For decades, train cars filled with liquefied natural gas (LNG) have
diverted around major cities. Even then, this material could not be
carried in the kind of ordinary tanker cars reserved for other liquid
transport. LNG could only be transported across the U.S. in individual
trucks, or in trains that used specialized containers and were routed
around population centers.
That’s about to change. Because as one of what will likely be several
parting gifts to America, Donald Trump is relaxing the rules around
both trucks and train cars filled with this extremely high energy liquid
fuel. As NPR reports,
Trump has overruled governors, legislators, businesses, homeowners, and
celebrities to specifically support a project that would ship millions
of barrels of LNG down the I-95 corridor using both trucks and trains.
The result would allow a company associated with Trump to move trains
with 100 cars’ worth of LNG through 200 miles of the high density urban
areas along the East Coast. Each one of those trains would be carrying
the energy equivalent of five Hiroshima-sized bombs.
This change in the rules is being made specifically to
support Delaware River Partners. The company will take methane fracked out of the ground in Pennsylvania, chill it into a super-dense
liquid state, and deliver it to an export terminal planned for
Gloucester County, New Jersey. The site of the terminal itself is close
to both homes and businesses, many of which objected to this change.
However, as the Florida Bulldog
reported, there’s more to this than just Trump’s reflexive desire to
roll over every environmental and safety regulation to help his pals in
the oil and gas industry. When it comes to Delaware River Partners,
Trump owes them. Literally.
That’s because Delaware River Partners is owned by New Fortress
Energy. And New Fortress Energy is owned by Fortress Investment Group.
And Fortress Investment Group gave Trump a $130 million loan in 2005.
Then they “forgave” that loan. Only this $130 million gift to Trump
apparently never got reported as income on those taxes Trump has made
such great effort to hide.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James is seeking information
on the loan in an effort to determine if Trump ever paid taxes on this
massive gift. Not surprisingly, “Trump and his staff have not cooperated
in obtaining the loan documentation.”
The I-95 deal isn’t the first time Trump has demonstrated his
gratitude to Fortress. The reason the Florida Bulldog was looking at
this company in the first place is that Trump has also awarded Fortress
New Energy two “special permits” to haul liquified natural gas by rail
in Florida.
he twentieth century was dubbed “the American Century” in 1941 by Time
magazine publisher Henry Luce. Luce hoped that Americans would abandon
their isolationism and seek international allies, joining against the
Axis in WW II. It was then more wishful thinking on his part than
reality, but his wish arguably came true.
It seems increasingly clear that the 21st century will
be the Chinese century. And, China is going to get there sooner thanks
to a new isolationism and a paroxysm of ignorant reality-denial for
which Donald J. Trump has been the cheerleader and chief implementation
officer.
The BBC reports that a British think tank predicts
that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy in 2028
instead of 2033, as a result of its deft handling of the pandemic and as
a result of outgoing president Trump’s monumental screw-up, the largest
public health disaster in American history.
China will grow 2% this year. The US economy will contract 3.5%. China’s growth is enabled by government health policy.
Even next year and through the 2020s, American growth
is expected to be anemic. In contrast, China will likely grow 5 percent a
year for a while starting next year, then as it matures further as an
advanced economy, fall to 4% growth.
And it isn’t just a matter of growth rate. The US
comes out of four catastrophic years of Trump with a massively
ballooning budget deficit.
I noted in October, “The US budget deficit in 2020
will be $3.1 trillion. The average budget deficit in Obama’s last two
years was slightly over $500 bn a year. This Republican administration
has given us a one-year budget deficit six times larger than Obama’s last ones. And mind you, Trump’s massive 2017 tax cut on the superwealthy had already put the annual budget deficit back up over $1 trillion a year.”
One of the most important growth sectors in this century will be green technologies, a sector in which China has developed a worrying lead
over the United States. China is responsible for 23% of global green
energy investment. It is the world’s largest maker of wind turbines and
produces 63% of the world’s photovoltaic panels.
The US government is hostage to Big Oil and has not
moved fast enough or vigorously enough to outperform China in this area.
