew Chapman - Raw Story
President Donald Trump has tried to paper over the disaster his trade war has been causing for American farmers by issuing a $16 billion bailout, paying farmers for the work they lost due to the tariffs — meaning that he is effectively borrowing money from China to pay farmers not to sell their goods to China.
But Trump’s policy is even more disastrous than it looks on paper, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group.
Of the $16 billion in “Market Facilitation Payments” Trump’s Department of Agriculture appropriated, the group found, 54 percent of it went to just the top one-tenth of farms, with 82 farmers receiving at least $500,000 and many of the recipients actually living in large cities. Smaller family farms, meanwhile, have received very little, with the bottom 80 percent of farmers getting less than $5,000 each — and farmers of color have received almost nothing.
The USDA initially said it would cap payments at $125,000 — but in practice, Trump officials have allowed the richest farmers to get around that limit by having family members who do not do meaningful work on the farm apply for their own payments, double-dipping again and again.
And the next round of payments could be even more skewed. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has announced that unlike the previous rounds, which paid farmers by the bushel or bale of produce, farmers will now be paid by the acre — meaning that small farms will automatically get less than large farms even if they are more productive or lost more money.
Again and again, Trump has forced middle America to pay the cost of his policies — and now he is specifically victimizing middle America’s poor.
But Trump’s policy is even more disastrous than it looks on paper, according to a new report from the Environmental Working Group.
Of the $16 billion in “Market Facilitation Payments” Trump’s Department of Agriculture appropriated, the group found, 54 percent of it went to just the top one-tenth of farms, with 82 farmers receiving at least $500,000 and many of the recipients actually living in large cities. Smaller family farms, meanwhile, have received very little, with the bottom 80 percent of farmers getting less than $5,000 each — and farmers of color have received almost nothing.
The USDA initially said it would cap payments at $125,000 — but in practice, Trump officials have allowed the richest farmers to get around that limit by having family members who do not do meaningful work on the farm apply for their own payments, double-dipping again and again.
And the next round of payments could be even more skewed. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has announced that unlike the previous rounds, which paid farmers by the bushel or bale of produce, farmers will now be paid by the acre — meaning that small farms will automatically get less than large farms even if they are more productive or lost more money.
Again and again, Trump has forced middle America to pay the cost of his policies — and now he is specifically victimizing middle America’s poor.
‘Don’t sell your homes – those plants are not closing’: Trump told voters who are now losing their jobs
July 30, 2019
By Sarah K. Burris - Raw Story
During a 2017 rally, President told manufacturing workers in Youngstown, Ohio that none the plants were going to close because as president he was going to stop it.
“I’ll tell ya what, I rode through your beautiful roads coming up from the [Youngstown Warren Regional] Airport and I was looking at some of those big, once-incredible job-producing factories,” Trump said in front of a sold-out crowd. “And my wife Melania said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘Those jobs have left Ohio.’ They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back.”
“Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” Trump went on.
Less than a 4-hour drive from Youngstown, Warren, Michigan residents are watching as a 78-year-old General Motors plant is closing, in spite of the president’s promise to save their jobs.
Macomb County was one of the Michigan counties to vote for Trump in 2016. NBC News correspondent Anne Thompson reported most workers are being offered jobs in other plants around the country, but it will require they move.
“It’s very stressful,” said Ghana Goodwin-Dye, who has worked for GM for 34 years. She said the only thing the UAW local union can do is tell people that the plant is closing and that they’ll be “picked up somewhere.”
Thus far, 60 workers have moved to other locations, 25 have retired, and 177 workers are searching for what to do next.
“I’ll tell ya what, I rode through your beautiful roads coming up from the [Youngstown Warren Regional] Airport and I was looking at some of those big, once-incredible job-producing factories,” Trump said in front of a sold-out crowd. “And my wife Melania said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘Those jobs have left Ohio.’ They’re all coming back. They’re all coming back.”
“Don’t move. Don’t sell your house,” Trump went on.
Less than a 4-hour drive from Youngstown, Warren, Michigan residents are watching as a 78-year-old General Motors plant is closing, in spite of the president’s promise to save their jobs.
Macomb County was one of the Michigan counties to vote for Trump in 2016. NBC News correspondent Anne Thompson reported most workers are being offered jobs in other plants around the country, but it will require they move.
“It’s very stressful,” said Ghana Goodwin-Dye, who has worked for GM for 34 years. She said the only thing the UAW local union can do is tell people that the plant is closing and that they’ll be “picked up somewhere.”
