Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

There are still plenty of warning signs ahead in the housing, auto loan, and student loan sectors, but for now, not only is America's economy growing under Bidenomics, it's skyrocketing.

 

The U.S. economy grew by an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter, the strongest pace since 2021, as spending — by families, businesses and the government — accelerated, even in the face of fast-rising borrowing costs.

New government data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that gross domestic product expanded between July and September, capping five straight quarters of growth and eluding a long-feared recession.

The economy’s resilience is a product of a strong job market and extra pandemic savings, which have made it possible for people to keep spending despite inflation and rising interest rates. Robust government hiring — including 214,000 new jobs between July and September — also added to overall strength.

“It’s enough to knock me over with a feather,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “We’ve had the most aggressive credit tightening from the Federal Reserve since the 1980s and, guess what, the economy’s accelerating. We really underestimated how much consumers could keep spending."

That spending was broad-based in the third quarter, with U.S. households doubling down on both necessities, such as housing, utilities and prescription drugs, as well as luxuries including dining out, hotel stays and recreation. Businesses and the federal government also continued to spend, though GDP was dragged down by lower non-residential investments.

Overall, the latest spike in GDP is more than double the previous quarter’s annual growth rate of 2.1 percent.

What isn’t clear yet is whether higher borrowing costs could reverse some of these gains in the months to come. Economists say that acceleration in economic growth is likely to slow later this year, as pandemic-era savings dry up and millions of households resume student loan payments. Fears of a government shutdown, ongoing strikes by actors and autoworkers, and worsening wars in Ukraine and Gaza are also adding to the uncertainty.

“The U.S. consumer has so been hanging tough and powering the economy forward, but I expect much slower growth the rest of the year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who expects economic growth to slow to an annualized rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter. “There are a lot of headwinds out there.”

In Cincinnati, Dominique Walker just made her first student loan payment in more than three years — which means she’s rethinking all sorts of other expenses, including manicures, massages and morning coffees. She’s packing her lunch a lot more and expects to spend less this holiday season than she has been.

“I’m having to rebalance things,” said Walker, 32, a data management specialist at a hospital. “That extra $305 a month, that has to come from somewhere.”

 

The bad news is that voters think the economy is the worst they've seen in decades.

 

The Fed has lifted borrowing costs 11 times since March 2022, with the goal of slowing the economy enough to stabilize prices. Mortgage rates, at 7.6 percent, are at a two-decade high, and the housing market has all but come to a standstill. But economists say that has freed up Americans to spend elsewhere. Expenditures at restaurants, movie theaters and sporting events have all risen in the past few months, helping support continued hiring in those industries.

Meanwhile, inflation has moderated — to 3.7 percent from last summer’s peak of 9.1 percent — though it remains far higher than the Fed would like.

The spate of growth is welcome news for the White House, which has invested heavily in infrastructure as part of its “Bidenomics” plan. But despite $302 billion in spending, it has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are working for them. Biden’s ratings on economic matters are lower than ever, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they approve of the president’s handling of the economy in a recent CNBC poll. 

 

The disconnect is staggering. Giving the economy back to Trump would be catastrophic. But tens of millions of Americans want to do just that.

 

Sunday Long Read: Sky Scrapers

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes to us from Outside Magazine's Brad Rassler, who spent some time on the barnstormer circuit and attender the annual High Sierra Fly-In as recreational bush pilots and hobbyists across America take to the wild blue yonder in the age of social media, influencers, and follower counts.

Throughout the lower 48, recreational bush pilots are using their nimble planes and social media influence to spread the word about bold frontiers in flight: touching down on remote federal lands, flocking to little-used runways in designated wilderness, and drag racing one another for pure sport. Their capstone event each season, the High Sierra Fly-In, never fails to deliver hair-raising thrills.

n early August of 2022, 69 days before the 12th annual High Sierra Fly-In—an event known as American aviation’s Burning Man—Trent Palmer hoisted himself into the cockpit of his red, white, and blue bush plane, the Freedom Fox, and fired up the engine for another cruise into the valleys north of Lake Tahoe. Palmer, wearing flip-flops, shorts, and a Trent Palmer limited-edition trucker hat (“Fly Low, Don’t Die,” $40), is not your typical bush pilot, hauling mountaineers and machinery. Thanks to a prodigious YouTube following, he’s one of the most prominent of a new breed of lower 48 adventurers who are landing their fat-tire planes on and in mountaintops, ridgetops, river canyons, mountain meadows, dry lake beds, and grass and dirt airstrips, mainly in the American West, and mostly on land managed by the federal government.

Here was Palmer, 34, his handsome face smooth of whiskers but strong of jaw, moving through his preflight checklist, which included ditching his flip-flops in favor of bare feet, both of which were hovering over the rudder pedals. He jiggled the center control stick, rising up from the floor between his legs, which he used to tame the Freedom Fox’s direction and pitch. He said “Clear” and pushed the starter button, and the propeller coughed and revved, eventually producing a throaty thrum. The plane’s wings and fuselage were the color of Old Glory; several dozen stars spanned the cockpit’s exterior. An observer would be forgiven for mistaking Palmer’s craft for an Air National Guard stunt plane.

Palmer tweaked the throttle and steered toward the runway. He spoke into his headset: “Stead traffic, Freedom Fox, taking runway two-six at alpha two. It’ll be a westbound departure.”

I sat to Palmer’s right, a motion-sickness bracelet on my left wrist, anti-nausea gum in my mouth, and a gallon-size ziplock at my feet. The copilot’s control stick started bobbing around between my legs in sync with Palmer’s. The Freedom Fox, an immaculately maintained, high-wing, single-engine tail-wheel plane with burly 29-inch bush tires, monster shocks, extended wings, and a 140-horsepower fuel-injected turbocharged engine, climbed from Reno-Stead Regional Airport at 1,500 feet a minute. The stamped alkaline flats of the Great Basin gave way to the dense pine forests of California’s Lost Sierra, a huge swath of mountainous backcountry about an hour north of Reno. On the horizon, the jagged crest of the Sierra Buttes came into view. Palmer, who was piping a Shakey Graves tune through the headsets, exuded competence, bonhomie, and (in the confines, I couldn’t help but notice) a pleasant, soapy smell.


He had agreed to take me along as he executed a series of “short takeoffs and landings”—STOL, for short—which epitomize bush flying, whether the assignment is depositing researchers onto a remote airstrip in Alaska’s Brooks Range, competing in STOL competitions, or landing “off-airport”—on ungroomed terrain, nowhere near a runway—as we were about to do next to California’s Stampede Reservoir.

Palmer seemed happy to be flying without cameras and a YouTube agenda. “How are you feeling?” he asked, this polite ambassador and evangelist of his winged pastime, this member of a band of nine bush-pilot buckaroos called the Flying Cowboys, social media influencers all, using their platforms to spread the bush-flying gospel to the uninitiated.