Only about 19% of US electricity is from renewables, which means we are
paying trillions for fuel, whereas sunshine and wind are free.
Some analysts expect China’s energy mix to be 62% renewables by 2030, with massive cost savings of 9%.
Trump spent four years knee-capping green energy and trying to bolster planet-killing coal.
President-elect Biden wants a 100% green electricity
by 2035, but given that he will very likely not have the Senate, it
isn’t clear he can in fact move that fast. I hope so, because otherwise
China is going to eat our lunch.
I keep hearing people say that the pandemic isn’t
really Trump’s fault. It makes me want to tear my hair out.
The fact of
the pandemic was not his fault, of course. But that you had no national
health policy to speak of was his fault. He closed down the economy too
late and opened it too early. He left states to compete for scarce
resources, driving up their costs. He refused to encourage mask-wearing
(82% of Chinese masked up, only about half of Americans did).
Early on,
China had a testing and contact tracing capability that allowed them to
contain outbreaks. They’ve gone long stretches since the summer without
having new case reported at all.
The US never had enough tests, and
results were coming back beyond the 3-day limit of when they were
useful. We had no national contact tracing corps, no ethos of
quarantining once you’ve been exposed. We quickly went to community
spread, at which point there are too many people to carry out effect
contact tracing. State and county public health offices had been shrunk
by long years of austerity — tax cuts for the wealthy, fewer services
for ordinary folk.
China nipped this thing in the bud (as did South
Korea and Taiwan). Trump, by a combination of bad policy and no policy,
let the thing snowball– so that states have had to impose repeated
shutdowns on a rolling basis, deeply harming the economy.
What a mess this man has left us in. In four unforgettable years, he has reduced the greatest country in the world to an also-ran.
Once he is pulled out of the White House and unprotected by the
Department of Justice’s utterly screwed up concept of absolute executive
immunity, many people would love to see Donald Trump promptly indicted
and convicted on charges of tax fraud. And that’s fine. After all, as
people rightly note, after he had evaded prosecution for all other
crimes, it was the IRS that finally got Al Capone and sent him off to
Alcatraz.
But eventually Capone was released from Alcatraz and went home.
Granted, that was in part because he was suffering from the long-term
effects of syphilis. Still … I want more when it comes to Trump.
I want Trump to be taken to the The Hague and tried before the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity.
To be clear right off the bat, I understand that this isn’t going to
happen. The United States is not a signatory to the International
Criminal Court (ICC). And while the Obama administration vowed to
cooperate with the court, conservatives have been so anti-ICC that under
George W. Bush that they even passed a law saying the United States
would help to free prisoners being held for trial by the ICC. So
… that.
But that doesn’t mean some appropriate venue for Trump can’t be
found. Should be found. Has to be found. Because Trump’s crimes far
exceed anything that can be dealt with in a New York state court looking
into how he shuffled funds among his 500+ shell companies.
Arguments might be made that all American executives might be held on
such charges. After all, it’s hard to name a leader who hasn’t been
involved in war, in sanctions that have cost the lives of thousands or
millions, and in providing military assistance to leaders who we know to
be just plain vile. Maybe they could all go to trial. And maybe they
all should. But what Trump did wasn’t an act of war. It cannot hide
behind some claim of national security. There was no delusion that his
actions might prevent more deaths in the future. It doesn’t even reach
the most base emotional appeal of exacting revenge for some past wrong.
When determining the scale of any crime, motivation plays a key
role. There are good arguments to be made that someone who accidentally
kills a stranger in a bar brawl is more dangerous to society than the
person who sets out to kill a family member over some long-held grudge.
But that’s not the way we treat it, either in court or in public
opinion.
Likewise, intent is vital. Someone who kills by accident, even when
that accident was the result of staggering bad judgment, is not held to
either the same level of horror or judgment as those who set out to take
a life intentionally. Again, it would be hard to find any executive who
could stand up to the rigors of a court that held them accountable for
simple mistakes. And again, that is not the case with Trump.