Thus far, 60 workers have moved to other locations, 25 have retired, and 177 workers are searching for what to do next.
As the coal industry falls apart, miners face losing their pensions
The Trump administration continues to tout its commitment to coal, but it has failed to protect miners from the industry’s collapse.
By Molly Taft - NEXUS MEDIA - Thinkprogress
JUL 24, 2019, 10:38 AM
In June, the Trump administration unveiled one of its largest environmental rollbacks to date: replacing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan rule, which regulated carbon pollution from power plants. The rule had been a favorite target of President Donald Trump as he stumped on the campaign trail and held presidential rallies. “We’ve ended the war on beautiful, clean coal and we’re putting our coal miners back to work,” he said during a speech in West Virginia last November.
But Trump’s promises to save coal have yet come to pass — and miners are becoming increasingly worried for their future.
This week, coal miners from across the country will visit Capitol Hill to demand that Congress protect their pension plans. The visit comes amid grim news for the industry. Six coal companies have declared bankruptcy since October, with two companies going under in this month alone.
Coal workers, in turn, are pushing Congress to pass the Miners Pension Protection Act, which would transfer federal funds into the troubled United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) 1974 Pension Plan. But even if lawmakers figure out a solution for the problems plaguing the pension plan, it will be just the beginning of solving a larger issue. Thousands of retirees across the country are on the brink of losing healthcare and security in various pension and retirement plans as the industry takes a nosedive.
The pension plan dates to 1946, when the federal government struck a deal with the miners that required coal companies to provide pensions and health care for retired miners. In exchange, miners agreed to end a nationwide strike. The current formation of the fund was negotiated in 1974.
The fund guarantees miners will be taken care of for working a dangerous job that often can take a serious toll on their health. But miners are now worried that guarantee won’t last. The fund lost $2 billion in the 2008 recession and took additional hits over the next few years after several coal companies went bankrupt. Since January, when Mission Coal went bankrupt, only one of the original companies in the 1974 pension fund plan, Murray Energy, has been paying dues into the fund.
If lawmakers don’t stabilize the pension fund, the union expects nearly 100,000 miners will lose pensions and health care benefits around 2022. But if Murray Energy collapses, that could happen much sooner.
“If [Murray Energy] were to file bankruptcy — and a lot of coal companies are filing bankruptcy these days — the fund would collapse within a matter of six months,” said Phil Smith, director of communications and governmental affairs at UMWA. The 2022 expiration date, Smith explained, assumes no more coal bankruptcies over the next two years — an optimistic scenario. “We don’t believe we have that much time to wait,” Smith said.
Even if lawmakers shore up the UMWA pension plan, that will only cover some miners. Even more who belong to other pension plans negotiated by the union risk losing health care and retirement benefits as the industry plummets.
For nearly a year, miners at Westmoreland Coal’s mines in Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana have faced an uncertain future as the company, which does not contribute to the UMWA fund but does pay into a pension plan for its workers, goes through bankruptcy proceedings. In March, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the company would be allowed to freeze its current pension plan as it negotiated a contract with a buyer.
Companies often shed pension plans, health care benefits, and union contracts during bankruptcies, as they restructure and attempt to find new buyers. Bankruptcies also provide coal companies the opportunity to duck out of other financial liabilities, including environmental cleanup costs and taxes. This can free up money for costly executive payouts.
Bankruptcy filings show that Westmoreland paid-out $10.2 million to executives in severance payments, salary bumps and bonuses a year before the bankruptcy, and short-shifted miners are calling foul.
“Coal miners, both underground and surface miners, are the hardest working people in America, and their safety and working conditions are the most dangerous in this country, with black lung, silicosis, and other breathing disorders, and from a safety standpoint, falling roofs, rocks, slips, falls, equipment mishaps, and working around beltlines, pulleys and other pinch points,” retired miner Jim Villos wrote in a letter sent to the bankruptcy judge. “We, the miners, kept our end of the deal and Westmoreland needs to keep their promise, too!”
Over the past few years, coal companies in the West have largely survived while Appalachian firms struggled, partially because western mines produce cleaner-burning coal that can be more easily mined. But now, even the western mines aren’t safe. And as Wyoming author Bob LeResche pointed out in a recent piece in WyoFile, as the industry continues to collapse, companies are using bankruptcy proceedings to eke out money for those at the top while leaving miners without a safety net.
