California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Democrats Have to Come Up With a Plan to Make Real Estate Affordable Again

by John Lawrence

In the end Trump's and Musk's blitzkrieg may end up being a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing. However, there is a lesson here for Democrats. They need to have a couple of bullet points and a well thought out plan that they can execute or start executing on Day 1 of the next Presidential election, and they need to start hammering on it now. This is exactly what Trump did. He hammered for four years in his campaign rallies on MAGA before the election of 2024. The major bullet point should be Make Housing Affordable Again. This is the Number One economic problem in the US, and is something that government can and should do something about. There are a number of ways to do this. Kamala's plan for down payment assistance is one. But a much larger effort is needed and it should be ready to go on Day One of a new Democratic administration in 2028.

The Federal government can also give much more than down payment assistance. It can provide much or all of the capital to pay for the home with the understanding that, when the home is sold, the government will be paid back. It can facilitate the transfer of equity that parents or grandparents may have in their homes to children to be used for their home in much the same way that a reverse mortgage works. That is equity in a home can be transferred from an older generation to a younger generation in such a way that there is no increase in expenses for the older generation. There are private companies that do much the same thing right now. It is called Home Equity Investment.  They will take an equity position in a home in such a way that when the home is eventually sold the company will get a percentage of the profits. At the same time they provide the homeowner with a bunch of cash which can be used to help a child buy their own home. This is different from a HELOC- a Home Equity Line of Credit - in which monthly payments have to be made. A HEI doesn't require monthly payments.Democrats should get involved in this and other creative  aspects in a big way and have well thought out plans that they can implement on Day One of a new Democratic administration.

Another idea is that government could let contracts to builders and developers to build affordable housing. Biden's Infrastructure and Jobs Act provided $547–715 billion for building and repairing infrastructure in the US which was and is very necessary. A similar act to build affordable housing could be implemented. It would also create thousands of jobs. These houses could be built in such a way as to be climate change resistant.  These various ideas could be fleshed out in a document similar to Project 2025. The point is to have plans to make real estate affordable and to make this the Number One bullet point for Democrats in 2026 and 2028. Secondary bullet points could be taxing the rich and giving tax breaks to the middle class, enhancing social security and  providing money for child care and elder care.

Our Fragile Infrastructure: Lessons From Hurricane Helene

Our Fragile Infrastructure: Lessons From Hurricane Helene

Posted on November 5, 2024 by Ellen Brown

Buncombe County North Carolina – damage after Hurricane Helene floods. NCDOTcommunications, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Asheville, North Carolina, is known for its historic architecture, vibrant arts scene and as a gateway to the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was a favorite escape for “climate migrants” moving from California, Arizona, and other climate-challenged vicinities, until a “500 year flood” ravaged the city this fall. 

Hurricane Helene was a wakeup call not just for stricken North Carolina residents but for people across the country following their tragic stories in the media and in the podcasts now favored by young voters for news. “Preppers” well equipped with supplies watched in helpless disbelief as homes washed away in a wall of water and mud, taking emergency supplies in the storm. Streets turned into rivers, and many businesses and homes suffered extensive water damage if they were not lost altogether. 

The raging floods were triggered by unprecedented rainfall and winds, but a network of fragile dams also played a role. On Sept 27, when the floods hit, evacuation orders were issued to residents near a number of critical dams due to their reported “imminent failure” or “catastrophic collapse.” Flood waters were overtopping the dams to the point that in some cases the top of the dam structure could not be seen. 

The dams did not collapse, but to avoid that catastrophe, floodgates and spillways had to be opened, releasing huge amounts of water over a number of days. Spokesmen said the dams had “performed as designed,” but they were designed for an earlier era with more stable, predictable climates and no population buildup below the dams.

Five days after the floods hit in East Tennessee, half a million gallons of water were still being released per second from Douglas Dam, northwest of Asheville and upstream from Knoxville on the French Broad River. (Video clip of opened floodgates.) The Watauga Dam in Tennessee was also releasing record flows, surrounding nearby homes in water. WTVC NewsChannel 9 Chattanooga reported that Chickamauga Dam, upstream from Chattanooga, released approximately 566,118 gallons of water per second. 

The Nolichucky Dam, in Tennessee near the North Carolina border, was reported to have “withstood nearly twice the water flow of Niagara Falls.” (See dramatic videos on Fox Weather showing the overflow and the floodgate release continuing three weeks later, a similar clip from 11Alive adding the damage downstream, and overflow footage on WKYC Charlotte.) Other major dams in which the floodgates were opened included Cowans Ford Dam, north of Charlotte (see video clip of the floodgate release); and Waterville Dam (also called Walters Dam), upstream from Newport in Tennessee  (video). Homeowners accused Duke Energy of sacrificing poor neighborhoods for wealthier properties, but as one official said, the excess water had to go somewhere. It had to go downstream. They did what they had to do to avoid outright collapse of the dams, a much worse disaster.  

Upriver from Asheville, the auxiliary spillway of the North Forks Dam was activated. It too is said to have “performed as designed,” but the result was again significant flooding. Mandatory evacuation orders were put in place from the dam to Biltmore Village in Asheville, which suffered major damage. North Forks Dam is classified as a ”high-hazard potential dam,” meaning its failure could result in potential loss of life and serious property damage. 

One concerned Asheville podcaster complained that the city had known for 20 years that the North Forks Dam was inadequate and a lethal danger under flood conditions, but it hadn’t been repaired. The dam was put to the test in September, when residents were told there was no choice but for the flood gates to be opened to prevent the dam from breaking. The result was a 30 foot wall of water that swept homes and lives away, rushing so fast that people were found in the tops of trees. The podcaster’s suspicions were aroused because lithium worth billions of dollars is located in Western North Carolina, where a mining company has been trying to restart operations since 2021, over community protests. 

That was also true of the nearby town of Spruce Pine, downstream from the North Toe Dam, which was submerged under eight feet of water from the combination of torrential rain and the release of the dam’s floodgates. Spruce Pine is a major producer of high-quality quartz, a rare but necessary resource for many tech products. Mining companies have been attempting to double their operations in Spruce Pine, but they too have met resistance from local landowners. For some controversial details, see here. 

Asheville is also downstream from Lake Lure Dam, which was reported on Sept. 27 to be “at risk of imminent failure” as the river was overtopping the dam. Most heavily affected was Chimney Rock, the town immediately downstream from Lake Lure, known for both its rustic scenery and its lithium mines. The damage was extensive.

According to an Oct. 2 broadcast on WBTV News in Charlotte titled “Lake Lure Dam ‘high hazard’ and needed repairs at time Helene hit,” the dam, completed in 1926, does not meet current state safety requirements. Repairs were ongoing but unfinished. Lake Lure Dam is one of 1,581 dams across the state considered “high hazard,” and according to a 2022 report, North Carolina has 194 high-hazard dams in poor or unsatisfactory condition, meaning they “may require immediate or emergency remedial action.” 

Off the Top of My Head

Kamala Equals Pragmatism

by John Lawrence

Last night on the Town Hall Kamala made it clear that she is a pragmatist. This makes a lot of sense since the old political left right spectrum in and of itself doesn't make sense any more. Take the border for instance. There is a consensus that no one should be coming across the border illegally. Even if applying for amnesty there is a legal and an illegal way to do it. Enough resources need to be applied to the border to make sure that the only option for people wanting to come into the US is the legal option. On this both Democrats and Republicans finally agree. Pragmatism is the penultimate American value. As Kamala said she just wants to "get stuff done."  As to whether or not her administration would be "just a continuance of the Biden administration," what difference does it make? Joe Biden did more for the American economy since Franklin Roosevelt. Most of this was directed towards sorely needed infrastructure improvement. American infrastructure has not kept up with most of the rest of the developed world. Now with the weather disasters caused by climate change, it needs to be hardened and improved that much more. However, all a lot of Americans, including those who can most afford it, seem to be fixated on is the price of groceries.

As for fracking, even under the Biden administration, there has been a capitulation to the fossil fuel industry and a realization that the American people will not sacrifice their lifestyles in order to combat climate change. Therefore, not only fracking but every other concession to fossil fuels has been made in order to keep gas prices low. The fact is that renewable energy production has fallen far short insofar as providing all of our energy needs. The demand for energy has outstripped the increase in renewable energy production. Hence, Kamala, not to mention Joe Biden, is now for fracking. So climate change continues apace. Weather disasters will get worse. Instead of describing floods as "1000 year floods," we should now be describing them as "twice a year floods." Americans seem to accept these weather disasters as long as the Federal government provides the money to rebuild after the disaster takes place. The insurance market is a different story. Private insurance will no longer be available in many regions of the country. Perhaps people who want to relocate out of disaster prone areas should study the insurance maps to see where insurance is available and where it is not, and then make their choices.