In one 2018 video, Palmer and two other young pilots fly to a northern Nevada mountaintop and set up base camp. One pilot paraglides off the summit. In a voiceover keyed to uplifting synths and soaring drone shots, Palmer says, “More often than not, we work away all the golden years of our lives, years we’ll never get back, all in an attempt to enjoy the remaining few.”

“I say it doesn’t have to be that way,” he continues. “What I’m saying is to stop waiting, stop dreaming, and start living. Life is too short to eat dessert last.”

“You know the drill,” he concludes. “Like this video if you do, subscribe if you haven’t, [and] come be my wingman.” Then he whispers “Peace,” flashes the V, and slaps his hand over the lens.

The result? Followers. Half a million of them. Palmer grosses about $150,000 a year from various income streams, including YouTube.

He gestured at the twitching control stick. “You might get punched in the nuts when I’m landing,” he said, “but don’t worry about it.”

 

Some 100 years later after pilots and aviators became household names, it feels like there's a whole Amelia Earhart /Howard Hughes vibe around these YouTube aces and TikTok flyers. Whether or not that's a good thing, well, the EPA is trying to crack down on the leaded fuel these planes guzzle, and new regulations may put the chocks on many of these fliers. 

And frankly, in the era of climate change, it's getting more and more difficult really to justify recreational flying anyway.

Maybe Snoopy had it right with his doghouse.

Last Call For Tales Of The Shattered Rainbow, Con't

House Republicans are doing everything they can to punish the LGBTQ+ community for existing, and that means millions of dollars in cuts to eliminate federal projects entirely.

 

House Republicans struck three Democratic projects that would provide services to the LGBTQ community during Tuesday’s fiscal 2024 Transportation-HUD Appropriations markup, enraging Democrats on the committee.

The three earmarks total $3.62 million, with two in Massachusetts and one in Pennsylvania. The projects were eliminated as part of a Republican en bloc amendment that advanced a range of Republican cultural priorities, including a provision that would ban flying gay pride flags over government buildings. The vote was along party lines, 32-26.

Subcommittee ranking member Mike Quigley, D-Ill., then introduced an amendment to add the three projects back into the bill.

That amendment remained pending as the committee recessed around 3:45 p.m. as it awaited advice from the parliamentarian, after Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., asked that a statement Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis. made be struck from the record.

“There’s a saying, how do you show you’re a bigot without saying you’re a bigot," Pocan said during debate over the GOP amendment. "I’m just saying, there’s a saying."

Pocan also said Harris was too tired from reading the websites of the organizations he opposes to listen to what Pocan was saying, another comment Harris objected to.

Earlier in the meeting, Pocan said the committee’s move to strip the earmarks was “bigoted” and described his own experience getting attacked leaving a gay bar that left him unconscious.

“This is what you guys do, by introducing amendments like this,” Pocan said. “Taking away from people’s earmarks is absolutely below the dignity of Congress, and certainly the Appropriations Committee.”

The earmarks that are set to be stripped include two in Pennsylvania: $1.8 million that Rep. Brendan F. Boyle requested for an expansion project at the William Way Community Center in Philadelphia and $970,000 that Rep. Chrissy Houlahan requested for a transitional housing program at the LGBT Center of Greater Reading.

“This cruel and unjust decision is not rooted in any legitimacy, but instead in bigotry and hatred,” Houlahan said on Twitter.

The third project is $850,000 that Rep. Ayanna S. Pressley, D-Mass., requested for LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc. to convert a former Boston Public School building into 74 units of affordable housing for seniors.

Harris criticized the Greater Reading center for offering services to children as young as 7, and argued the Philadelphia center promotes protests held by the Young Communist League of Philadelphia. And he said the Massachusetts project would discriminate against those who are not LGBTQ or allies.

Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont. said taxpayers should not be paying for the resources for transgender individuals that the LGBT Center of Greater Reading offers.

“The question is, should taxpayers pay for this?” he said. “The answer is no.”

 

And there you are. 

 

Republicans are now instituting a dollar cost for keeping the T in LGBTQ+ in an effort to punish and split the community. Pretty soon it's going to be a legal and criminal cost as well if Republicans have their way in states they control, but these cuts are specifically happening in blue states too.

And yes, this is all part of hundreds of billions in cuts that House Republicans want to defund from President Biden's infrastructure and green energy bills.

A series of GOP bills to finance the federal government in 2024 would wipe out billions of dollars meant to repair the nation’s aging infrastructure, potentially undercutting a 2021 law that was one of Washington’s rare recent bipartisan achievements. The proposed cuts could hamstring some of the most urgently needed public-works projects across the country, from improving rail safety to reducing lead contamination at schools.

Some of the cuts would be particularly steep: Amtrak, for example, could lose nearly two-thirds of its annual federal funding next fiscal year if House Republicans prevail. That includes more than $1 billion in cuts targeting the highly trafficked and rapidly aging Northeast Corridor, which runs between Boston and Washington, prompting Amtrak’s chief to sound early alarms about service disruptions.

In recent days, Republicans have defended their approach as a fiscally responsible way to reduce the burgeoning federal debt. They’ve largely tried to extract the savings by slimming down federal agencies’ operating budgets next year, technically leaving intact the extra funding that lawmakers adopted in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

But the effect would be the same: The GOP bills would reduce the federal money available for repairs. The cuts would come at a time when the country is grappling with the real-life consequences of its own infrastructure failures, from train derailments in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the collapse of a key portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia last month.

I guarantee you that these same House Republicans will blame Democrats when these cuts are forced into must-pass legislation later this year. 

The cruelty is the point.

Highway To Heaven

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg made it happen, folks: The overpass that collapsed in a tractor trailer fire two weeks ago on I-95 in Philly is repaired and traffic is open well before the July 4th holiday travel rush.

The reopened portions of I-95 have been “completed safely” and are “available for traffic,” Mike Carroll, Pennsylvania’s secretary of transportation, said Friday.

Workers labored through the night. Some worked up until a few minutes before state officials held a press conference about the reopening, installing guide rails on the road, Carroll said.

The partially reopened bridge was constructed with “the high standards that exist for our structures across the state,” Carroll said, and “every bit of material used to construct this facility has been rigorously tested and used in multiple applications for many years in Pennsylvania, and across the nation from Maine to Arizona.”

“This road is being opened because it’s completed, it’s safely completed, and it’s ready for traffic,” Carroll reiterated. “And I don’t think the people of Philadelphia want to wait one more minute to put a vehicle across 95.”

Next up, said Gov. Josh Shapiro, is building the rest of the bridge around the reopened lanes in a process officials have said they expect to take months, and to “keep traffic flowing while that work goes on.”

 

So a new permanent bridge will be completed later this year, but the new temporary lanes are good to go. 

Nice job, Philly.

 

Highway To Hell, Con't

President Biden's infrastructure bill set aside billions for highway and bridge repair, but those repairs are going to take years, and some highways need the money, you know, yesterday.

 

Repairs on Interstate 95 are expected to take "months" after an elevated section collapsed in Philadelphia on Sunday morning when a tanker truck carrying flammable cargo caught fire beneath the overpass, officials said.