After the bankruptcy of a big coal company, LeResche wrote, those who move in to clean up the damage “will bleed the mines’ remaining assets and escape liabilities to workers, communities and the environment; liabilities that have accrued over decades. They tend to be litigious, and are not strangers to the world of serial bankruptcies and corporate manipulation. Their environmental records are seldom clean. These are not the operators and corporate neighbors one would normally invite into the neighborhood.”
As the 2020 election looms and conversation continues around the Green New Deal, the UMWA has invited presidential candidates to visit coal mines, where they will speak to miners’ concerns about their futures. What remains to be seen is how miners will cope with the death of their industry.
“The problem is bankruptcy laws are made for corporations,” UMWA’s Mike Dalpiaz told NPR in March. “They’re made by rich guys in Congress for rich guys that own corporations.”
But Trump’s promises to save coal have yet come to pass — and miners are becoming increasingly worried for their future.
This week, coal miners from across the country will visit Capitol Hill to demand that Congress protect their pension plans. The visit comes amid grim news for the industry. Six coal companies have declared bankruptcy since October, with two companies going under in this month alone.
Coal workers, in turn, are pushing Congress to pass the Miners Pension Protection Act, which would transfer federal funds into the troubled United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) 1974 Pension Plan. But even if lawmakers figure out a solution for the problems plaguing the pension plan, it will be just the beginning of solving a larger issue. Thousands of retirees across the country are on the brink of losing healthcare and security in various pension and retirement plans as the industry takes a nosedive.
The pension plan dates to 1946, when the federal government struck a deal with the miners that required coal companies to provide pensions and health care for retired miners. In exchange, miners agreed to end a nationwide strike. The current formation of the fund was negotiated in 1974.
The fund guarantees miners will be taken care of for working a dangerous job that often can take a serious toll on their health. But miners are now worried that guarantee won’t last. The fund lost $2 billion in the 2008 recession and took additional hits over the next few years after several coal companies went bankrupt. Since January, when Mission Coal went bankrupt, only one of the original companies in the 1974 pension fund plan, Murray Energy, has been paying dues into the fund.
If lawmakers don’t stabilize the pension fund, the union expects nearly 100,000 miners will lose pensions and health care benefits around 2022. But if Murray Energy collapses, that could happen much sooner.
“If [Murray Energy] were to file bankruptcy — and a lot of coal companies are filing bankruptcy these days — the fund would collapse within a matter of six months,” said Phil Smith, director of communications and governmental affairs at UMWA. The 2022 expiration date, Smith explained, assumes no more coal bankruptcies over the next two years — an optimistic scenario. “We don’t believe we have that much time to wait,” Smith said.
Even if lawmakers shore up the UMWA pension plan, that will only cover some miners. Even more who belong to other pension plans negotiated by the union risk losing health care and retirement benefits as the industry plummets.
For nearly a year, miners at Westmoreland Coal’s mines in Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana have faced an uncertain future as the company, which does not contribute to the UMWA fund but does pay into a pension plan for its workers, goes through bankruptcy proceedings. In March, a bankruptcy judge ruled that the company would be allowed to freeze its current pension plan as it negotiated a contract with a buyer.
Companies often shed pension plans, health care benefits, and union contracts during bankruptcies, as they restructure and attempt to find new buyers. Bankruptcies also provide coal companies the opportunity to duck out of other financial liabilities, including environmental cleanup costs and taxes. This can free up money for costly executive payouts.
Bankruptcy filings show that Westmoreland paid-out $10.2 million to executives in severance payments, salary bumps and bonuses a year before the bankruptcy, and short-shifted miners are calling foul.
“Coal miners, both underground and surface miners, are the hardest working people in America, and their safety and working conditions are the most dangerous in this country, with black lung, silicosis, and other breathing disorders, and from a safety standpoint, falling roofs, rocks, slips, falls, equipment mishaps, and working around beltlines, pulleys and other pinch points,” retired miner Jim Villos wrote in a letter sent to the bankruptcy judge. “We, the miners, kept our end of the deal and Westmoreland needs to keep their promise, too!”
Over the past few years, coal companies in the West have largely survived while Appalachian firms struggled, partially because western mines produce cleaner-burning coal that can be more easily mined. But now, even the western mines aren’t safe. And as Wyoming author Bob LeResche pointed out in a recent piece in WyoFile, as the industry continues to collapse, companies are using bankruptcy proceedings to eke out money for those at the top while leaving miners without a safety net.