Romans were bought off from thinking critically by "bread and circuses." Americans seem to be following the same pattern. Instead of being concerned about climate change and infrastructure development to mitigate against climate change, Americans complain about grocery prices while attending concerts where the ticket prices are in the thousands of dollars. In fact the ones who complain about grocery prices the most are those who can well afford them, those for whom grocery prices are a minimum part of their budgets. Americans have been trained to only think about their own personal economic situation and not about the good of the world, not about helping those whose economic situations are much worse. People is Gaza are starving. People in Sudan are starving. People in Cuba don't have any electricity. UNHCR most recently estimated that, by the end of 2023, for the first time in recorded history, the number of people forcibly displaced is now over 117.3 million, with over 31.6 million refugees under UNHCR's mandate and another 6 million Palestinian refugees. These people have far more to worry about than grocery prices and that's if even groceries are available at all.

As for Kamala, sure her administration would be a continuation of the Biden administration and that's a good thing. Part of Biden's Build Back Better plan was to expand Medicare to provide for in home caregivers. That part was stripped out of the infrastructure bill due to compromises with Republicans. Now this is part of what Kamala wants to do - to pick up pieces previously rejected by Republicans. Of course she can't say that. She will be branded an extreme leftist by Republicans just for wanting to help people and improve the lives of Americans. In the final analysis though, Kamala is a pragmatist just wanting to "get stuff done" while Repiublicans are still down the Qanon rabbit hole palavering about inconsequential things that have nothing to do with anything.

Off the Top of My Head

Hardening American Infrastructure

by John Lawrence

It's hard not to believe that, if power lines throughout the south had been undergrounded prior to Hurricane Helene, lights, heat, air conditioning and power would still be on. I believe that a massive infrastructure program should be undertaken to mitigate the effects of climate change. Certainly we have seen an increase of massive flash flooding not only from hurricanes but also from regular, everyday rain storms. Cell service could also be maintained if it were provided by satellites instead of ground networks the equivalent of telephone poles. This is even possible today with some cell phones which have an emergency provision that allows communication via satellite when out of cell phone range in emergencies. Well, climate change will bring one emergency after another. If power and communications were hardened, the effects of widespread devastation wrought by hurricanes such as Helene could be mitigated. Undergrounding the electricity grid would prevent the massive power outages that Helene caused.

On June 26, 2024 U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced $1.8 billion in awards from the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) discretionary grant program for 148 projects across the country. [This] announcement brings the total amount of Biden-Harris Administration RAISE grants to more than $7.2 billion for over 550 projects across the country. ... “After decades of underinvestment, the condition of America’s infrastructure is now finally getting better instead of worse – and today we proudly announce our support for 148 more projects in communities of every size across the country,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Through President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re funding projects across the country to make roads safer, make it easier for people to move around their community, make transportation infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather, and improve supply chains to keep costs down for consumers.” This is a step in the right direction, but only a step. A much bigger effort is necessary to really harden America's infrastructure to mitigate climate change.

Problem is that many voters would resist an increase in their taxes that might be necessary to provide the money for all the work that needs to be done to underground utilities around the country. Americans would always prefer to have the money in their private pockets to spend as they choose rather than to provide the funds necessary for the government to improve infrastructure. That's why the US lags far behind other advanced countries in infrastructure such as high speed trains which are common in many other countries. Americans seem to be willing to rewire and repole electric lines after every storm rather than put the utilities underground so that that would no longer be necessary. Unfortunately, that procedure to "get the power back on" may be more trouble than its worth when the country is faced with massive storm after massive storm. A hardened electric and communications infrastructure would have facilitated relatives getting in touch with each other after Hurricane Helene rather than not knowing for days and even weeks whether or not their relatives were safe. Voters who will not vote to raise taxes to provide a safer and sounder and more advanced infrastructure are not doing themselves any favors in the long run, and the long run is almost here. In terms of climate change, it's already here.

Off the Top of My Head

Starter Homes Cost More Than $1 Million in 237 American Cities

by John Lawrence

In many US cities a starter home costs more than $1 million making it unaffordable for most young people who make less than $400,000. CBS News reports:

If you put 20% down on your $1 million home, you would need an $800,000 mortgage for the remainder of what you owe on the purchase. In this case, your mortgage payment would be $7,739 per month, inclusive of estimated property taxes and homeowners insurance costs. That amounts to about $92,868 per year in mortgage payments. 

With 0% down, you can expect to pay $9,070 per month inclusive of estimated property taxes and homeowners insurance costs. With less than 20% down, you should also expect to pay for private mortgage insurance (PMI), which would cost about $1,250 per month. That works out to a total of $10,320 per month, or $123,840 in annual mortgage payments. 

Based on these figures, you would need to earn $331,671.43 annually to afford a $1 million home with a 20% down payment if you follow the 28% rule. Or, you would need to earn about $442,285.71 annually to afford the same home with no down payment based on this rule. 

Obviously, only very rich families with parental support can afford to buy a starter home in 237 American cities. So what is the solution? If you're young, move to an American city where the average price of a starter home is around $200,000. Cities like South Bend, Indiana, Cleveland, Ohio, or Topeka, Kansas. Indianapolis, Indiana has cheap starter homes. The median price for a housing unit in Indianapolis is $232,000. However, think twice about cities that are desirable or undesirable due to climate change. I wouldn't buy a house in a city in the south, for instance. Also there are several other factors like what's the job situation. As time goes on, some areas of the country will become virtually uninhabitable due to climate change. In general you have to consider the topography. Are you close to a river or creek that could flood? Are you close to a forest that could burn? Does the area have adequate water resources? What about infrastructure? I wouldn't want to be too close to the ocean as climate change raises ocean levels and shore lines are washed away.

Young people should be given a path to home ownership like returning GIs from World War II. They could buy a house with nothing down. Their mortgages were guaranteed by the government. In exchange for a two year commitment to the American Climate Corps, young people should also be able to buy a house with nothing down. Home ownership is the time proven way to build middle class wealth. Renters will never build wealth. The government should be in the business of creating a strong middle class. This can only be accomplished by encouraging wide spread home ownership, and this has to start with young people getting into homes.

Off the Top of My Head

Mud Slinging and Character Assassination: the Only Things Republicans Know How To Do

by John Lawrence

And then the pundits discuss the mud slinging by the hour. Calling people names. Making up stuff. What's this got to do with the future vision for the country? What I want to hear from Trump and Kamala is their vision for the future of our country. I could care less about what they seem to be all about - destroying their opponent. These are the ethics of a wrestling match - destroy your opponent. Kamala has to get specific about a few policies, namely, the border, taxation and abortion. She needs to co-opt Trump's issues. She needs to call for a tax cut for the middle class while raising taxes on the rich. On the border, she has to call for strengthening the border to the point that it is impregnable while calling for increased legal pathways for immigration and asylum. On the wars she has to demand a cease fire and hostage release in Gaza and a settlement in Ukraine that's basically a compromise instead of an all or nothing approach.

The overriding issue of our times is climate change. Nothing could be clearer than the differences between the two parties on this issue. The Democrats are very environmentally conscious. Republicans couldn't care less about the environment or climate change. All they care about is their plastic straws, gas guzzling vehicles, guns and meat. Don't ask them to change their way of life in order to save the planet for future generations. It's hard to imagine a worse ethical stance. They are against everything that is conducive to making the world a better place. It's the legacy of an ethic of selfishness as promulgated by Ronald Reagan, George W Bush and others including Ayn Rand who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness. The US has a very weak, to the point of nonexistence, communal ethic. Individualism and competition is the fabric of American character. There have been a few exceptions, namely, the Depression and World War II. Even in those cases there were many voices who called for not getting involved and just letting the chips fall where they may.

So Kamala, don't get caught up in the mudslinging, character assassination and name calling or responding to same. Express clearly where you are on the issues and where your policies will take America and the world. Vagueness is the enemy of clarity and decisiveness. Better to ignore Trump and his puerility. I want to see clarity about the border and clarity about taxation. As far as women's reproductive rights, Democrats own that issue. As for the rest, a continuation of Biden's policies in terms of infrastructure, the child tax credit, elder long term care and other aspects of Biden's Build Back Better program are important. Especially, the surge in mental awareness and acceptance of mutual responsibility for climate change and the environment is paramount regardless of Republican insistence on keeping their plastic straws, guns, meat and gas guzzlers. A change in the mentality of Americans has to occur or climate disasters will only get worse until many areas of the US, not to mention the world, will become uninhabitable in the very near future.