"With regards to the complete rebuild of I-95 roadway, we expect it to take some number of months," Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro told a press conference on Sunday evening, adding that he plans to issue a disaster declaration to "expedite this process" and "immediately draw down federal funds."

Shapiro said he had spoken directly to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg who assured him there would be "absolutely no delay" in getting federal funds to safely and swiftly rebuild the "critical roadway."

In the meantime, officials are looking at "interim solutions to connect both sides of I-95 to get traffic through the area," according to Shapiro. All lanes between the exits for Philadelphia's Woodhaven Road and Aramingo Avenue are closed in both directions indefinitely, local ABC station WPVI reported.

The northbound side of the affected segment "completely collapsed," while the southbound lanes are "not structurally sound to carry any traffic," Shapiro said. One vehicle remains trapped beneath the collapsed roadway, according to the governor.


"We are still working to identify any individual or individuals who may have been caught in the fire and the collapse," he said, before later clarifying that no one on I-95 at the time was injured or killed in the incident.

Inspectors from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation determined that the southbound portion cannot be reopened and will also need to be replaced, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security report reviewed by ABC News on Monday.

 

Taxpayers sure hate gas taxes and highway repairs, right up until said highway collapses and screws up traffic for three months at a time. Ask your friends in Cincy about the Brent Spence Bridge sometime.

 

Insuring The Worst, Ensuring The Worst

As climate change continues to drop more and more intense floods, fires, storms and blizzards, more and more insurance companies will jack up property insurance, or will simply stop issuing new policies altogether, making it impossible to afford to remain in disaster-prone areas.  Florida and California are the most susceptible to this as residents are paying the price. Flood insurance rates in South Florida are tripling in the wake of record Miami flooding and hurricanes last year.

 

Events of the past year have convinced more Florida homeowners of the need to carry flood insurance.

Flooding caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole caught hundreds, if not thousands, of homeowners across the state by surprise, and without flood insurance.

Similarly, many homeowners affected by last month’s historic rainfall in eastern Broward County had no flood insurance and learned tragically that damage caused by water rising from the ground was not covered by their normal homeowner insurance.

It’s not just flood victims who are experiencing hard lessons about flood insurance.

Just as homeowners are realizing the increased risks of going without flood coverage, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has released data showing that coverage costs are exploding for properties in coastal areas most vulnerable to flooding.

The cost hikes stem from mandates by Congress to require rates charged by the National Flood Insurance Program, which is run by FEMA, to reflect the cost of flood risk to individual covered properties, and to pay down the program’s deficit, which was $20.5 billion as of last November, according to FEMA.

The result is a new risk pricing model called Risk Rating 2.0, which took effect on Oct. 1, 2021, for new NFIP policies and on April 1, 2022, for renewing policies. Rather than set rates solely based on a property’s elevation within a zone on a Flood Insurance Rate Map, the new approach considers more risk variables such as flood frequency, types of flooding, and distance to a water source, along with individual property characteristics like elevation and the cost to rebuild, FEMA’s website states.

Improved modeling, however, is of little comfort to homeowners who will have to pay more for flood insurance at the same time costs of regular multiperil property insurance are skyrocketing.

Recently, FEMA released a spreadsheet that compared average premiums currently and how high they’ll climb under the new pricing model.

For example, homeowners in Boca Raton’s 33432 ZIP code can look forward to a whopping 229% flood insurance premium increase, from an average $950 per policy to $3,128.

In Broward County, the 33305 ZIP code that includes Wilton Manors and Fort Lauderdale neighborhoods near the Middle River will pay 209% more, from $1,099 to $3,400.

In the 33315 zip code, which includes Fort Lauderdale’s Edgewood neighborhood that was among the hardest-hit by last month’s flooding, average rates will increase by 64% — from $863 currently to $1,420.

These numbers are averages. Within each ZIP code are less expensive homes with cheaper coverage costs and pricier homes that will cost even more to insure.

Unsurprisingly, homes nearest the coast, particularly in low-lying areas, cost far more to insure than homes on higher ground in western suburban cities.

For example, homeowners in Coral Springs’ 33071 ZIP code are looking at a total premium increase of just 17.6% — from $669 to $787.

FEMA says the new pricing model will also drive down the cost of flood insurance for customers with low-risk characteristics. Yet, none of South Florida’s ZIP codes will see average rates decrease, FEMA’s data shows.

 

And in California, State Farm will no longer issue new policies for any property in the state. 

Across the country, the climate crisis is wreaking havoc on insurance markets. As climate change fuels more intense storms and wildfires, home insurers in disaster-prone states like Texas, Louisiana, and Florida have stopped issuing and renewing policies. In some cases, companies have even gone under in the aftermath of a particularly damaging natural disaster. As a result, homeowners are contending with skyrocketing premium payments and even beginning to struggle to find insurers willing to cover them at all.

The latest sign of the insurance industry tumult came from State Farm, the largest homeowners insurance provider in California. Last week, the company revealed that it would no longer offer policies to new Golden State customers due to “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market.”

“It’s necessary to take these actions now to improve the company’s financial strength,” the company noted in a press release. State Farm indicated it would continue to keep the customers it already has on its books in California.

California’s insurance industry has been struggling to stay afloat in a state increasingly ravaged by fires and floods. Since 2017, when a series of catastrophic fires caused $33 billion in damages, insurers in the state have lost two decades of underwriting profit. As a result, the cost of homeowners insurance has risen by a quarter since 2015, and insurance companies have been withdrawing coverage in the most fire-prone parts of the state in an attempt to reduce the liability on their books. Meanwhile, Californians who have been unable to secure policies from insurance companies have flocked to the California FAIR Plan, the state-run insurer of last resort. The result is an unstable insurance market that appears to be teetering on the edge of crisis.

 

I expect that large sections of the country will be uninsurable at all in the next few years, especially in coastal states and wildfire states. The federal government will have to step in, or no more buildings and homes will be built in entire regions of the country. And even then, expect a lot less new construction ahead.

 

For example in Arizona, the state is already limiting new construction because Phoenix's water situation is unsustainable. 

Arizona has determined that there is not enough groundwater for all of the housing construction that has already been approved in the Phoenix area, and will stop developers from building some new subdivisions, a sign of looming trouble in the West and other places where overuse, drought and climate change are straining water supplies.

The decision by state officials very likely means the beginning of the end to the explosive development that has made the Phoenix area the fastest growing metropolitan region in the country.

The state said it would not revoke building permits that have already been issued and is instead counting on new water conservation measures and alternative sources to produce the water necessary for housing developments that have already been approved.

On Thursday, Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said Arizona was not immediately running dry and that new construction would continue in major cities like Phoenix. The analysis prepared by the state looked at groundwater levels over the next 100 years.

“We’re going to manage this situation,” she said at a news conference. “We are not out of water and we will not be running out of water.”