After the bankruptcy of a big coal company, LeResche wrote, those who move in to clean up the damage “will bleed the mines’ remaining assets and escape liabilities to workers, communities and the environment; liabilities that have accrued over decades. They tend to be litigious, and are not strangers to the world of serial bankruptcies and corporate manipulation. Their environmental records are seldom clean. These are not the operators and corporate neighbors one would normally invite into the neighborhood.”
As the 2020 election looms and conversation continues around the Green New Deal, the UMWA has invited presidential candidates to visit coal mines, where they will speak to miners’ concerns about their futures. What remains to be seen is how miners will cope with the death of their industry.
“The problem is bankruptcy laws are made for corporations,” UMWA’s Mike Dalpiaz told NPR in March. “They’re made by rich guys in Congress for rich guys that own corporations.”
Trump's tariffs trip up the all-American RV industry
Timothy Aeppel - Reuters
JULY 18, 2019
ELKHART, Ind. (Reuters) - Carrie Gray points to a stack of unwelcome mail on a conference table at the offices of Renegade RV, one of the leading U.S. manufacturers of high-end recreational vehicles. She’s buried in bad news from most of her about 350 suppliers.
“We got letters from 75 percent of them demanding tariff-related price increases,” explains Gray, Renegade’s materials manager.
About 85% of the recreational vehicles sold in the United States are built in and around Elkhart County, making it a popular stop for politicians to tout their visions for U.S. manufacturing – including President Donald Trump, who staged a rally here last May.
And yet this uniquely American manufacturing sector has been caught in the crossfire of Trump’s trade war, according to interviews with industry insiders and economists, along with data showing a steep sales decline amid rising costs and consumer prices. The industry has taken hits from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum and other duties on scores of Chinese-made RV parts, from plumbing fixtures to electronic components to vinyl seat covers.
Shipments of RVs to dealers have fallen 22% percent in the first five months of this year, compared to the same period last year, after slipping 4% in 2018, according to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association.
The RV industry’s woes illustrate how even the most “American” of manufacturers, the kind of industries Trump has vowed to protect, can be heavily exposed to tariffs in a world of globalized supply chains.
Tariff-related price hikes have forced manufacturers to pass on some of the increased costs though higher RV prices, which in turn has contributed to slower sales. As dealers cut orders, many plants furloughed workers or reduced hours, including Renegade, which has reduced its headcount of 160 by about 10 workers since May at its two factories here.
Michael Hicks, a Ball State University economist who tracks the industry, said its decline is far worse than he or other analysts expected and could signal a wider economic downturn. RV shipments have fallen sharply just before the last three U.S. recessions.
“The RV industry is a great bellwether of the economy,” said Hicks, because the vehicles are an expensive and discretionary purchase, easily delayed by consumers who start to worry about their financial stability.
The Commerce Department said in a statement that it has “met with private industry” to hear concerns about steel and aluminum tariffs and that it has granted most U.S. companies’ requests for tariff exemptions among the applications it has fully processed. The department referred questions about tariffs on Chinese goods to the office of the United States Trade Representative, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The RV industry may have contributed to its own problems by building too many factories during a sales boom in recent years, leading to an oversupply now. But tariffs were the pivotal factor in the industry’s decline, said managers at RV manufacturers and suppliers.
“The tariff price increases are what tipped the RV business — it started the landslide, no question,” said Tom Bond, the materials and purchasing manager at Adnik Manufacturing, an Elkhart-based division of Norco Industries that has been hit with higher costs on metals it uses to make components such as seat frames.
Sitting in an office near the front of the Adnik factory, Bond and Ronald Dick, the company’s brand manager, spent an hour griping about the speed and scope of their materials costs increases. And yet, like many in this region that strongly supported Trump’s election, they often added the caveat that they support the larger goal of the tariffs to protect U.S. factories from unfair foreign competition.
“It’s good for our country in the long haul,” said Dick, “but it’s going to hurt.”
Thor Industries Inc - which controls nearly half the RV market - said its sales in North America fell about 23% in its fiscal third quarter, which ended in April, compared to a year ago. The company said in a release that it has cut production and shifted to four-day weeks at some North American plants.
---
CUTTING WORKERS AS STEEL PRICES RISE
Despite its all-American image, the RV industry relies on imports for everything from air compressors and appliances to bedding fabrics and the LED light strings that have become a popular interior feature.
The cost of metals surged dramatically after sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum were imposed last year. Those prices have since moderated, but manufacturers say many of the price increases on the metal parts they buy haven’t gone away.