Off the Top of My Head

Peace is Not Just the Absence of War

by John Lawrence

As an advocate for a Department of Peace, I do not advocate eliminating the Department of War (Defense Department) altogether. I think both are necessary but in a more balanced way. Most efforts toward peace in the world should take place outside the arena of war, that is as a preventative to war. This includes economic development in parts of the world that are liable to gang control. In fact I would advocate the use of the US military to go after the gangs that are controlling certain parts of the world, for example in Mexico where gangs are trafficking humans to the US border and controlling the inflow of drugs into the US. Haiti is another candidate for the use of the US military to eliminate the gangs while the Peace Corps is helping with economic development. In areas of the world that don't have mature institutions that can provide security for the populace, the US military could provide that while the Peace Corps is building infrastructure. The two should operate hand in hand. What China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. China is winning friends and influencing people by building infrastructure in many parts of the world. But much more needs to be done that China is not doing. Low level infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation needs to be built out. Approximately half the world does not have clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.  3.6 billion people are still living with poor-quality toilets that damage their health and pollute their environment. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, contaminating water resources.China is building high level infrastructure such as ports, railroads and trains. The US should complement their efforts.

There are around 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. Most of these bases are unnecessary and represent a waste of money. They are also sitting ducks for attacks by the likes of ISIS. They should be eliminated and the resources redirected elsewhere. With US sea borne and satellite military resources there is no need for land based resources. The efforts should instead be put into developing  infrastructure both in terms of economics and in terms of political institutions. What is important is helping to create stable institutions in parts of the world where instability results in chaos ^e.g. Haiti. Also if life was good in countries where there is a lack of stability and economic development, people would not be flocking to the US and European borders and asking for asylum. So military assets as well as Peace Corps assets could work hand in hand. Once war breaks out these efforts at creating peace in the first place are useless. A Department of Peace needs to have a diplomatic aspect as well as the Peace Corps division. Also person to person exchanges help to build understanding. In fact the largest efforts need to be made with those who are considered our worst enemies.

As an anti-war protester in the 1960s, I am still one today. Peace efforts or efforts at creating peace in the world today do have both an economic and a military component. In some countries peace workers would be slaughtered by gangs if they weren't adequately protected by the US military while they go about doing their jobs. So while I am anti war, I am not anti military. I just think that the balance of human and financial resources is completely out of whack. Less money and manpower (womanpower?) needs to be devoted to the military and more money and womanpower needs to be devoted to the Department of Peace which should include the Peace Corps (economic development), the diplomatic corps (institutional development)  and exchange corps ( person to person friendship). Less effort needs to be spent on proving to the rest of the world that the US way is the best way and more effort needs to be spent on creating stable societies with the economic and institutional resources so that people in all parts of the world can have comfortable and secure lives.

Bringing the rest of the world up to economic and institutional speed is of utmost importance today because, unless the whole world is operating cooperatively, it will be impossible to do much about our common enemy - global warming. In fact we have met the enemy and it is us. Economic development in the developed world has proceeded in such a way as to have created the global warming crisis. Now it must proceed in such a way as to eliminate it. Sustainable development and environmental responsibility should be the order of the day. Countries that have vast fossil fuel resources have no incentive to curtail the economic development of those resources if they are considered to be pariah nations by the rest of the world. Nations that are considered pariah nations have no incentive to convert from war time expenditures to peace time expenditures if they are not brought into the community of nations in a respectful way. Nations that are at war right now have no incentive to negotiate a peaceful resolution if their interests and concerns are not taken into account.

By the Dawn’s Early Light: On the Fall of the Francis Scott Key Bridge

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Ellen Brown on Web of Debt blog

The Baltimore bridge that collapsed on March 26^th was named for Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics to the American national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1814. His inspiration was the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in the critical port of Baltimore during the War of 1812. The British had just burned the U.S. Capitol and the White House and had set their sights on the Baltimore port, with the guns from hundreds of British ships trained on shelling the American flag. If the flag were taken down, they would know the Americans had surrendered, and the British agreed the shelling would stop. But in the dawn’s early light, the flag still waved, held up by patriots who replaced soldiers who had fallen before them. Francis Scott Key observed all this from a British ship on which he had been allowed on board to negotiate a prisoner release. It is a quite moving story, dramatized here.

What the dawn’s early light brought on March 26, 2024, by contrast, were shocking news videos of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsing when the Singapore-owned cargo ship Dali slammed into it. It was “like something out of an action movie,” said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott. Several commentators are calling it a “black swan” event that will have catastrophic effects on global supply chains. Interestingly, the War of 1812 was also about disruptions to U.S. trade with foreign nations, in that case by blockade by the British navy. But more on that, and on how our forebears turned dependence on foreign manufacturers into economic independence, after a look at what went amiss with the Dali and the bridge.

An Unusual Stroke of Bad Luck

Before it fell, the Key Bridge was a pivotal artery for traffic, cargo and supplies across the country. The Interstate 695 running across the bridge connects to I-95, one of the country’s busiest and most important supply chain highways, running from the northern to the southern end of the Eastern seaboard. Shipping is expected to resume to full capacity by the end of May, but  rebuilding the bridge to appropriate standards could take five to seven years. That means this strategic artery will no longer be accessible for transporting hazardous materials, which Maryland law forbids to be transported by tunnel (including unleaded fuel, diesel, propane gas, and nitrogen chemicals for fertilizer), along with oversized cargo that cannot fit through roadway tunnels in the area (including tractors and military vehicles).

Observers contend there is still no plausible explanation for the direct hit to the bridge’s most critical support. The power went out on the ship about three minutes before the strike, yet multiple layers of security for maintaining steering control are mandated by U.S. and international regulation. Even without power, the Dali should have continued in the direction it was headed; but instead it veered to the right, for a direct hit into the key pylon supporting the bridge.

Engineering Professor Emerita W. M. Kim Roddis, a registered professional engineer with experience in bridge design, acknowledged in an interview in a March 28 article on GW Today that it was a “one in a million” occurrence. As reported in the George Washington University publication, she was asked how a 1.6-mile-long bridge that carried 31,000 cars per day could suffer such a complete collapse. She responded:

The container ship Dali lost power multiple times on its way out of Baltimore Harbor. The ship’s inability to steer resulted in it heading at an angle towards the southwestern major bridge pier—the pylon.

The navigation chart for Baltimore Harbor shows four protective devices called dolphins, one in front of each pier for outgoing and incoming ships. … They essentially serve as bumpers to deflect or slow boats and ships that are headed toward the pylon.

The [Dali’s] angled course allowed the ship to miss the dolphin and strike the pylon. When the ship collided with the pylon it exerted a huge crushing force on the pier, bursting the pylon apart. This pylon was the only support for the bridge on that side. … The continuity of the structure meant that all three spans came down when the southwestern pylon was lost. …

The angle the ship came in at was unusual. So, yes, this was an unlikely accident. …  [O]ne-​in-​a-​million is in the right ballpark.

AOC and Sanders aim to place public housing at center of Green New Deal

Proposal aims to decarbonize all of nation’s public housing units, with an investment of between $162bn and $234bn over next decade

Bernie Sanders speaks alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the capitol in Washington DC on 21 March 2024. Photograph: Win McNamee/Getty Images

from The Guardian

With a sweeping legislative proposal, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders are attempting to place public housing at the center of the green energy transition, tackling the twin crises of global warming and soaring housing costs.

“Public housing should be the gold standard for affordable, environmentally friendly, and safe communities,” Ocasio-Cortez said in an email. “This bill is how we ensure that.”

The Green New Deal for Public Housing aims to decarbonize all of the nation’s public housing units – and build more of them – with an investment of between $162bn and $234bn over the next decade. In doing so, it would avert 5.7m tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the equivalent of removing 1.26m cars from US roads each year, while creating jobs and public health benefits.

The proposal is co-sponsored by a slew of other progressive lawmakers and supported by dozens of environmental groups, housing justice organizations and labor unions.

“We are going to provide decent-quality, affordable housing for millions of Americans, and at the same time, we’re going to create good-paying union jobs,” said Sanders at a Thursday press conference. “That is a win, win, win situation.”

It is not likely to pass, but supporters say it can help build support for the vision.

The bill’s reintroduction comes as the nation faces an unprecedented shortage of affordable housing. In 2022, a record half of US renters spent more than 30% of their incomes on rent, a January report from Harvard University found – and more than half of these “rent-burdened” Americans gave more than 50% of their earnings to the landlord.

Public housing remains an affordable option that 1.7 million Americans rely on. But amid a chronic lack of investment, it is often allowed to fall into disrepair, creating a maintenance backlog of $70bn.

In the absence of funds to mend these units, they are often demolished or privatized instead. As a result, the US public housing stock shrunk from 1.2m units to just over 900,000 between 2009 and 2022 – a 25% decline – according to an analysis from the progressive thinktank Climate and Community Project, which informed the policy proposal.