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its suburbs, gets more than half its water supply from groundwater. Most of the rest comes from rivers and aqueducts as well as recycled wastewater. In practical terms, groundwater is a finite resource; it can take thousands of years or longer to be replenished.

The announcement of a groundwater shortage means Arizona would no longer give developers in some areas of Maricopa County new permits to construct homes that rely on wells for water.

Phoenix and nearby large cities, which must obtain separate permission from state officials for their development plans every 10 to 15 years, would also be denied approval for any homes that rely on groundwater beyond what the state has already authorized.

The decision means cities and developers must look for alternative sources of water to support future development — for example, by trying to buy access to river water from farmers or Native American tribes, many of whom are facing their own shortages. That rush to buy water is likely to rattle the real estate market in Arizona, making homes more expensive and threatening the relatively low housing costs that had made the region a magnet for people from across the country.

“Housing affordability will be a challenge moving forward,” said Spencer Kamps, vice president of legislative affairs for the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona, an industry group. He noted that even as the state limits home construction, commercial buildings, factories and other kinds of development can continue.

And as climate shifts render more and more of the country vulnerable to new flooding, fires, storms and disasters, we'll all be paying much higher premiums for property in the future. Eventually, millions of Americans will be stuck in homes that they can't sell because they are in uninsurable areas, and they'll get to wait until they are wiped out. I guarantee you that the people who can afford to move out will do so, leaving ruined economies and neighborhoods behind.

The people who will pay the highest cost will, as always, be those who can least afford it.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

With House Republican Circus of the Damned Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy and President Biden reaching a tentative debt ceiling deal last night, it's now up to Republicans in the House and Senate to pass it, and there's no guarantee at all that McCarthy has the votes.

 

To get the legislation through a fractious and closely divided Congress, Mr. McCarthy and top Democratic leaders must cobble together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the House and the Senate willing to back it. Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have already declared war on the plan, which they say fails to impose meaningful spending cuts, and warned that they would seek to block it.

So after spending late nights and early mornings in recent days in feverish negotiations to strike the deal, proponents have turned their energies to ensuring it can pass in time to avert a default now projected on June 5.

“This is the most conservative spending package in my service in Congress, and this is my 10th term,” Representative Patrick T. McHenry, Republican of North Carolina and a lead member of Mr. McCarthy’s negotiating team, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill on Sunday morning.

House Republicans circulated a one-page memo with 10 talking points about the conservative benefits of the deal, which was still being finalized and written into legislative text on Sunday, hours before it was expected to be released. The G.O.P. memo asserted that the plan would cap government spending at 1 percent annually for six years — though the measure is only binding for two years — and noted that it would impose stricter work requirements for Americans receiving government benefits, cut $400 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for global health funding and eliminate funding for hiring new I.R.S. agents in 2023.

“It doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” Mr. McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill. “But, in divided government, that’s where we end up. I think it’s a very positive bill.”

Mr. Biden told reporters that he was confident the deal would reach his desk and that he would speak with Mr. McCarthy on Sunday afternoon “to make sure all the T’s are crossed and the I’s are dotted.”

“I think we’re in good shape,” the president said. Asked what sticking points were left, he said, “None.”

Still, the deal, which would raise the debt ceiling for two years while cutting and capping some federal programs over the same period, was facing harsh criticism from the wings of both political parties.

“Terrible policy, absolutely terrible policy,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” referring to the work requirements for food stamps and other public benefit programs. “I told the president that directly when he called me last week on Wednesday that this is saying to poor people and people who are in need that we don’t trust them.”

Ms. Jayapal, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she wanted to read the bill before she decided whether to support it.

Some on the right had already ruled out doing so before seeing the details.

“No one claiming to be a conservative could justify a YES vote,” Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia and a member of the House Freedom Caucus, wrote on Twitter. Representative Dan Bishop, Republican of North Carolina, posted his reaction to news of the deal: a vomit emoji.

Russell T. Vought, President Trump’s influential former budget director who now runs the Center for Renewing America, encouraged right-wing Republicans to use their seats on the House Rules Committee — which Mr. McCarthy granted them as he toiled to win their votes to become speaker — to block the deal. “Conservatives should fight it with all their might,” he said.

Some Senate Republicans, who under that chamber’s rules have more tools to slow consideration of legislation, were also up in arms.

“No real cuts to see here,” Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said on Twitter. “Conservatives have been sold out once again!”

“With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?” asked Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who has vowed to delay the debt limit deal.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, was also critical — though for a much different reason. He called the deal too stingy, demanding more robust military funding, particularly for the Navy.

“I am not going to do a deal that marginally reduces the number of I.R.S. agents in the future at the expense of sinking the Navy,” Mr. Graham said on “Fox News Sunday."

So, a huge pile of sausage being made, Republicans get their Medicaid work requirements expansion, and get hundreds of millions in IRS, CDC, and Covid funding cuts, and yes, Biden's student loan forgiveness program remains all but dead after SCOTUS killed it.

Worse, Student loan repayments are going to have to restart later this year, and that's going to hurt millions of Americans, period.

But Biden is getting 98% of the funding passed last year in the Infrastructure and Green New Deal bills too, so...nobody's going to be happy with this bill.

Will it pass?

We'll see. I remind everyone who is complaining about this bill that you elected Republicans to run the House, and this is the direct result.

Maybe stop electing them?

Empire State Of Energy

New York is banning fossil fuels in new construction, a major step towards future decarbonization, but the MAGA trolls and the courts are going to have a field day with this, and  I give it less than 50% odds that it survives the inevitable SCOTUS challenge.

New York has become the first state in the nation to pass a law banning natural gas and other fossil fuels in most new buildings, a move that could help reshape how Americans heat and cook in their homes in the coming decades.

Late Tuesday, the New York legislature approved a $229 billion state budget that will prohibit natural gas hookups and other fossil fuels in most new homes and other construction, a major victory for climate activists. The move, which will likely face a court challenge from the fossil fuel industry, will serve as a test of states’ power to ban fossil fuels outright, rather than simply encouraging developers to build low-carbon buildings.

The law effectively requires all-electric heating and cooking in new buildings shorter than seven stories by 2026, and in 2029 for taller buildings. And although it allows exemptions for manufacturing facilities, restaurants, hospitals and even carwashes, the measure does not do what some climate activists had feared: give cities and counties license to override the ban.

Dozens of cities and counties have adopted bans on gas hookups in new buildings, part of a national movement to cut emissions from homes and businesses that account for about 11 percent of the nation’s carbon pollution and 30 percent of New York state’s greenhouse gas emissions.

As the restrictions spread across the country, they become a new front in the culture wars. Earlier this year, when a federal official suggested, and then quickly retracted, the idea that the national government might ban gas stoves, debate over the future of gas flared.

But Democrats, who control the New York Senate and Assembly, decided to press ahead, despite the partisan warfare. And, in the end, it was not negotiations over gas stoves that stirred controversy but a drawn-out fight over bail reform and housing policy that delayed approval of the budget by a month.