The person who determines to kill with cold knowledge of what they
are doing, and with expectation of some personal gain, is regarded as
the worst form of killer. And that is exactly what Donald Trump did when
he knowingly made the decision to halt plans for national testing and
contact tracing.
Trump understood that aggressive national guidelines on social
distancing, the institution of a national testing program, and follow-up
with a program of contact tracing could save a large number of lives
and restrict the spread of COVID-19. He had examples before him of
exactly how successful a program could be.
On March 13, the day that Trump rolled out what was supposed to be a
nationwide set of drive-thru testing facilities sited at thousands of
“big box” retailers and backed by a website created by “7,000 engineers
from Google,” South Korea had just finished utterly crushing the initial
outbreak in that country. They had done so using exactly the techniques
that were being advocated on that day: widespread testing, detailed
contact tracing, strict quarantine of infected individuals, and
isolation of those in contact with the infected. It wasn’t just South
Korea. Other nations, such as Taiwan, smashed their first surge of cases
in the same way, and did so in spite of close proximity and regular
contact with the area of China that had seen the original outbreak.
But Trump did not follow the announcement on March 13 with an actual
system of either testing or case tracing. The website that he cited did
not exist. The testing facilities themselves never went past a handful
of poorly supplied locations mismanaged by Jared Kushner and his college
buddies. That was not a failure born from ignorance or bumbling, though
there was plenty of both to go around. It was an intentional
decision made by Trump and his White House staff to allow COVID-19 to
ravage the country because he believed it would be to his political advantage.
As Trump watched disaster unfold in New York City, he didn’t think,
“What can I do to help?” He thought, “Excellent.” He thought that if he
continued to pull his punches against the virus, the death toll would
climb primarily in blue states. He thought the blame would fall on
Democratic politicians. He thought he could hold on to power by walking
over a sea of bodies.
Trump murdered Americans for personal gain, with calculated intent
and full knowledge of what he was doing. Whether the United States
honors the ICC or not, there is absolutely no doubt that Trump’s actions
fit the definition of both genocide and crimes against humanity. He
deserves a trial and punishment appropriate to scale of those crimes.
And don’t even get me started on the sedition …
"Sometimes, ya just gotta bump some people off, maybe 300,000 or so. Sometimes dat's da only way to get your message across, capiche?"
The right wing militant with an automatic weapon at the neck of this peaceful protestor might very well have bought his ammo with funds from Trump's Paycheck Protection Program.
A Southern Poverty Law
Center-designated hate group that has promulgated anti-immigrant
propaganda titled “The fiscal burden of illegal immigration on United
States taxpayers” (I’m not going to link to it) received more than
$680,000 in funds from the Paycheck Protection Program, an NBC News analysis has found(Disclosure:Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.)
The Federation for American
Immigration Reform (FAIR) and more than a dozen other designated hate
groups in fact received a total of $4.3 million in funds—even as
families have continued to remain without direct relief, aside from one
lousy check. In FAIR’s case, it received $683,680 in relief as its also advocated punishing immigrant families through policies like the “public charge” rule. Help for me, none for thee.
As my colleague Joan McCarter noted earlier this summer, there was clear “evidence
that the aid didn't go where it was most needed and hasn't done the job
for tens of thousand of businesses.” From mom-and-pop shops to local
restaurants, it’s clear which businesses have been in desperate need
of help. It’s also clear which entities saw a financial opportunity,
despite providing no public good.
Various AFA propagandists have further claimed that
“[h]omosexuality is not only harmful to homosexuals themselves, but also
to children and to society,” and that “[a]s with smoking, homosexual
behavior’s ‘second hand’ effects threaten public health.” Per NBC News’ report, AFA got $1,390,800 in PPP funds.
Another group that got funds was Church Militant, “an
organization that runs a media operation that advocates for so-called
gay conversion therapies and links homosexuality to pedophilia,” NBC
News continued. Per SPLC,
“Church Militant focuses on homosexuality with an intensity and
frequency bordering on obsessive.” That group received just over
$300,000 in funds.