Instead of allowing the nation’s public housing stock to wither away, the bill seeks to transform it. Units would not only be repaired and freed of contaminants like lead and mold, but also made efficient and green.

Each would be insulated and weatherized to conserve energy, as well as outfitted with fossil fuel-free electric appliances. Renewable energy would be installed on-site. And developments would be made climate-resilient with increased green space and decreased paved areas, which can help absorb heat and soak up water during heavy rains.

In addition to slashing greenhouse gas pollution, the bill would come with “major health and comfort benefits”, said Kira McDonald, a researcher at Climate and Community Project who co-authored the report.

Removing fossil fuel-powered appliances would lower air pollution and therefore improve residents’ respiratory health. And insulation and heat pumps could cut energy bills, while making homes easier to keep at a comfortable temperature amid extreme weather.

The Green New Deal for Public Housing would not only improve the nation’s existing public units, but also “finally help build more”, said Ocasio-Cortez. Currently, the 1998 Faircloth Amendment in effect prevents the federal government from funding new public housing, but the proposal would immediately repeal that policy in order to erect more state-of-the-art, green units.

The policy would benefit the US’s most vulnerable residents. Public housing residents are disproportionately likely to be people of color, and 24% of public housing residents are living with a disability.

“The Green New Deal for Public Housing is going to change the game for those of us and our neighbors who are being hit hardest by the climate crisis,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.

The policy also would have knock-on effects for the entire nation, including by spurring the creation of about 280,000 jobs over a decade. The bill includes language to ensure those jobs are all unionized.

It could also help create a supply of efficient technologies for all residents. Last year, New York City’s public housing authority invited manufacturers to compete for a contract to create and install at least 10,000 induction stoves in New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) buildings, specifically calling for apartment-sized models that do not require electrical upgrades. The winning model will become available on the market for all US residents.

“Those models are available elsewhere, but not in the US because producers basically don’t see that there is a strong enough market,” said McDonald. “This can change that.”

Nycha has launched a similar program to bring small heat pumps on to the US market, and back in the 1990s put out a call for small, energy-efficient refrigerators that helped shape the green fridge market.

“There are gaps in green building technology and green appliance markets in the US,” said McDonald. “Public housing can help fill them … so this policy is also a form of green industrial policy.”
Public housing is the only form of US housing whose affordability does not rely “solely on the market and solely on billionaires”, Ocasio-Cortez said at Thursday’s press conference.
Jasmine Sanchez, a housing advocate who lives in a Nycha development, said many public housing residents face the “constant threat of privatization” and often feel left behind by the US government.
“Everyone deserves to be invested in and everyone deserves to live threat free,” she said.

Instead of allowing the nation’s public housing stock to wither away, the bill seeks to transform it. Units would not only be repaired and freed of contaminants like lead and mold, but also made efficient and green.

Each would be insulated and weatherized to conserve energy, as well as outfitted with fossil fuel-free electric appliances. Renewable energy would be installed on-site. And developments would be made climate-resilient with increased green space and decreased paved areas, which can help absorb heat and soak up water during heavy rains.

In addition to slashing greenhouse gas pollution, the bill would come with “major health and comfort benefits”, said Kira McDonald, a researcher at Climate and Community Project who co-authored the report.

Removing fossil fuel-powered appliances would lower air pollution and therefore improve residents’ respiratory health. And insulation and heat pumps could cut energy bills, while making homes easier to keep at a comfortable temperature amid extreme weather.

The Green New Deal for Public Housing would not only improve the nation’s existing public units, but also “finally help build more”, said Ocasio-Cortez. Currently, the 1998 Faircloth Amendment in effect prevents the federal government from funding new public housing, but the proposal would immediately repeal that policy in order to erect more state-of-the-art, green units.

The policy would benefit the US’s most vulnerable residents. Public housing residents are disproportionately likely to be people of color, and 24% of public housing residents are living with a disability.

“The Green New Deal for Public Housing is going to change the game for those of us and our neighbors who are being hit hardest by the climate crisis,” said Saul Levin, legislative and political director of the progressive advocacy group Green New Deal Network.

The policy also would have knock-on effects for the entire nation, including by spurring the creation of about 280,000 jobs over a decade. The bill includes language to ensure those jobs are all unionized.

It could also help create a supply of efficient technologies for all residents. Last year, New York City’s public housing authority invited manufacturers to compete for a contract to create and install at least 10,000 induction stoves in New York City Housing Authority (Nycha) buildings, specifically calling for apartment-sized models that do not require electrical upgrades. The winning model will become available on the market for all US residents.

“Those models are available elsewhere, but not in the US because producers basically don’t see that there is a strong enough market,” said McDonald. “This can change that.”

Nycha has launched a similar program to bring small heat pumps on to the US market, and back in the 1990s put out a call for small, energy-efficient refrigerators that helped shape the green fridge market.

“There are gaps in green building technology and green appliance markets in the US,” said McDonald. “Public housing can help fill them … so this policy is also a form of green industrial policy.”

Public housing is the only form of US housing whose affordability does not rely “solely on the market and solely on billionaires”, Ocasio-Cortez said at Thursday’s press conference.

Jasmine Sanchez, a housing advocate who lives in a Nycha development, said many public housing residents face the “constant threat of privatization” and often feel left behind by the US government.

“Everyone deserves to be invested in and everyone deserves to live threat free,” she said.

Though the bill is not expected to pass, Climate and Community Project says support to expand and improve public housing is growing. In 2021, the report notes, the House voted to repeal the Faircloth Amendment and most Democratic lawmakers supported including $60bn for public housing in the spending package that later became the Inflation Reduction Act, though both measures ultimately failed to pass.

“While just a couple of senators ultimately blocked these reforms, it was clear that there is already strong support for saving public housing that advocates can build on,” the report says.

The policy represents a “visionary future that will uplift everyone”, said Levin of Green New Deal Network.

“By lifting up the world we need,” he said, “we are building toward that vision”.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden Should Run on Tax Cuts for Middle Class

by John Lawrence

There are only two issues Republicans have: the border and tax cuts. The American people are expecting a tax cut if a Republican is elected to the Oval Office. That's the reason they are complaining about the economy. The American people have gotten a lot of good economic stuff out of the Biden administration. Now they want their tax cuts. Every Republican administration in recent history has promised tax cuts. Biden should steal that thunder and run on tax cuts for the middle class and tax increases for the very wealthy. He started sounding this note during the last election cycle. He needs to reemphasize this medley. Biden needs to take these issues away from Republicans. I wrote previously about the fact that Biden should go full Trump on the border issue. It's ridiculous that the US has 750 military bases around the world, and seeks to control every other country's borders but can't control its own. A majority of these bases are equipped with modern military equipment and airfields. According to a report, the U.S. had about 750 military bases across 80 countries in the world and had deployed 173,000 troops in 159 different countries as of July 2021.

Let's review the Biden record on the economy which is truly epic. Biden has added 14 million jobs in less than three years, bringing the Black unemployment rate to a record low and reducing student loan debt by billions. That's for starters. The astoundingly strong labor market is arguably the White House’s biggest victory. In some ways, the bump was inevitable — Biden took office at a time when millions were still out of work because of the pandemic. Even so, the rapid job gains in recent years have blown past economists’ expectations and have fueled the economy’s blockbuster growth. To date, the White House has canceled some $132 billion in student loan debt for more than 3.6 million Americans. It has also increased federal Pell Grants to low- and middle-income students, allowing them to take on less debt. As a result, outstanding student loan balances have been falling for six months. 

The American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021, injected a $1.9 trillion stimulus into the U.S. economy. It included financial safety nets like payments of $1,400 to households earning up to $75,000, extended unemployment benefits, and an expansion to the child tax credit. Collectively that cut overall poverty by 44%, according to the Brookings Institution, and lifted Americans’ financial health to new heights. Biden’s $1 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act was the next major spending package to win congressional approval in November 2021. It fulfilled the president’s campaign-trail promise to refurbish the country’s roads and bridges, while expanding access to clean water and broadband internet. It will support an additional 600,000 new jobs by the end of next year and 800,000 jobs in 2025, according to Moody’s Analytics.

 

The passage of the so-called “Chips and Science” plan allowed Biden to cement an industrial-policy legacy and fulfill a bipartisan desire to rely less on China’s semiconductor industry. More than 460 companies have shown interest in its $53 billion of research and production subsidies, the Commerce Department said last month. And the relationship between public and private investment is something to brag about. Micron Technology’s (MU.O), opens new tab $100 billion outlay for a New York chip factory is expected to create nearly 50,000 jobs in the state. Intel’s (INTC.O), opens new tab $20 billion expansion in Arizona is expected to support 3,000 new jobs. The Inflation Reduction Act gave Biden a chance to revive progressive proposals before the 2022 midterm elections. Though the final plan was whittled down from $1.8 trillion to $430 billion of new spending, it still included Biden’s plans for clean energy tax credits and Medicare drug price negotiation. Bank of America estimates it has already spurred $132 billion of investment across more than 270 new clean energy projects.