Elkhart’s RV industry anchors a large network of related transport equipment companies, including utility trailer makers and specialty bus manufacturers, who rely on the same supply chains. Matt Arnold, president of utility trailer manufacturer Look Trailers based in Middlebury, Ind., said the axles he buys had three price hikes and are now 28% higher than before tariffs, while his Chinese tire rims were hit with a 65% tariff.
His rim supplier shifted to a source in Vietnam, but those still cost 8% more than he was paying before. In response, he boosted his trailer prices by about 20%, but that tanked sales. So far, he’s had to shutter his Georgia factory, laying off 80 people, and cut about 10% of his workforce in Indiana.
---
RISING RV PRICES, SLOWING SALES
Tariffs have so far translated into a 5% increase in RV sticker prices for consumers, estimates Gregg Fore, chief revenue officer at trade magazine RV Business and the former owner of an RV parts supplier, based on anecdotal reports and proprietary sales data he has seen.
“That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you start to talk about adding $1,000 to the price of a $20,000 vehicle,” he said.
Many RVs cost far more. Renegade, for instance, sells models that cost as much as $750,000 and can come with multiple bathrooms, heated tile floors and cedar closets.
Some industry leaders say the business will stabilize once dealers reduce excess stocks. But many of the region’s leaders are worried, including Jackie Walorski, the Republican who represents the area in Congress.
Walorski is an outspoken critic of President Trump’s tariffs, although she steps lightly. In a statement, she praised the President’s tax cuts and other policies for helping fuel economic growth.
“At the same time, I have not been afraid to stand up for Hoosiers when tariffs and retaliatory measures have put those gains at risk,” she said, using a common nickname for Indiana residents. “As I’ve told the president, we need to put a stop to China’s unfair trade practices by using a scalpel, not an axe.”
“We got letters from 75 percent of them demanding tariff-related price increases,” explains Gray, Renegade’s materials manager.
About 85% of the recreational vehicles sold in the United States are built in and around Elkhart County, making it a popular stop for politicians to tout their visions for U.S. manufacturing – including President Donald Trump, who staged a rally here last May.
And yet this uniquely American manufacturing sector has been caught in the crossfire of Trump’s trade war, according to interviews with industry insiders and economists, along with data showing a steep sales decline amid rising costs and consumer prices. The industry has taken hits from U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum and other duties on scores of Chinese-made RV parts, from plumbing fixtures to electronic components to vinyl seat covers.
Shipments of RVs to dealers have fallen 22% percent in the first five months of this year, compared to the same period last year, after slipping 4% in 2018, according to the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association.
The RV industry’s woes illustrate how even the most “American” of manufacturers, the kind of industries Trump has vowed to protect, can be heavily exposed to tariffs in a world of globalized supply chains.
Tariff-related price hikes have forced manufacturers to pass on some of the increased costs though higher RV prices, which in turn has contributed to slower sales. As dealers cut orders, many plants furloughed workers or reduced hours, including Renegade, which has reduced its headcount of 160 by about 10 workers since May at its two factories here.
Michael Hicks, a Ball State University economist who tracks the industry, said its decline is far worse than he or other analysts expected and could signal a wider economic downturn. RV shipments have fallen sharply just before the last three U.S. recessions.
“The RV industry is a great bellwether of the economy,” said Hicks, because the vehicles are an expensive and discretionary purchase, easily delayed by consumers who start to worry about their financial stability.
The Commerce Department said in a statement that it has “met with private industry” to hear concerns about steel and aluminum tariffs and that it has granted most U.S. companies’ requests for tariff exemptions among the applications it has fully processed. The department referred questions about tariffs on Chinese goods to the office of the United States Trade Representative, which did not respond to requests for comment.
The RV industry may have contributed to its own problems by building too many factories during a sales boom in recent years, leading to an oversupply now. But tariffs were the pivotal factor in the industry’s decline, said managers at RV manufacturers and suppliers.
“The tariff price increases are what tipped the RV business — it started the landslide, no question,” said Tom Bond, the materials and purchasing manager at Adnik Manufacturing, an Elkhart-based division of Norco Industries that has been hit with higher costs on metals it uses to make components such as seat frames.
Sitting in an office near the front of the Adnik factory, Bond and Ronald Dick, the company’s brand manager, spent an hour griping about the speed and scope of their materials costs increases. And yet, like many in this region that strongly supported Trump’s election, they often added the caveat that they support the larger goal of the tariffs to protect U.S. factories from unfair foreign competition.