“Extremist movements thrive in climates of political
uncertainty,” SPLC senior research analyst Cassie Miller explained to
NBC News. “In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, far-right actors
have exploited people’s fears and grievances to promote their
ideologies. But now the government is doing even more to help hate
groups by handing them millions of dollars in forgivable loans.”
If he can give relief money from the first stimulus package to the groups mentioned above, why not include the KKK this time around. After all, some of those sheets look like they've seen better days.
While Rome burns, Nero fiddles. While Americans die, Trump plays golf instead of signing the stimulus bill on his desk. "All Obama does is play golf. If I'm elected, I guarantee you I won't be playing golf."
UPDATE: Trump finally signs relief package
Alicia Adamczyk
Trump finally signs relief package, but millions may wait weeks for jobless benefits to kick in again
President Donald Trump signed another coronavirus relief bill
into law after almost a week of suggesting he would veto it. And while
the bill, which Trump called a "disgrace," extends unemployment benefits
for millions into 2021, his five-day hesitation to sign it may cost
those people a week of benefits, unemployment experts say, and millions more an extra $300 from the federal government.
WHAT HAPPENS...
Tony Romm, Rachel Siegel
The Washington Post
Dec. 27, 2020
Countdown to shutdown: Here’s what happens if Trump doesn’t enact the stimulus law by midnight Monday
Millions of Americans are days away from losing unemployment
payments, housing assistance and other critical coronavirus aid, as
federal relief begins to evaporate amid President Trump’s continued
refusal to sign a $900 billion congressional stimulus deal into law.
The programs — adopted at the start of the still-worsening pandemic
— have helped people purchase groceries, pay their bills, stay current
on their rents and mortgages and take sick leave over the past nine
months. All are set to expire this week as a result of Trump’s
last-minute decision to reject a bipartisan aid package his own
administration helped negotiate.
The economic unraveling is set to take place over several days.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers also sought to use the stimulus
deal to plus up some federal safety-net support, enhance vaccine
distribution, extend new lifelines to cash-starved businesses and
distribute one-time $600 checks to most Americans. They coupled their new aid with a must-pass measure that would fund the government’s operations through September 2021.
With that agreement now in tatters, however, Washington has found
itself scrambling in anticipation of a government shutdown on Tuesday — a
halt that threatens to undermine the government’s ability to respond to
the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis it has wrought.
“I don’t know how to describe it other than traumatic,” G. William
Hoagland, a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said.
Mnuchin’s loyalty to Trump could end with painful setback as president shreds stimulus deal
With millions of Americans bracing for sudden, severe financial
hardship, Trump spent much of the weekend mounting false attacks against
Democrats and tweeting disproved conspiracy theories about the 2020
presidential election. He has held off on signing the stimulus in an
attempt to secure larger one-time direct payments to Americans, an idea his own party does not support and moved to block this past week.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday as
the president decamped to one of his golf courses in Florida.
Here’s what will happen if the bill isn’t signed into law:
Unemployment benefits lapse
The economic blow is likely to land hardest on 14 million people who
lost their jobs early in the pandemic and still have not been rehired.
They have exhausted their benefits, and they are unlikely to see any
more aid until Trump signs the stimulus into law.
The day after
Christmas marked the last week for which these workers could have
applied to receive their weekly unemployment checks. Some of the workers
now at greatest risk participate in the “gig economy,” driving for Uber
or delivering for Grubhub, as they stand to lose access to the tranche
of jobless aid Congress authorized back in March.
Unemployment, sick leave and housing aid are set to expire in weeks, threatening Americans with sudden financial ruin
Democratic and Republican lawmakers extended unemployment benefits as
part of the $900 billion package they adopted last week. But Trump’s
newfound opposition to their bipartisan stimulus deal prevented it from
being implemented before Dec. 26. The missed deadline means workers now
face at least a week, if not more, during which they will receive no
financial help at all.
Even if Trump had signed the $900
billion deal into law, it might have taken some states weeks to
implement the payments given the archaic nature of their computer
systems. But the president’s approach threatens even greater delays,
keeping checks out of the hands of workers who need it most — with no
guarantee they’ll ever receive the payments they missed.