 

So what is the American people's response to these clear economic gains that Biden has been responsible for? Now we want our tax cuts so we will elect Trump since that is what he provided after his election in 2016. This is an ominous predilection for the reelection of Joe Biden. He can neutralize this threat by out promising Trump on the issue of tax cuts for the American people. At the same time he can balance this by his previous promise of not increasing taxes on anyone making less than $400 million a year. This would make Biden's policy on tax cuts more fiscally responsible than Trump's. Trump's tax cuts added $7 trillion to the national debt, something Republicans weren't too concerned about. Biden should take the wind out of Trump's sails on tax cuts while also providing a more responsible policy regarding the national debt.

Off the Top of My Head

While China Builds Infrastructure in the Americas, the US is Disconcerted

by John Lawrence

How dare they, the Chinese that is, build infrastructure in South America! Why, that's our back yard, our sphere of influence. China is building an elaborate $3 billion port in Chancay, Peru. It wasn't that long ago that the US was complicit in a plot to overthrow the democratically elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende who was a socialist. Be that as it may, many countries are turning to China preferring the building of infrastructure to the building of military bases of which the US has constructed about 750 in some 80 countries throughout the world. China is even bailing out Argentina financially. According to Reuters, Argentina's central bank said on [October 18, 2023] that China has cleared a currency swap line totaling a freely accessible $6.5 billion, part of a broader deal the South American country has been using to help it defend the embattled local peso. Many countries throughout the world are effectively saying to the US, "What have you done for us lately?" So the question is how can the US compete with a country who is building economic assets in other countries while all the US has to offer is the construction of military bases? Is it the world's policeman versus the world's builder, and which role will be more appealing?

"In the district of Chancay, Huaral province, approximately 80 kilometers from the Peruvian capital, Lima, a major private investment project is being developed that promises to change the logistics landscape in Latin America. It is the New Multipurpose Port Terminal of Chancay, a joint project by the Chinese company COSCO Shipping Ports Limited (CSPL), which owns a 60 percent share, and the Peruvian company Volcan Compañía Minera, with the remaining 40 percent.

"With an investment budget of over $3 billion, this ambitious project is in the development stage, over 40 percent complete. Construction began in 2011, and the terminal is expected to start operations in the last quarter of 2024."

Back to Argentina: "China has increased the amount and instead of $5 billion we are getting $6.5 billion," Argentine President Alberto Fernandez told Radio 10 from the Asian country, where he is for an official trip.

"Every time we went through difficult times, Xi Jinping's government gave us its support," Fernandez added. "This is an important step so that production (in Argentina) does not stop."

This is the second swap line with China activated during Fernandez's presidency. According to an official bank source, the total amount of the swap line stood at 47 billion yuans .

The move comes as Argentines head to the ballots on Sunday for a presidential election. Libertarian Javier Milei, who has vowed to dollarize the economy and shut down the central bank, is seen as the front-runner.

Well, Javier Milei won the election. It's unclear whether Milei's tough talk regarding China will mean that he will not let China bail them out! " According to Reuters, "Argentinian president-elect Javier Milei has criticised China and Brazil, which are among his country's most important trading partners. A few months ago, Milei even likened the Chinese government to an "assassin" and said the people of China were "not free". Milei's tough talk on China stands in sharp contrast with a vow of cooperation by the outgoing president, Alberto Fernandez, who visited Beijing last month and hailed China as a "true friend" of Argentina."

China is South America’s top trading partner and a major source of both foreign direct investment and lending in energy and infrastructure, including through its massive Belt and Road Initiative. Can the US compete? China has surpassed the United States as South America’s largest trading partner. Beijing has also expanded its diplomatic, cultural, and military presence throughout the region. Most recently, it leveraged its support amid the COVID-19 pandemic, supplying the region with medical equipment, loans, and hundreds of millions of vaccine doses. U.S. President Joe Biden, who sees China as a “strategic competitor” in the region, has pledged greater economic cooperation with Latin America, but some analysts argue the United States should be doing more.

But will the US do more? It can't even get modest amounts of aid for Israel and Ukraine passed by the Republican controlled House of Representatives. The Trumpist American Firsters don't want to spend money on other countries. However, they don't mind the trillion dollar military-industrial complex budgets. They are baked in the cake especially because all the financial and economic incentives align for the various interests. Lobbyists will make sure there is no reduction in that budget.

But China’s push comes as American wars overseas, unstable foreign policy election-to-election, and deep political polarization have intensified questions about US global leadership. Meanwhile, pressing issues like climate change, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s assault on Gaza have sharpened discussion over whether the West is taking the right approach to respond.

All this coincides with longstanding calls from countries across the developing world for an international system where they have more say.

Many of those countries have substantially enhanced their economic ties with Beijing during Xi’s rule, including under a decade of his up to $1 trillion global infrastructure building drive, which leaders gathered to celebrate last month in the Chinese capital.

Economics tends to transcend politics in international relations. Up to now the economic success of the west and in particular the United States has exerted a pull on countries around the world. However, it can't be ignored that currently China is outpacing the US with its investments in other countries particularly with its Belt and Road initiative. Its alternative vision for economic development is very appealing. Its live and let live policy regarding lecturing other nations on their internal political systems also is seen by many as a refreshing alternative to the US' insistence that other countries should structure their political systems similarly to the US'.

Off the Top of My Head

The Absence of War is Not Peace

by John Lawrence

Human beings do not use the absence of war to create peace. They use the absence of war to prepare for the next war. The time between wars could be used in a more constructive way and that is to do everything possible to prevent the next war. Instead what we do is to build up our offensive and defensive capacities so that whatever side we are on prevails in the next war. The US military-industrial complex is allotted almost a trillion dollars a year whether or not there is war or absence of war. There is never ever really peacetime. It's sole purpose is to prepare for the next war. Meanwhile the Peace Corps is allotted next to nothing in order to create the conditions that might prevent the next war. What are those conditions you might ask? They are very simple: creating educational opportunities for the undereducated, creating economic opportunities for those in poverty, creating hospitals and clinics for those whose health is at risk, building infrastructure for those lacking access to modern infrastructure. In other words building more successful societies from the ground up for those lacking what the most advanced societies already have. Above all poverty and lack of healthful conditions must be alleviated all over the world including in the advanced nations themselves before anything approaching world peace can be achieved.

So what is the lesson of the Israeli-Gaza war? It is that in the time period before the war, nobody did nothing to create the conditions for a lasting peace which would have been the two state solution. Instead people just stood back content to have the Palestinians live miserable lives without political or economic rights. Nobody cared. Nobody worked hard to correct or ameliorate the situation. People were content just to let the situation fester until the next violence broke out, and then it did with very dramatic and horrific results. When there was an absence of war, people just said ho hum, there's no urgency to create the conditions for a lasting peace. Then when war breaks out everyone gets very excited and upset, horrible things happen to children and old people. People want revenge. Hate proliferates. War is exciting. Peace is dull and undramatic. People get bored with the absence of war. People's senses come alive during war. During the absence of war in which there is no real peace, people pursue their self interest or in other words lining their purses. During war they get all excited. There is nonstop news coverage. People get upset by (wo)man's inhumanity to (wo)man as if people doing horrible things to other people is unimaginable. It's not. People's senses come alive and they come out of their collective stupors.

If the US just spent half its defense budget on war and the other half on peace, it would still have a larger defense budget than any other country in the world, and just think what the Peace Corps could do with a $500 billion budget. Why it could even compete with China's Belt and Road initiative which is building infrastructure in parts of the world where inadequate infrastructure exists. The two largest world economies could compete creating peace in the world instead of trying to out compete each other with larger and better weapons and more vitriolic and challenging rhetoric. However, this is not OK with conservatives who feel very threatened by the Chinese COMMUNIST Party although the Chinese system brought 800 million people out of poverty in 40 years primarily by adopting a free enterprise capitalistic system. Oh but it is still authoritarian politically, you say. That is subject to interpretation as the Chinese political system is based on Confucianism which promotes a meritocracy unlike the US where any bozo can become President.