“It’s good for our country in the long haul,” said Dick, “but it’s going to hurt.”
Thor Industries Inc - which controls nearly half the RV market - said its sales in North America fell about 23% in its fiscal third quarter, which ended in April, compared to a year ago. The company said in a release that it has cut production and shifted to four-day weeks at some North American plants.
---
CUTTING WORKERS AS STEEL PRICES RISE
Despite its all-American image, the RV industry relies on imports for everything from air compressors and appliances to bedding fabrics and the LED light strings that have become a popular interior feature.
The cost of metals surged dramatically after sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum were imposed last year. Those prices have since moderated, but manufacturers say many of the price increases on the metal parts they buy haven’t gone away.
Elkhart’s RV industry anchors a large network of related transport equipment companies, including utility trailer makers and specialty bus manufacturers, who rely on the same supply chains. Matt Arnold, president of utility trailer manufacturer Look Trailers based in Middlebury, Ind., said the axles he buys had three price hikes and are now 28% higher than before tariffs, while his Chinese tire rims were hit with a 65% tariff.
His rim supplier shifted to a source in Vietnam, but those still cost 8% more than he was paying before. In response, he boosted his trailer prices by about 20%, but that tanked sales. So far, he’s had to shutter his Georgia factory, laying off 80 people, and cut about 10% of his workforce in Indiana.
---
RISING RV PRICES, SLOWING SALES
Tariffs have so far translated into a 5% increase in RV sticker prices for consumers, estimates Gregg Fore, chief revenue officer at trade magazine RV Business and the former owner of an RV parts supplier, based on anecdotal reports and proprietary sales data he has seen.
“That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you start to talk about adding $1,000 to the price of a $20,000 vehicle,” he said.
Many RVs cost far more. Renegade, for instance, sells models that cost as much as $750,000 and can come with multiple bathrooms, heated tile floors and cedar closets.
Some industry leaders say the business will stabilize once dealers reduce excess stocks. But many of the region’s leaders are worried, including Jackie Walorski, the Republican who represents the area in Congress.
Walorski is an outspoken critic of President Trump’s tariffs, although she steps lightly. In a statement, she praised the President’s tax cuts and other policies for helping fuel economic growth.
“At the same time, I have not been afraid to stand up for Hoosiers when tariffs and retaliatory measures have put those gains at risk,” she said, using a common nickname for Indiana residents. “As I’ve told the president, we need to put a stop to China’s unfair trade practices by using a scalpel, not an axe.”
Fiscal collapse of coal towns all but certain, new research shows
There are, however, things that can be done to help impacted areas mitigate risk.
E.A. CRUNDEN - Thinkprogress
JUL 16, 2019, 1:19 PM
New research shows that communities in coal country are at an increased risk of fiscal collapse. The data is the latest blow to President Donald Trump’s ongoing but faltering efforts to rescue the industry and its workers.
Local governments dependent on coal are failing to account for the financial implications of the industry’s demise, according to new findings from Columbia University and the Brookings Institution. That trend is likely to worsen should the federal government take action to curb carbon emissions, which would be likely if a Democrat were to triumph in 2020.
Released Monday, the new report looks at 26 counties in 10 states, all in Appalachia or the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. Those areas are all classified as “coal-mining dependent,” meaning that the industry is a major employer there, with some 53,000 workers noted by the study.
Coal also serves as a major contributor to local governments in those places. Despite that dependency, however, the report finds that those areas, already hard-hit by coal’s decline, are not prepared for the implications of potential climate policies.
“If the United States undertakes actions to address the risks of climate change, the use of coal in the power sector will decline rapidly,” the report observes, while going on to note that coal-dependent governments “have yet to grapple with the implications of climate policies for their financial conditions.”
With the backdrop of the plummeting coal industry, the study broadly examines the fiscal risk posed to communities heavily reliant on that sector. Between 2007 and 2017, coal production fell by a third, a decline that is set to continue even under current policies with a pro-coal federal government. But even a “moderately stringent climate policy,” the researchers note, could lead the industry to plummet by around 75% into the 2020s.
That would likely be disastrous for unprepared communities. School districts and other systems in these areas rely on coal-dependent revenue and local economies are heavily intertwined with the industry. Historically, the study argues, “the rapid decline of a dominant industry” has led to the fiscal collapse of local governments, threatening their long-term well-being.
And despite the risk that coal’s decline poses to reliant communities, government filings fail to capture this. “[M]unicipalities are at best uneven and at worst misleading (by omission) in their characterizations of climate-related risks,” the report notes.