The law’s passage, and the approval of a measure that would require the state to build renewable energy when the private sector falls short, have fueled supporters’ hopes for New York to become a national model.

“I hear from local government and state folks frequently that they’re thinking of this sort of policy, and so I’m certain, as other policymakers look to a state that’s found a politically and technically feasible way to go about electrification, that others will be paying attention,” said Amy Turner, a senior fellow at Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

In Massachusetts, a law adopted last year has allowed 10 cities and towns to participate in a pilot program banning gas-burning stoves and furnaces from new construction. Environmentalists are eager to see the state go further, using a new building code written to discourage the use of fossil fuels. Advocates are also eyeing Chicago, where the heavily blue city recently elected a liberal mayor.

New York’s new law “is an indication that this policy is definitely building momentum and becoming more mainstream, in particular within the Democratic Party,” said Abe Scarr, director of the Illinois Public Interest Research Group, a consumer group that’s part of a coalition trying to build support for a similar ban in Chicago.

 

So, we'll see if this works or not. I mean, eventually we're going to stop using fossil fuels because we'll either ban them, or none of us will be left to argue about it.

Book Ban Bonanza, Con't

For now, a Texas county commission will keep their library open after a federal judge ordered the county reverse its book ban for the public library, which caused the Llano County, Texas county commissioners to consider closing the library rather than comply with the judge's order.

A small-town Texas library system threatened with extinction was spared Thursday after the Llano County commissioners said they would abide by a federal judge's order to restore the books they banned rather than shut the system down.

Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who is the head of the county commission, made the announcement after county leaders heard from more than a dozen residents at an emergency meeting.

"The library will remain open while we try this in the courts, rather than through the news media," said Cunningham, who said the county has already spent more than $100,000 on legal costs and vowed to appeal the federal judge's decision.

Outside the county building, loud cheers could be heard as jubilant opponents of shutting down the libraries celebrated.

"That's a victory," the Rev. Kevin Henderson of Sunrise Beach Federated Church declared. "That's a victory for free speech!"

A disappointed Eva Carter disagreed. She said she was on the side of those who wanted to close the libraries and predicted the federal judge's ruling would be overturned on appeal.

“We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed," Carter, 82, said. "We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done.”

Before the commissioners made their decision, residents were given two minutes apiece to weigh in at an emergency meeting. And some of the first to speak denounced the commissioners for threatening the century-old system that, they said, has long been a vital part of the community and a haven for students seeking to do schoolwork and research.

They also dismissed as nonsense claims some in the community have made that the targeted books are pornographic.

"These books are not pornographic," librarian Suzette Baker, who works at the Kingsland branch of the system, told the commissioners.

Jeff Scoggins paused from livestreaming the meeting to warn the commissioners that they will hear it from the voters if they bow to a "minority" that is pushing to close the libraries.

It will be a black eye for Llano County, and "this could domino" to other Texas counties where local libraries have been targeted by small but vocal groups of conservative critics, Scoggins warned.

 

Of course, as Republicans target public schools, public libraries, public transportation and public services for elimination, it's up to us to get involved locally and fight to keep even basic governance. Republicans don't want any of it.

 

What they want are dumb, uneducated slaves who are suffering while they profit. And in a lot of red states, they are going to get that. Everyone gets to deal with church-based everything: health care, education, social services who only help who they see as worthy of it. Don't want to play ball? Suffer without, die or leave, it's all the same to the "Christians" running the show.

Book Ban Bonanza

A federal judge earlier this month ordered that children's' books banned by county commission officials in Llano County, Texas's only public library be returned to shelves as county commissioners violated the Constitution. This week, the county commission is considering their response to the judge's order and will be voting on whether or not they should be permanently closing the county's library.

 

A small Texas county is weighing whether to shut down its public library system after a federal judge ruled the commissioners violated the constitution by banning a dozen mostly children's books and ordered that they be put back in circulation.

The Llano County commissioners have scheduled for Thursday a special meeting in which the first item on the agenda is whether to "continue or cease operations" at the library.

Leila Green Little, one of the seven local residents who successfully sued the county for banning the books, fired off an email Monday urging county residents to attend the special meeting and give the commissioners an earful.

“We may not get another opportunity to save our library system and, more importantly, the public servants who work there,” Little wrote.

In the message, Little also included a screenshot of a text message that Bonnie Wallace, who is vice chairman of the Llano County Library Advisory Board, sent to one of her supporters. It was obtained by the seven residents as part of the discovery for the civil suit they filed against the county on April 25, 2022.

It read, in part, "the judge has said, if we lose the injunction, he will CLOSE the library because he WILL NOT put the porn back in the kid's section!"

Wallace, who did not return a call for comment from NBC News, was referring to Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, according to Little. The judge also did not return a call from NBC News. It was not immediately clear what books Wallace was describing as "porn."

The books that Llano County officials removed from the library shelves include Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”; "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; the graphic novel "Spinning" by Tillie Walden; and three books from Dawn McMillan’s “I Need a New Butt!” series.

Last year, an assistant principal at a Mississippi elementary school was fired after he read “I Need a New Butt!” to a second-grade class. The reason? Because the book used words like “butt” and “fart” and included cartoon images of a child’s butt.

Also removed from the library were Maurice Sendak’s "In the Night Kitchen"; Robie H. Harris’ "It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health"; and four other children's picture books with "silly themes and rhymes," like "Larry the Farting Leprechaun," "Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose"; "Freddie the Farting Snowman" and "Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts," according to the complaint.

The Llano County emergency meeting was called after U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman ruled last week in favor of the seven local residents who sued Cunningham, Wallace, the Llano County commissioners, and the other library board members for removing the books.

"Defendants claim to be on a hunt to eradicate 'pornographic' materials," the residents said in their complaint. "This is a pretext; none of the books Defendants have targeted is pornographic."

 

So yes, we've reached the point where screeching conservatives afraid of kids reading about butts and white hoods would rather shut down libraries than allow kids to read.

 

Republicans are getting involved in local government to shut that government and its services down: libraries, schools, public transportation, social services, the whole thing. They're doing so in order to keep the populace ignorant, miserable, and under control.

 

Of course, those who can afford books and private schools and cars and don't need social service programs will be fine. The rest of us are screwed, because we don't count as human anyway. The cost of civilization and all that has become "I got mine, now I'm taking yours."

 

The GOP way.

 

Last Call For Mission: Emissions, Con't

The EPA under the Biden administration is expected to announce new auto emission standards this week that would effectively require two-thirds of new cars sold in the US to be electric, something that's sure to draw heavy fire from carmakers, Republicans, and lobbyists.

 

The new rule would be the most aggressive move so far from the Biden administration to limit auto pollution, which makes up a significant portion of overall US greenhouse gas emissions. To encourage automakers to sell more electric vehicles, the regulation would reportedly set a limit to the amount of emissions an auto company’s fleet of sold cars can produce every year. The requirement wouldn’t specifically mandate that auto companies sell electric vehicles, but that limit would make doing so necessary to comply.