So where is the American Department of Peace? We have the Department of Defense(Offense). We have the Department of Homeland Security. We have the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). What agencies of the Federal government are devoted to creating a more peaceful world? Basically, none, and so is it any wonder that, while the human race continues to invent a plethora of gadgets, it can do hardly anything to create world peace? Peace depends on mutual respect among the leaders of the various nations of the world. Instead US authorities criticize and lord it over the leaders of other nations because they are not exactly like us. Instead of walking a mile in their shoes, they insist that every other nation walks a mile in our shoes.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden: The Least Appreciated Great President in American History

by John Lawrence

President Biden has gotten more real work done for the American people than any President with the exception of Franklin D. Roosevelt. So why is his job approval rating so low - just 39%? Chalk it up to the fickleness of the American people. They don't know a great President when they see one. Biden has been able to do so much with much narrower margins in Congress than FDR had in all his terms as President. In fact Roosevelt had Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate from 1933 until his death in 1945, and in those days the filibuster was a speaking filibuster that delayed but didn't terminate legislation and so was of little consequence compared to the fact that today 60 Senators are required to pass any bill.

So what are some of Biden's accomplishments? The Inflation Reduction Act is a historic legislative achievement that lowers costs for families, combats the climate crisis, reduces the deficit, and finally makes the largest corporations pay their fair share. For the first time, Medicare is able to negotiate the price of certain high-cost drugs, a month’s supply of insulin for seniors is capped at $35, Medicare beneficiaries pay $0 out of pocket for recommended adult vaccines, and seniors’ out of pocket expenses at the pharmacy will be capped at $2,000 a year. Historically low unemployment at 3.5%. A manufacturing boom is occurring. Companies have announced nearly $300 billion in manufacturing investments in the United States. These investments are ensuring the technologies of the future are made in America, and bringing back supply chains from overseas. And they are creating good-paying jobs, including union jobs and jobs that don’t require a four-year degree. As part of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, the Department of Commerce is overseeing $50 billion to revitalize the U.S. semiconductor industry, including $39 billion in semiconductor incentives. The first funding opportunity seeks applications for projects to construct, expand, or modernize commercial facilities for the production of leading-edge, current-generation, and mature-node semiconductors. This includes both front-end wafer fabrication and back-end packaging. The Department will also be releasing a funding opportunity for semiconductor materials and equipment facilities in the late spring, and one for research and development facilities in the fall.

President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan to change the course of the pandemic and jump start our economic recovery. The American Rescue Plan funded our successful vaccination campaign, safely re-opened schools for in-person learning, helped 200,000 child care providers keep their doors open, and delivered relief to American families. Biden forged a consensus and got the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed – a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation’s infrastructure. We are rebuilding our roads, bridges, ports, and airports, upgrading public transit and rail systems, replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up pollution, providing affordable high-speed internet to every family in America, delivering cheaper and cleaner energy to households and businesses, and creating good-paying jobs – including union jobs, and jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

President Biden signed into law the PACT Act – the most significant expansion of benefits and services for toxic exposed veterans in more than 30 years. This law also enables the Department of Veterans Affairs to move more quickly in the future to determine if illnesses are related to military service, and it offers critical support to survivors who were harmed by exposures. And, the law authorized 31 new clinical sites and provides VA several tools and resources to ensure effective implementation of the law. The Biden Administration announced debt relief of up to $20,000 for Americans earning less than $125,000 per year who had Pell Grants in college, and up to $10,000 for all other borrowers below that income threshold. More than 40 million borrowers stand to benefit from this action, and about 20 million would see their debt entirely wiped out - and nearly 90% of this relief will go to borrowers earning less than $75,000 per year. In early 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to provide millions of borrowers with more affordable monthly student loan payments through changes to income-driven repayment plans.

The U.S. is positioned to achieve our ambitious climate goals of cutting our emissions in half by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050. The President has taken executive action and signed legislation to develop clean energy at home, accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, and reduce pollution that endangers overburdened communities. And, the President is lowering energy costs for families, creating good paying jobs, and ensuring America leads the global clean energy economy. The President also protected more lands and waters in his first year than any President since John F. Kennedy. President Biden took action to lower the cost of health care for millions of Americans. Right now, four out of five people who sign up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act can find health care coverage for $10 a month or less and millions of Americans on Obamacare are saving an average of $800 a year. Since he took office, there has been a combined 50 percent increase in enrollment in states that use HealthCare.gov and the nation’s uninsured rate is historically low at 8 percent. Over 16 million Americans signed up for quality, affordable health coverage, the highest number ever produced in an open enrollment period.

So what are Biden's most significant achievements? In my opinion infrastructure and climate action lead the way. These areas have been neglected too long, and the Biden initiatives will just barely make amends. In and of themselves, they are probably insufficient, but they are a good start, a start that has been delayed too long. Changing the narrative on taxation, I think, is a major accomplishment. Making it clear that a tax bill does not have to apply to everyone. By not raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, an oft repeated phrase, the narrative has been changed from "tax and spend" to "tax the rich and spend on helping the poor and middle class". Deficit reduction doesn't mean necessarily to stop spending on social programs as it means getting more money into government coffers by taxing the rich. Inequality is out of control; taxing the rich ameliorates this situation. What Biden did to get us through the COVID crisis is remarkable. It could have been an economic disaster for everyone; it wasn't. Student debt relief was a great achievement although it is still not clear how that will play out in the courts.

The American people by and large don't appreciate all that Biden has done compared to what any Republican administration would have done. Clearly, Democrats are on the side of rationality and helping the American people. Republicans are on the side of winning at all costs and helping the rich. They don't give a damn about helping the American people especially the middle class and the poor. The Republican mantra of reducing the deficit and the debt would have you believe that it can only be done in one way, that is by reducing spending. No, it can also be done by taxing the rich which would also reduce inequality. But this is all the Republicans have, that and the discredited policy of tax breaks for the rich that have done little to "trickle down" and have greatly contributed to the national debt. Enhancement of Obama's landmark health care legislation is another major achievement although Obama deserves much of the credit. It's a testimony of what the Democratic party is able to achieve for the country. The fact that Biden accomplished so much in a bipartisan way is something few other politicians could have hoped to accomplish especially in the political environment that exists today.

My criticism of Biden has to do with the Ukraine war. On the one hand he has prevented it from becoming a world war as of yet. However, in the negotiations preceding the war, I believe more could have been done to prevent the war in the first place. By not acknowledging or being sensitive to Russia's concerns about the encroachment of NATO on its borders which started during the Clinton administration and was hastened by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Biden and other diplomats missed an opportunity to defuse the crisis. Their policy was a de facto attempt to bully Russia into accepting the fact that Ukraine would also become part of NATO. Now the US is entrenched in a policy of Ukraine "winning" and Russia "losing" instead of a policy of a negotiated settlement to end the war, a negotiated settlement which could have been had before the war even started IMHO, for instance, by delaying Ukraine's admission to NATO for a period of time during which Russia's security concerns might have been addressed. In effect Ukraine has become a vassal state of the US instead of its historic situation of being a vassal state of Russia.

Off the Top of My Head

Government Deficit Spending Is Not the Problem: Lack of Labor and Physical Resources Is

by John Lawrence

Since the US dollar is a sovereign fiat currency, the US can never run out of dollars. The debt ceiling is a totally artificial limit which results in the US hoisting itself on its own pitard. According to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) as espoused in The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton, the only limit on government spending is inflation, and inflation is concerned with the amount and nature of resources available to soak up the money injected into the economic system by the government. According to this theory it makes sense that a lack of labor resources could lead to inflation. Consider that right now there is a shortage of air traffic controllers, and this is leading to a cancellation of flights. If there were more air traffic controllers available, the number of flights could be increased, and more economic activity would ensue. The constraint on flights available because of the lack of air traffic controllers leads to inflation because the money charged for each available flight can be increased. Essentially there is a bidding war for the available flights. If any resource including natural resources like steel and cement is not sufficient for the demand for those resources, then the price of those resources will increase leading to inflation. Right now in the US labor is becoming a scarce resource especially labor of the type necessary in the essential economy, that is the economy of goods and services necessary for the continuation and enhancement of everyday life. As more labor is developed for essentially useless services like the entertainment and social media industries, plumbers, electricians and carpenters are not available for useful services, and, therefore, the cost of those services increases.

Which brings us to Biden's Inflation Reduction Act which allocates $370 billion to rebuild infrastructure and fight climate change. These are all necessary and vital goals, but the question should be asked are the resources for this amount of spending sufficient or will this spending be inflationary. To put it more succinctly is the blue collar labor sufficient for the job? If not, the price of labor will be bid up and the spending will be inflationary. More and more these days students are encouraged to go to college where they end up after graduation working for Wall Street or hedge funds or in the entertainment/social media industry. They are not encouraged to go to vocational technical schools to become carpenters, plumbers and electricians. So they go into industries which are not essential to the real economy. There are shortages of labor for the real economy everywhere we look. In order to overcome these shortages, it would be necessary to step up legal immigration since immigrants by and large fill the jobs Americans don't want to do, and by and large Americans don't want to perform any kind of the less glamorous and remunerative type of labor necessary for production in the real economy. Also outsourcing has made it unnecessary for Americans to perform labor in the real economy. We rely either on immigrants or foreign workers for that.