Those findings come at a grim time for the industry. Coal has been declining for years, a trend due largely to market factors. Renewables and cheaper fossil fuels, like natural gas, have dethroned coal in recent decades. But Trump has made rescuing the industry a key mission of his presidency, going so far as to float bailing out coal, along with the also-struggling nuclear power sector.
Trump’s efforts to save coal have been primarily concentrated in regulatory rollbacks and rule-weakening. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, replacing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), which used the federal government to target the emissions produced by coal-fired power plants.
By contrast, the ACE rule largely turns that authority over to the states, in a move experts have argued would not save the coal industry but would likely drive up emissions.
New data similarly indicates that the administration’s efforts aren’t shifting coal’s trajectory, even short-term. S&P Global reported Monday that despite the ACE rule, several coal plant operators are still going ahead with scheduled retirements.
Those operators argue that even despite the rule change, the “dynamics” within the industry will not shift, such as the rising popularity of renewables and natural gas. Notably, more coal plants shuttered during Trump’s first two years in office than during the entire first term of the Obama administration.
Even as coal collapses, however, experts argue that more can be done to help impacted communities. Proposals like the Green New Deal, a blueprint for rapidly decarbonizing the economy, include calls for a “just transition” — a clause that would ensure protections for coal miners and other impacted fossil fuel workers. Many Democratic 2020 contenders have endorsed the Green New Deal along with calling for a just transition for frontline communities hit hard by efforts towards net-zero emissions.
But some unions have aligned against the Green New Deal, expressing concern over the impact of decarbonization on those workers, even as other unions — including Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — have backed the proposal.
As Monday’s study emphasizes, advance planning is needed as coal communities head towards collapse; this could include potentially a carbon pricing system that would see funds redistributed to those impacted.
“A new source of government revenue may be required to push a serious economic development program across the finish line,” the report says, underscoring that a “logical source of these funds would be a federal carbon price.”
Even that may be a hard sell in many communities. Trump has expressed no interest in a carbon tax and local efforts have struggled. Washington state failed last November to enshrine a carbon pricing effort after a record-breaking financial opposition effort from out-of-state oil companies. And last month, Oregon Republicans left the state in order to kill a similar effort.
Still, the coal industry is keeping close ties to the administration. Bob Murray, CEO of coal mining corporation Murray Energy, is hosting a private fundraising event for Trump’s re-election campaign later this month, according to Documented. The fundraiser will be held in West Virginia, one of the most coal-reliant communities.
Local governments dependent on coal are failing to account for the financial implications of the industry’s demise, according to new findings from Columbia University and the Brookings Institution. That trend is likely to worsen should the federal government take action to curb carbon emissions, which would be likely if a Democrat were to triumph in 2020.
Released Monday, the new report looks at 26 counties in 10 states, all in Appalachia or the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. Those areas are all classified as “coal-mining dependent,” meaning that the industry is a major employer there, with some 53,000 workers noted by the study.
Coal also serves as a major contributor to local governments in those places. Despite that dependency, however, the report finds that those areas, already hard-hit by coal’s decline, are not prepared for the implications of potential climate policies.
“If the United States undertakes actions to address the risks of climate change, the use of coal in the power sector will decline rapidly,” the report observes, while going on to note that coal-dependent governments “have yet to grapple with the implications of climate policies for their financial conditions.”
With the backdrop of the plummeting coal industry, the study broadly examines the fiscal risk posed to communities heavily reliant on that sector. Between 2007 and 2017, coal production fell by a third, a decline that is set to continue even under current policies with a pro-coal federal government. But even a “moderately stringent climate policy,” the researchers note, could lead the industry to plummet by around 75% into the 2020s.
That would likely be disastrous for unprepared communities. School districts and other systems in these areas rely on coal-dependent revenue and local economies are heavily intertwined with the industry. Historically, the study argues, “the rapid decline of a dominant industry” has led to the fiscal collapse of local governments, threatening their long-term well-being.
And despite the risk that coal’s decline poses to reliant communities, government filings fail to capture this. “[M]unicipalities are at best uneven and at worst misleading (by omission) in their characterizations of climate-related risks,” the report notes.
Those findings come at a grim time for the industry. Coal has been declining for years, a trend due largely to market factors. Renewables and cheaper fossil fuels, like natural gas, have dethroned coal in recent decades. But Trump has made rescuing the industry a key mission of his presidency, going so far as to float bailing out coal, along with the also-struggling nuclear power sector.