The proposed regulation, first reported by the New York Times, is expected to be formally announced by Wednesday. Given the impact on auto companies’ bottom lines, it would likely result in a battle between the administration, the auto industry, environmental groups, and consumer advocates over the new rules. The regulation would also go through public comment before taking effect and will almost certainly face legal challenges, meaning it could be months before the EPA officially sets the new rules.

The auto industry is likely to maintain that meeting the requirements of the proposal isn’t realistic. Last year, electric vehicle sales were up 65 percent from 2021, but they still only accounted for about 6 percent of all new vehicle sales. Getting EV sales up to the 67 percent in the reported EPA proposal would require, as the Times put it, a “quantum leap.”

The Biden administration has long seemed determined to make such a dramatic jump. In March, the administration announced commitments to expand the federal fleet of electric vehicles and the availability of charging stations. That plan includes placing 500,000 chargers across the nation’s highways and interstates. Earlier this year, the Inflation Reduction Act included an expansion of tax credits for the purchase of new or used electric vehicles. The administration’s actions on EV expansion are part of a larger goal to “put the United States on a path to achieve net-zero emissions, economy-wide, by no later than 2050,” according to the White House.

 

I'm sure Republicans and the Roberts Court will find a way to say that the EPA actually doesn't have jurisdiction over the environmental impact of vehicles and will scrap emissions regulations completely in the next few years anyway, and should Trump win in 2024, we'll be banning EVs completely.

 

Of course, as expensive as EVs and new cars in general are, we're going to need a lot more public transportation in America, something that Biden, to his credit, has already signed into law. Red states of course won't have any of it, so at least blue states will have that covered.

 

Rest of us will be lucky to have flint and tinder.

The Biggest Of Book Bans

Missouri Republicans are eliminating all state funding for public libraries in retaliation for the ACLU suing the state over the state's recent book ban law in school libraries, and the results are going to be dozens of libraries shutting their doors for good.

 

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.


ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined explicit sexual material as images “showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,” “sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,” or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

“The house budget committee’s choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri’s public libraries is abhorrent,” Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard.

Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers – every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn’t have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June.

“State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities,” Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. “Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut.”

This is just cruelty and retaliation, but that's who Republicans are. The purpose of government is to punish your political enemies for daring to oppose you at all. And the fact that if this becomes law and the state's public library budget is zeroed out meaning libraries in the reddest, rural counties in Missouri will close, well, that's the point.

Going Off The Rails, Cali Edition

Even with the Biden infrastructure bill covering a healthy chunk of the cost, California's high-speed rail corridor from San Francisco to LA is going to cost well over $100 billion just for the land rights and environmental impact, let alone the actual rail construction.

 

California's bullet train project that is meant to link Los Angeles to San Francisco faces more cost increases and potential delays, according to an update from project leaders released this week.

High Speed Rail Authority officials on Thursday could not provide an estimated completion date for the original vision pitched to voters but said the price tag for the entire project is now up to $128 billion, a 13% increase from last year's projections.

Construction is currently focused on a segment in the Central Valley, a 170-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced. Project officials last year estimated that the route would be ready for riders in 2030. While that is still their goal, the latest update shows service could begin sometime between 2030 and 2033.

The Central Valley segment also faces 41% in cost increases compared to last year's estimates, now expected to cost up to $35.3 billion. Part of the scoping plan changed between this year and last, with this year's estimate including light maintenance facilities and new elements for the station in Bakersfield. Project leaders also pointed to the impacts of COVID-19, inflation and supply chain issues that have raised the prices of labor, concrete and steel.

The Los Angeles to San Francisco project was originally pitched to voters with a $33 billion price tag and an estimate that it would begin operating in 2020. Voters approved $9 billion for the project in 2008.

The bullet train will need funds to finish the Bakersfield to Merced line. In the short term, the HSRA is banking on a potential $8 billion grant from the federal government as part of President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure law.

"Additional federal investment is really needed in this transformative project in order to realize its promise to California," said Micah Flores, a spokesman for the project.

When asked if there is a demand for transportation between the two Central Valley cities, Flores noted updated ridership numbers project there could be about 6 million passengers for that section.

Flores also said the project continues to see progress with the creation of 10,000 jobs in the Central Valley — 4,000 of them created in the last four years.

Although there isn't an exact timeline for the completion of the full project between Los Angeles to San Francisco, project leaders noted the environmental review process for 422 of the 500-mile route has been completed. The two final routes requiring environmental reviews include Palmdale to Burbank and Los Angeles to Anaheim.

In the report, a note from HSRA CEO Brian Kelly noted the project does not have any ongoing, dedicated funding beyond 2030.

“More than anything, the project needs stabilized, long-term funding. We have been engaged with our federal partners about this challenge, and we believe that we have a strong strategy to be successful at the federal level," Kelly wrote. " At home, we need an answer on how this project will be funded after 2030. megaprojects that last for decades need long-term, stable funding. Every country around the world that has built high-speed rail has dedicated billions of dollars over several decades to see it through.”

 

We do need long-term federal funding for projects like this, but that federal part includes Republicans who'd never vote for anything they can't personally get rich from in their own states, so it won't happen. Luckily, California, being basically the fifth largest economy on Earth by itself, is getting it done anyway.

The Jackson Blues, Con't

In seething rage after the state GOP was called out for destroying the state capital's water system, Mississippi Republicans are now moving to put as much of the city of Jackson under state control as they can, and are passing legislation to make the changes permanent. The result is an effort to effectively dismantle the city's government and to rip power from Black leaders in the most Black city in the country.

 

Citing rising crime, Mississippi’s Republican-controlled House recently passed a bill that would expand areas of Jackson patrolled by a state-run Capitol Police force and create a new court system with appointed rather than elected judges. Both would give white state government officials more power over Jackson, which has the highest percentage of Black residents of any major U.S. city.

The state Senate has also passed a bill to establish a regional governing board for Jackson’s long-troubled water system, with most members appointed by state officials. The system nearly collapsed last year and is now under control of a federally-appointed manager.

The proposals for state control have angered Jackson residents who don’t want their voices diminished in local government, and are the latest example of the long-running tensions between the Republican-run state government and the Democratic-run capital city.

“It’s really a stripping of power, and it’s happening in a predominantly Black city that has predominantly Black leadership,” said Sonya Williams-Barnes, a Democratic former state lawmaker who is now Mississippi policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center Action Fund. “You don’t see this going on in other areas of the state where they’re run by majority white people.”

Norris notes state government officials have long been unwilling to help Jackson with the water system and other problems.

“We had to go through all this by ourselves. Solo,” he said. “Now, all of the sudden you want to come and take it and say, ‘OK, well, we’re going to take over.’ You know, treating us like kids. We’re not kids.”

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said the proposal for courts with appointed judges reeks of apartheid and “plantation politics.”

“If we allow this type of legislation to stand in Jackson, Mississippi, it’s a matter of time before it will hit New Orleans, it’s a matter of time before it hits Detroit, or wherever we find our people,” Lumumba said.