The next thing is that all this infrastructure rebuilding is going to contribute to global warming as well as reducing it. Rebuilding all the bridges of America will require large amounts of steel and cement. Steel and cement production produce large amounts of carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere. The International Energy Agency estimates that direct CO² emissions due to crude steel production is approximately 1.4 tons of CO² per ton of steel produced. The cement industry is responsible for about 8% of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions — far more than global carbon emissions from aviation. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world, after the U.S. and China. So rebuilding America's infrastructure will contribute to global warming while at the same time attempting to reduce global warming. The fact is that alternatives to steel and cement which do not produce greenhouse gasses are not available. Research on these topics needs to be stepped up. But more research in areas like artificial intelligence, of the kind which has no use in the amelioration of global warming, takes place while productive research into materials to replace steel and cement languishes. Also while more electric vehicles are being produced, the electric energy to power these vehicles is coming from power plants that still use fossil fuels to produce it. One form of greenhouse gas production is being traded for another. Nothing is gained unless all energy generating power plants are using renewable and non carbon dioxide producing fuels.

The problem is that limited resources both in terms of labor and physical resources will hamper efforts both in repairing American infrastructure and building infrastructure which reduces the amount of greenhouse gas production. Stephanie Kelton writes: "That's why MMT recommends a different approach to the federal budgeting process, one that integrates inflation risk into the decision making process so that lawmakers are forced to stop and think about whether they have taken the necessary steps to guard against inflation risk before approving any new spending. MMT would make us safer in this respect because it recognizes that the best defense against inflation is a good offense. We don't want to allow excessive spending to cause inflation and then fight inflation after it happens. We want agencies like the CBO helping to evaluate new legislation for potential inflation risk before Congress commits to funding new programs so that the risks can be mitigated preemptively. At its core  MMT is about replacing an artificial (revenue) constraint with a real (inflation) restraint." The artificial revenue constraint is the debt ceiling!

In the above passage the words "inflation risk" could also be replaced with "greenhouse gas emission risk." The CBO should evaluate both kinds of risks. So as the economy becomes more electrified in terms of electric cars and buildings, we need to think about the fact that the electricity generated by these increased demands needs to come from non carbon dioxide emitting sources. Also substitutes must be found quickly - in other words research needs to be stepped up - to find substitutes for steel and cement. To boot, non polluting energy sources must be found for ships and planes. Both human and physical natural resources must be taken into account. Have all these things been thought through?

Off the Top of My Head

A 500 Year Event, Gov. DeSantis, or a Once a Year Occurrence?

by John Lawrence

Gov. DeSantis has said repeatedly, "This is a 500 year event" as if once we get the damage cleaned up from Hurricane Ian, we can relax because this kind of devastation won't happen again for another 500 years. I've got news for you, Gov. Desantis. An event like Ian will probably happen again within 5 years, and it will be even worse as the Caribbean warms more making hurricanes even more ferocious. Floridians experienced the deadly, devastating consequences of back-to-back major hurricanes—Irma in 2017 and Michael in 2018—along with near-misses by Matthew in 2016 and Dorian in 2019. They don't sound like 500 year events to me. Let's be honest with each other, Gov. DeSantis. The wreckage from Ian won't even be fully cleaned up before the next major hurricane hits Florida. Thank God, DeSantis is not a climate change denier. However, he is not given high marks for taking action to mitigate the effects of climate change. “I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists,” DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. “I am not a global warming person. I don’t want that label on me.” Forget about labels, Gov. DeSantis, you have a major problem on your hands. You better get down on your knees and start worshiping at the church of climate change.

Inside Climate News reports:

"Florida’s climate challenges are among the biggest in the country. Beyond those related to hurricanes intensified by climate change, they include sea level rise, extreme heat, drought and increasing health threats from mosquito-borne diseases. Florida is the most hurricane-prone state, and hurricanes are not only getting more powerful, they are bringing much more rainfall. 

Sunny day flooding is a regular occurrence in some communities because of sea level rise. Some face several feet of sea level rise by the end of the century. 

By its own numbers, the DeSantis administration predicts that with sea level rise, $26 billion in residential property statewide will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045."

OK, Ian will probably result in more than $26 billion to clean up, and that's not "by 2045". That's this year - 2022. As insurance companies refuse to insure Florida residential property, Florida residents better hope that the Federal government takes up the slack. By the way that's the Federal government that this Republican state tells to stay out of its business. It's always about states' rights until there's some disaster. Then they come running to the Federal government for help. Private flood insurance will soon be a thing of the past. Nearly 80,000 Florida homeowners will have to find new insurance, after Southern Fidelity declared bankruptcy. The Tallahassee based company is the fourth insurer to declare insolvency recently.

The hardest hit by Ian, of course, were retirees and poor people living in mobile homes. Mobile homes should be outlawed in most parts of Florida. They cannot withstand the powerful hurricanes that are only going to get more powerful as climate change accelerates. Even structurally sound homes will still suffer from water damage and the loss of services like power, water, cell phone towers and more. There will be more water damage from storm surges and fresh water flooding as major storms drop 24 inches or more of water on neighborhoods. All utilities need to be undergrounded, or they will be on the ground more than they will be functional. It will be a full time job just getting water, power, sewer and communications back online, not to mention getting roads cleared of debris and rebuilding bridges and washed out roads. Massive climate disasters are only going to get worse, and we're still putting about 34 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. There's no way that we can survive without a full on effort by all countries of the world to get off fossil fuels ASAP. Yet countries of the world continue to fight, bicker and compete with each other instead of COOPERATING.

How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure

Posted on September 2, 2022 by Ellen Brown

from Web of Debt

There are work-arounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.

Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.

Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation’s food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, “Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. … [T]he US system of government’s numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems.”

There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. “A work-around,” says Tucker, “is so-called off-balance sheet money creation.” That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.

Off-budget Funding: The Model of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation

For funding its national infrastructure campaign in the Great Depression, Congress called on the publicly-owned Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). It was not actually a bank; it got its liquidity by issuing bonds. Notes Tucker, “The RFC was allowed to borrow money from the Treasury and the capital markets, and then invest in relief and mobilization efforts that would eventually generate a return for taxpayers, all while skating past austerity hawks determined to cut or freeze government spending.”

According to James Butkiewicz, professor of economics at the University of Delaware:

The RFC was an executive agency with the ability to obtain funding through the Treasury outside of the normal legislative process. Thus, the RFC could be used to finance a variety of favored projects and programs without obtaining legislative approval. RFC lending did not count toward budgetary expenditures, so the expansion of the role and influence of the government through the RFC was not reflected in the federal budget.

The RFC lent to federal government agencies including the Commodity Credit Corporation (which lent to farmers), the Electric Home and Farm Authority, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Public Works Administration, and the Works Progress Administration (WPA). It also made direct loans to local governments and businesses and funded eight RFC wartime subsidiaries in the 1940s that were essential to the war effort.  

The infrastructure projects of one agency alone, the Works Progress Administration, included 1,000 miles of new and rebuilt airport runways, 651,000 miles of highway, 124,000 bridges, 8,000 parks, and 18,000 playgrounds and athletic fields; and some 84,000 miles of drainage pipes, 69,000 highway light standards, and 125,000 public buildings (built, rebuilt, or expanded), including 41,300 schools. For local governments that had hit their borrowing limits on their taxpayer-funded general obligation bonds, a workaround was devised: they could borrow by issuing “revenue bonds,” which were backed not by taxes but by the revenue that would be generated by the infrastructure funded by the loans. 

A bill currently before Congress, HR 3339, proposes to duplicate the feats of the RFC without increasing the federal budget deficit or taxes, by forming a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB). 

China’s State “Policy Banks”

China is dealing with the global economic downturn by embarking on a stimulus program involving large national infrastructure projects, including massive water infrastructure. For funding, the government is drawing on three state-owned “policy banks” structured like the RFC. 

The Chinese government is one of those systems referred to by Todd Tucker as not being hampered by “a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress.” It can just issue a five-year plan and hit the ground running. In May 2022, it began construction on 3,876 large projects with a total investment of nearly 2.4 trillion yuan (about $350 billion).   

Funding is coming chiefly from China’s “policy banks” set up in 1994 to provide targeted loans in areas where profit-driven banks might be reluctant to lend. They are the China Development Bank, the Export-​Import Bank of China and the Agricultural Development Bank of China. As noted in a June 30 article in the Washington Post, China could also draw on its “Big Four” banks – Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China Construction Bank Corp., Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., and Bank of China Ltd. – but “they are essentially profit-driven commercial banks that can be quite picky when it comes to selecting borrowers and projects. The policy lenders, however, operate on a non-profit basis and are often recruited to pour cheap funds into projects that are less attractive financially but matter to the longer-term development of the economy.”