Trump’s efforts to save coal have been primarily concentrated in regulatory rollbacks and rule-weakening. In May, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled the Affordable Clean Energy (ACE) rule, replacing the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (CPP), which used the federal government to target the emissions produced by coal-fired power plants.
By contrast, the ACE rule largely turns that authority over to the states, in a move experts have argued would not save the coal industry but would likely drive up emissions.
New data similarly indicates that the administration’s efforts aren’t shifting coal’s trajectory, even short-term. S&P Global reported Monday that despite the ACE rule, several coal plant operators are still going ahead with scheduled retirements.
Those operators argue that even despite the rule change, the “dynamics” within the industry will not shift, such as the rising popularity of renewables and natural gas. Notably, more coal plants shuttered during Trump’s first two years in office than during the entire first term of the Obama administration.
Even as coal collapses, however, experts argue that more can be done to help impacted communities. Proposals like the Green New Deal, a blueprint for rapidly decarbonizing the economy, include calls for a “just transition” — a clause that would ensure protections for coal miners and other impacted fossil fuel workers. Many Democratic 2020 contenders have endorsed the Green New Deal along with calling for a just transition for frontline communities hit hard by efforts towards net-zero emissions.
But some unions have aligned against the Green New Deal, expressing concern over the impact of decarbonization on those workers, even as other unions — including Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — have backed the proposal.
As Monday’s study emphasizes, advance planning is needed as coal communities head towards collapse; this could include potentially a carbon pricing system that would see funds redistributed to those impacted.
“A new source of government revenue may be required to push a serious economic development program across the finish line,” the report says, underscoring that a “logical source of these funds would be a federal carbon price.”
Even that may be a hard sell in many communities. Trump has expressed no interest in a carbon tax and local efforts have struggled. Washington state failed last November to enshrine a carbon pricing effort after a record-breaking financial opposition effort from out-of-state oil companies. And last month, Oregon Republicans left the state in order to kill a similar effort.
Still, the coal industry is keeping close ties to the administration. Bob Murray, CEO of coal mining corporation Murray Energy, is hosting a private fundraising event for Trump’s re-election campaign later this month, according to Documented. The fundraiser will be held in West Virginia, one of the most coal-reliant communities.
A major American steelmaker has lost 70% of its market value since Trump slapped steep tariffs on the metal last year
Gina Heeb - Business Insider
Jul. 8, 2019, 12:12 PM
- Bloomberg reported Sunday evening that a 25% tariff on imports of the metal has accelerated the decline of some US mills.
- US Steel, a titan of the metal industry, has lost $5.5 billion in market value and idled two furnaces since Trump announced the move in March 2018.
- A divide based on the furnace technology companies use has widened over the past year, increasing challenges for companies like USS.
President Donald Trump has sought to make the US steel industry more competitive through protectionism, but tariffs levied last year have accelerated the decline of some of its largest players.
Bloomberg reported Sunday evening that a 25% tariff on imports of the metal has accelerated the decline of some of the mills Trump vowed to protect. The metal titan US Steel has lost $5.5 billion, or roughly 70%, in market value and idled two furnaces since the president announced the move in March 2018 on national security grounds.
US Steel had originally emerged as a rare darling of protectionist policies, with tariffs expected to increase US output and metal industry jobs. Trump last summer visited one mill in Illinois, where US Steel had originally planned to boost production as tariffs restricted foreign access to the market.
"The days of plundering American jobs and wealth — those days are over," he asserted to the Granite City crowd.
But the increase in production came at the same time that demand began to cool, eventually sending steel prices sharply lower. Growth in the US and elsewhere is expected to continue to fall in the coming months, as stimulus measures fade and trade tensions persist.
The divide created a complicated scenario for companies like US Steel, according to Bloomberg. That's because they use older and more costly equipment than companies such as Nucor, which run cheaper furnaces that can better compete in the new market.
"Are some companies going to suffer? Absolutely," Nucor Chief Executive Officer John Ferriola told Bloomberg in an interview, adding that Trump's actions sped up expected changes in the industry. "We'll see some capacity go away, I'm sure of it."
Bipartisan lawmakers and businesses have coalesced behind the need to address trade practices they say undermine American businesses. Some industry groups have stood by the use of blanket tariffs as a tool to win fairer trade agreements, while others argued they would ultimately risk pain for American businesses and consumers.
US Steel and Nucor did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment.
payback funnies
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what you see is what you get!!!
your share, idiot!!!!