“Fourteen million people not getting paid for a week in this economy is
not good,” said Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst for the
National Employment Law Project, which advocates for out-of-work
Americans. “That’s an immediate hardship.”
A looming eviction crisis
As many as 17 million households are behind on their rent and may face
the immediate threat of eviction starting Jan. 1. Out of work — and out
of cash — these families have benefited from limited federal eviction
protections that are set to expire in four days, further adding to the
pressure on the president to act.
“We’re facing the very real
possibility of tens of millions of people losing their homes this
winter,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing
Coalition, said.
Millions of Americans risk losing power and water as massive, unpaid utility bills pile up
The Trump administration issued a moratorium on evictions this fall
out of a belief that a homelessness crisis could worsen during the
coronavirus pandemic, forcing people into cramped living conditions.
Housing experts praised the policy, even though it caused some headaches
— allowing landlords, for example, to start legal proceedings against tenants even if they could not yet remove people from their homes.
Once it expires at midnight Dec. 31, there “may be many families who
lose their homes immediately,” said Yentel, adding that her
organization’s repeated efforts to contact the Trump administration have
gone unanswered.
Lawmakers sought to implement an eviction
moratorium of their own as part of the $900 billion stimulus that Trump
has not yet signed. The package also includes $25 billion to help
renters pay back their bills and other costs, including their
electricity and water payments, amid growing concerns that Americans are
falling far behind on their bills.
Other new programs put on hold
Unless the sprawling stimulus package is signed into law, hundreds of
billions of dollars in aid for small businesses, households, schools,
transportation services, vaccine distribution, Internet access
and more will fall into limbo. Republican and Democratic lawmakers
agreed that the $900 billion relief package would not entirely heal the
economy. But there was still hope that their targeted aid could help
fill the recovery’s lingering gaps during a brutal winter.
It also set aside stimulus checks up to $600, including for adults and children. Initially, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said millions of Americans could start receiving payments as soon as this week. But that pledge was thwarted Dec. 22,
when Trump demanded Congress revisit the bill and raise the level of
stimulus checks to $2,000 (Trump has also demanded reductions in money
for foreign aid). Trump doubled down over the weekend, though it is
wildly unclear what his involvement is in new negotiations or if his
insistence on larger payments will derail the entire bill.
Here’s what’s in the new $900 billion stimulus package
Small businesses were supposed to see a lift through $284 billion for
first and second forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans, and $20
billion for targeted grants through the Economic Injury Disaster Loans
program. The package provides $15 billion
in additional aid for the arts and entertainment industry, including
independent movie theaters, entertainment venues, music clubs and
cultural institutions.
Billions were tagged for the airline industry,
highways, airports, buses and Amtrak, delivering much-needed help to
ailing transit systems that have announced massive cuts in staff and
service to make ends meet. More than $800 million in relief was
specified for public transit in the Washington region in particular.
A costly government shutdown
A government shutdown normally causes great disruption, freezing
Washington in place and leaving millions of federal workers without a
paycheck. But a lapse in funding this week could prove especially
harmful in the midst of a global pandemic that already has taxed federal
agencies.
Along with stimulus relief, lawmakers last week had
approved a measure that keeps the government running after a spending
stopgap expires Monday night. That means a shutdown is set to kick in
Tuesday unless Trump signs the bill — or Congress comes up with another
solution.
“Not signing the bill also means that the federal
government will be closed after Monday, which will idle a large portion
of the federal workforce at the time when the pandemic is bearing down
hardest on the American economy,” said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist and
former Treasury official during the Obama administration.
Lawmakers could try to quickly pass stopgap funding measures on Monday
as they have for weeks in an attempt to buy more time. But it’s unclear
how long such a temporary solution would last or whether the Senate
could even move fast enough to pass it while much of Capitol Hill is
away for the holidays.
There is also the open question of
whether Trump would sign such a bill into law, as he has often pointed
to his demands for larger stimulus checks despite the crucial funding
measures in the stalled legislation.
"Suffering Americans? I don't see any suffering Americans. Maybe I'll see one out on the golf course today."
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