The sponsor of the expanded police and court bill, Republican Rep. Trey Lamar, from a rural town more than 170 miles (275 kilometers) north of Jackson, said it’s aimed at making Mississippi’s capital safer and at reducing a backlog in the judicial system.

“I can assure you that the bill has zero racial intent whatsoever,” said Lamar, who is white, in response to arguments that courts with appointed judges would disenfranchise Jackson voters. “There is nothing racial about the bill on its face, and there is no intent for the effect to be racial."

 

Not any more racial that cross burnings or poll taxes, folks. 

Nowhere is the Republican playbook to destroy government more apparent than in the Jim Crow South, where a city regularly doomed by a white supremacist state government is set up to fail at every turn, and then the local government services are taken into receivership by the kindly Republicans trying to "save" those people from themselves.

It's American apartheid. Subjecting Black folk to a white court system, a white police department, white water and infrastructure, and white government without any say over their own city.

And yes, Mayor Lumumba is right, cities like New Orleans, Detroit, Milwaukee, Louisville, and Omaha are next if the GOP has its way.

You may want to wash your hands of red states and let the people who live there "get what they deserve" but the people who live there don't deserve this.

Last Call For Going Off The Rails, Con't

The massive chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio due to a Norfolk Southern train derailment has brought all sorts of ire from folks quick to blame Biden for every damn thing when Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao rolled back train braking safety regulations and Republicans like Marco Rubio demanded that the regs be further rolled back in October 2021, but now the EPA has stepped in to make things right.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a sweeping enforcement action against Norfolk Southern on Tuesday, compelling the rail company to conduct and pay for cleanup actions associated with the Feb. 3 derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

“The Norfolk Southern train derailment has upended the lives of East Palestine families, and EPA’s order will ensure the company is held accountable for jeopardizing the health and safety of this community,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in remarks prepared for a news conference in East Palestine. “Let me be clear: Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community.”

If the company fails to complete any of the actions ordered by the EPA, the agency will “immediately” conduct the necessary work and then seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost. The order will require the company to identify and clean contaminated soil and water; pay any EPA costs, including reimbursing the agency for cleaning services that it will offer to residents and businesses; and participate in public meetings at EPA’s request and post information on-line.

The rail company already faces multiple class-action suits from members of the East Palestine community over the incident, which forced residents within roughly a mile radius to evacuate their homes.

 

Now, how quickly will Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine find a federal judge friendly enough to block this order, saying the Environmental Protection Agency has no authority to actually protect the environment?

We're going to find out in short order.

Going Off The Rails

The story of a train derailment last week near East Palestine, Ohio is getting more and more bizarre, and more and more dangerous by the day. The Norfolk Southern train was carrying potentially dangerous chemicals and an axle broke, spilling cars and chemicals all over the place. The train caught fire, residents were evacuated, a controlled burn of vinyl chloride was conducted, and resident are now back.

And here's where things really start to go off the rails.

Days after a train carrying hazardous materials went off the tracks in northeastern Ohio, burst into flames and stoked fears of a “potential explosion,” authorities assured evacuated residents that it was safe to return to town.

More than a week after the derailment, Maura Todd is not convinced.

The headaches and nausea her family experienced at their house last weekend and the pungent odor that reminds her of a mixture of nail polish remover and burning tires told her otherwise, Todd said.

On Saturday, she was making plans to pack her bags and move away from East Palestine, Ohio, to Kentucky with her family and her three miniature Schnauzers — at least temporarily, Todd said.

“I’ve watched every news conference and I haven’t heard anything that makes me think that this is a data-driven decision,” Todd, 44, told The Washington Post. “We don’t feel like we have a whole lot of information.”

After the derailment, federal and local officials repeatedly told residents that the air quality was safe and that the water supply was untainted.

But more than a week after the Norfolk Southern train derailed — causing an explosion that sent flames into the air and a cloud of smoke across parts of the village, and leading authorities to release a toxic plume — residents told The Post that they had yet to see a full list of the chemicals that were aboard the train when it lost its course.

Without much information, residents and experts told The Post that they question whether it’s safe to return to their homes a week after contaminants flowed into local streams and spewed into the air. In some waterways, dead fish had been spotted, a state official confirmed at a news briefing, and residents returning to homes in a neighboring Pennsylvania town were advised by state officials to open their windows, turn on fans and wipe down all surfaces with diluted bleach.

“The biggest question remaining is what, if anything, is still being released from the site, first and foremost,” said Peter DeCarlo, an environmental health professor at Johns Hopkins University. “If there are still residual chemical emissions, then that still presents a danger for people in the area.”

It was 9 p.m. on Feb. 3 when 50 cars of a 141-car Norfolk Southern train derailed, igniting a large blaze near the hazardous chemicals that kept firefighters away for days. The derailment, which caused no injuries, probably was caused by mechanical issues on one of the rail car axles, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said.

The incident caused further alarm nearly 48 hours after the crash, when changing conditions in a rail car caused authorities to warn of a possible “major explosion.” Officials on Monday conducted a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride to prevent a blast, and on Wednesday they allowed residents to return.

Some nights, resident Eric Whitining told The Post, the air smells like an “over-chlorinated swimming pool” and his eyes burn. He returned to his house the day authorities lifted the evacuation order. He can’t move his family of five out of their home, so he says he has no choice but to stay put and follow authorities’ instructions.

“For a small town, we have to trust them, because what else do we have to do?” Whitining said. “We have to trust that they are not lying to us.”

 

When  NewsNation correspondent Evan Lambert tried to ask questions at Ohio GOP Gov. Mike Dewine's press conference addressing the evacuation order, he was beaten and arrested by DeWine's State Police goons.

A reporter was pushed to the ground, handcuffed and arrested for trespassing while covering a news conference about the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in Ohio.

NewsNation posted video of correspondent Evan Lambert being arrested Wednesday in the gymnasium of an elementary school in East Palestine where Gov. Mike DeWine was giving an update about the accident.

Lambert was held for about five hours before being released from jail, NewsNation reported.

“I’m doing fine right now. It’s been an extremely long day,” Lambert said after his release. “No journalist expects to be arrested when you’re doing your job, and I think that’s really important that that doesn’t happen in our country.”

 

Now the fears are that burning the vinyl chloride, while preventing a devastating explosion, has now contaminated hundreds of square miles of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. 

Answers at this point are non-existent. Norfolk Southern has given East Palestine $25,000 (yes, twenty-five thousand, for a company that made billions last year in record profits) and they're expecting this to all just go away now.

Something tells me it won't.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Washington Monthy's Bill Scher sums up President Biden's excellent State of the Union speech last night, and it was one of the best SOTU speeches I've seen in my lifetime.

When Democratic President Bill Clinton delivered his 1995 State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of Congress and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he pledged to cut spending: “We propose to cut $130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to three, getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need.”

When Democratic President Barack Obama delivered his 2011 State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of the House and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he pledged to cut spending: “I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. Now, this would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was President.”

When Democratic President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of the House and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he did not pledge to cut spending.

Sure, Biden nodded toward the center—praising bipartisanship, offering more border security, delivering an ode to former President George W. Bush for his work to combat HIV/AIDS. But the president did not act like a worried politician looking to make an ideological pivot. A quintessentially confident Biden delivered this address, proudly defending his record and conceding nothing. He even managed to lock in a key concession from Republicans.

After Biden pointed to unnamed Republicans who “want Medicare and Social Security to sunset” (a reference to Senator Rick Scott’s plan to sunset every federal law and program every five years), Republicans interrupted with howls. Unrattled, Biden seized the opportunity. “As we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They’re not to be touched.” Republicans applauded, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy from behind the podium. Surely Biden was aware that McCarthy had already said he would leave Social Security and Medicare out of budget negotiations, but his deft ad-lib made it look like he extracted the concession from the entire GOP conference.

We can’t definitively say whether Biden’s defiance is politically wise until the 2024 election. Say what you will about the strategic retreats on spending offered by Clinton and Obama, but they got themselves handily re-elected. And despite his unwillingness to offer concessions before negotiations, Biden may end up walking a path similar to his Democratic predecessors. It’s extremely hard to envision a budget agreement with the Republican-controlled House that doesn’t trim spending.

But in the short run, Biden’s easygoing confidence is precisely what he needs to keep the naysayers at bay. Thanks to a better-than-expected midterm performance, Biden avoided drawing an early primary challenge. However, murmurs of concern about his advanced age among Democrats are everywhere. You can feel the Democratic panic every time a poll crops up with Biden trailing Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. Following this month’s ABC/Washington Post poll showing Donald Trump beating Biden by three points, Julián Castro, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020, posted on Twitter, “this poll undermines Biden’s central argument for re-nomination.” A desperate and disjointed State of the Union address could have shaken the Democratic base and ignited a wave of ageist calls for a new nominee.

That’s not what happened. Biden didn’t just give a solid speech. He demonstrated agility, went off script, and ran circles around his hecklers. It echoed Ronald Reagan’s masterful moment during the second 1984 general election presidential debate when the 73-year-old president was questioned about his stamina. The Gipper cheekily responded, “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

 

As any dynasty-spanning coach will tell you after a championship win, "We played the game that we needed to play." President Biden gave the speech that he needed to give last night, and it was one for the history books. 

He put one over on the GOP on live TV, hit all the points he needed to, and then he stuck around congratulating his Democratic colleagues by name for more than an hour. In the end, Joe Biden really is the kind of gifted politician that gets things done. He doesn't have the raw charisma of Bill Clinton, nor the shining presence of Barack Obama (especially when he's in Preacher Mode™), but he does have the likeability of Joey from Scranton, and people respond to it.

He's also put in the work for the last four decades. He's earned it, and he's put things on the board that neither Clinton nor Obama could do on climate change, infrastructure, and jobs.

Having said that, it's ridiculous to not believe Americans when we say we can do better, and that GOP blocking everything they can doesn't have real world consequences.

Reflecting on their personal financial situations, 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.

On the other hand, today’s “better off” percentage is not unusually low, having descended to 35% or lower during other challenging economic times. This includes the late 1970s and early 1980s, the early 1990s, and from 2008 through 2012. In those periods, a higher percentage than today’s 14% volunteered that their finances were “the same” as last year.

I'm better off than I was a year ago, but times are still tough. Luckily, Biden gets that.

The last guy certainly didn't.

Might want to keep that in mind.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Hopefully this asshole spends the next two decades in jail, but neo-Nazi hate group Atomwaffen founder Brandon Russell and his girlfriend are facing federal charges after being picked up in a plot to destroy power substations around Baltimore in order to "completely destroy the whole city." 

A neo-Nazi leader recently released from prison has been arrested again and accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid with a woman he met while incarcerated.

Brandon Russell, 27, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, are expected to make their first appearance Monday in Baltimore federal court on a charge of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, which carries up to 20 years in prison.

“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel said on Jan. 29, according to the court record. She was speaking to a federal informant, who was having similar discussions with Russell.

According to prosecutors, their plan was to attack with gunfire five substations that serve the Baltimore area. The charges come after similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon that remain unsolved; the Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the United States is in a “heightened threat environment” and that critical infrastructure is among the “targets of potential violence.”

In conversations about the plot, according to court documents, one defendant “described how there was a ‘ring’ around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they ‘would completely destroy this whole city.’”

Clendaniel and Russell met while incarcerated at separate prisons, according to the court documents — Russell in federal custody for possessing bombmaking materials and Clendaniel in a Maryland facility for robbing convenience stores with a machete.

“Going to prison was worth it because I might not have met you otherwise,” Russell said in one text.

Both are on probation. It was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys representing them in this matter. Attempts to reach family for Clendaniel and Russell was not immediately successful.

Russell, a former Florida National Guard member, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which attempted to use violent attacks to spark a race war in the United States. Experts say the group, while small, is dangerous because of its influence on the broader far-right movement to eschew politics and spill blood.

Proud Boys and Oath Keeper terrorists are one thing, but these Atomwaffen assholes put the Nazi in neo-Nazi and they specifically targeted Baltimore in order to make Black folk suffer and die. It's 2023 and America is still dealing with shit like this.

And we have an entire major political party playing footsie with these guys, and the people who support them.

Jesus wept.

Like A Troubled Bridge Over Waters, Con't

President Biden will be in town today to kick off the new year and to remind everyone why he was elected as he visits the Brent Spence Bridge, with work funded by his historic infrastructure bill beginning later this year to replace the nearly 70-year old structure. 

 

President Joe Biden is visiting northern Kentucky on Wednesday to tout spending more than $1 billion in federal grants to improve congestion on the aging Brent Spence Bridge.

The bridge links Covington and downtown Cincinnati over the Ohio River along Interstate 75, one of the busiest trucking routes in America.

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced last week it would award $1.635 billion for the construction of a companion bridge to help unclog bridge traffic by separating truck traffic from local vehicles. This is from an infrastructure law Congress passed in late 2021 to help repair or rebuild 10 of the most economically significant bridges in the country.

“The grant to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will fund improvements to the Brent Spence Bridge, which is currently the second worst truck bottleneck in the nation and carries more than $400 billion in freight per year over the Ohio River,” reads a news release Wednesday from DOT.

The project also will improve “delays in the movement of freight that currently raise costs for American families.”

President Biden is expected to fly into Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport around 11:25 a.m.

Expect traffic delays on I-275 and I-71/75, as well as streets around the Brent Spence Bridge in Covington.

The president will hold a news conference near the bridge around lunchtime, making a rare joint appearance with Senate Republican Majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Other elected officials plan to attend, adding to the bipartisan mix of the event: Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, former Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, and Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.

I'll of course be following the project over the next couple of years. Remember, proposing that the companion bridge be built with toll money is what cost Matt Bevin reelection. Keeping the bridge toll-free might get Beshear another term.