Like the RFC, the policy banks mainly get their funds by issuing bonds. They can also get “Pledged Supplementary Lending” directly from the Chinese central bank, which presumably creates the money on its books, as all central banks are empowered to do.

Off the Top of My Head

We Need a Department of Peace to Balance and Offset our War Department

by John Lawrence

Let's face it. the Department of Defense is a euphemism. It was called the Department of War until 1949. So let's call it what it really is. Don't get me wrong. There are times when war is necessary as occurred in WW II. However, we spend about $1 trillion on our War Department while spending little or nothing on peace. Is there really a Peace Corps? Yes, and its budget is about $400 million. That's about 4 ten thousandths of the War Department budget. My point is that we should be making at least the same effort towards peace as we're making towards war, and we should be putting our money where our mouth is. This doesn't mean we totally disarm ourselves. It means that we are making an effort towards creating peace in the world if at all possible and are willing to devote an equal amount of resources towards it. In our present state it's all about threatening war in order to to create a state of peace. It's Pax Americana similar to the Pax Romana which meant that you didn't mess with Rome or else you were threatened with violence. Instead of creating peace by means of a threat of war, we should be actively pursuing a peaceful world instead.

What would a Department of Peace actually do? Well, diplomacy would be under this department instead of the State Department for starters. Second, the American equivalent of China's Belt and Road initiative. Building infrastructure around the world just as China is doing. But what's most important at the present time is converting the world to green infrastructure. The middle class in India is growing. They want to live just like Americans. As more Indians enter the middle class they are consuming more fossil fuels to provide the energy to do so. This is contributing to the looming climate disaster. Just what we don't need is more carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere as a result of more people gentrifying into the middle class. Therefore, a Department of Peace, which should include the Peace Corps, would step up the efforts not only to change the fossil fuel habit in the US, but to actively change it around the world. About a half a trillion dollar budget would be about right while decreasing the War (Defense) budget which is 10 times the combined budgets of the rest of the world to half a trillion.

President Biden wants a Civilian Climate Corps reminiscent of the Civilian Conservation Corps which President Roosevelt established to build parks and plant trees during the Great Depression. An excellent idea in view of the fact that planting a trillion trees would suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Unless we do that there is already enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 410 ppm to melt both poles. Why not require participation in the Civilian Conservation Corps for people receiving welfare benefits who aren't otherwise employed or who are unemployable in the prevailing economy. I'm thinking about the homeless and others for whom this might be a first step to getting back on their feet in the so-called real world. I'm in favor of the government being the employer of last resort, and employment in a Civilian Climate Corps is the perfect solution both for them and for the environment.

Building the elements of peace around the world would entail looking out for the health care needs of people outside the US in our era of pandemics. This is also good sense in a selfish way since viruses can transmit world wide in a matter of days if not hours. They don't respect national boundaries. People to people cultural contacts with people of other nations brings about understanding and the realization that, no matter what the religious or ethnic differences seem to be, human beings are all essentially the same deep down and all have the same needs and aspirations. Helping others to realize their aspirations creates peace in the world. Cultural and educational exchanges are an important way to increase mutual understanding. There are many ways to create peace in the world. The US shouldn't be always taking the stance of trying to put down those peoples and countries who don't follow the US way of life. Others might have a different way of setting up their societies, but rather than taking this as a threat, we should engage diplomatically and peacefully if at all possible knowing that in the final analysis, if push came to shove, we also have the means to defend ourselves. A Department of Peace and a Department of War should go hand in hand. Today it is lopsided in favor of war.

Off the Top of My Head

Biden Could Solve the Gas Crisis Today by Taking Sanctions Off Russian Oil

by John Lawrence

Sanctions on Russian oil have been an abysmal failure. Russian oil profits are up 50% from last year! Just as American and British oil corporations have been scoring record profits, so has Russia. Oil prices are set on the world market and soaring prices result in record profits for Russia. If Putin had designed the sanctions himself, he couldn't have wreaked more havoc on the US and European economies. It's time for Biden to admit that his policy of sancti0ns against Russia has failed. They haven't deterred Russia from pursuing a war of attrition against Ukraine. They have demonstrated the abject failure of using US sanctions to control the actions of other countries. They are a total lost cause now and in the future. That's the lesson of the war in Ukraine for the west.

Bloomberg reported:

Russia’s oil revenues are up 50% this year even as trade restrictions following the invasion of Ukraine spurred many refiners to shun its supplies, the International Energy Agency said.

Moscow earned roughly $20 billion each month in 2022 from combined sales of crude and products amounting to about 8 million barrels a day, the Paris-based IEA said in its monthly market report. 

Russian shipments have continued to flow even as the European Union edges towards an import ban, and international oil majors such as Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE pledge to cease purchases. Asia has remained a keen customer, with China and India picking up cargoes no longer wanted in Europe.

The IEA, which advises major economies, kept its outlook for world oil markets largely unchanged in the report. Global fuel markets are tight and may face further strain in the months ahead as Chinese demand rebounds following a spate of new Covid lockdowns, it said. 

Reduced flows of Russian refined products such as diesel, fuel oil and naphtha have aggravated tightness in global markets, the agency noted. Stockpiles have declined for seven consecutive quarters, with reserves of so-called middle distillates at their lowest since 2008.

But for all the disruption, Moscow has continued to enjoy a financial windfall compared with the first four months of 2021. Despite the EU’s public censure of the Kremlin’s aggression, total oil export revenues were up 50% this year. 

The bloc remained the largest market for Russian exports in April, taking 43% of the country’s exports, the IEA said.

So where is this "world market" that is setting the price of oil? Is it on Wall Street? I'd like to have a word with whoever is in charge of this "world market." Lord knows the US produces enough oil to supply all the US' gas needs so why not take US oil production off the world market and just sell it to the American people at a reasonable price? Oh, I guess that's not how capitalism works. Ironic, isn't it, that a formerly communist country like Russia is now profiting from capitalist markets! So even if the US, Canada and Europe are having record inflation with recessions predicted in the near future, Biden won't take the sanctions off of Russian oil, and basically this is all for spite, all because he hates Putin so much. Biden has staked American prestige on fighting a proxy war with Russia based on the almighty dollar and the power it supposedly possesses over every financial transaction going on in the world. Problem is that all the sanctions on Russia have only proven the weakness and futility of using sanctions to achieve policy goals. Russia has demonstrated that the sanctions just don't work. They haven't deterred Russia in the least. China and India have taken up the slack in Russian oil purchases.

Besides that, what Biden fails to understand is that like the US, Russia's currency, the ruble, is a fiat currency. That means that unlike China, it is not pegged to the US dollar. Russia's central bank can print as many rubles as it wants without asking US permission. The US can of course do the same thing - print as many dollars as it wants except the limiting factor is inflation. So the US can't print dollars right now, but Russia can still print rubles. That means that Russia controls Russian investment in Russia and Russian control of internal consumer markets. Imported products come mainly from China, and China is Russia's friend. Russia is demanding payment for its gas in rubles rather than dollars, and this supports the value of the ruble as a convertible currency just as Nixon's demand that the Saudis price their oil in dollars supported the value of the dollar and made the dollar the world's reserve currency.

All this boils down to the fact that Russia is in the driver's seat with respect to the war in Ukraine. It's hard to see how the unending supply of western weapons is sufficient to win the war for Ukraine now that the policy of sanctions has failed. Demonizing Putin is not a policy that is likely to have an effect on the war one way or other. Putin still has a lot of friends in the world and US inflation, while being primarily a function of sanctions on Russian oil, is also dependent on the supply chain of products coming from China, Russia's friend. Biden should be careful about whom he demonizes. After demonizing MBS, he's now about to get back in bed with him and the Saudis. Biden's Build Back Better policy could have helped the American people, and even now could fight inflation, but alas, after promising that it would be passed "in tandem" with the bipartisan infrastructure bill, it never was. What up with that?

Off the Top of My Head

Tie Build Back Better Aid for Americans with Weapons Aid for Ukraine

by John Lawrence

Funny how all the concern about inflation doesn't apply to the billions being spent with US weapons manufacturers for javelins, stingers, howitzers and other weaponry. The aid for Ukraine is not money being spent in Ukraine. It's money being spent right here in America going into the coffers of the military-industrial complex. Then the deliverables are shipped to Ukraine, not the money. Since it's being spent right here in the US, it is increasing inflation because more money going into the money supply increases inflation. But hardly anyone is concerned about the inflation that that is causing. When it comes to Biden's Build Back Better plan, it's dead in the water because that would cause inflation. Congress persons are so concerned about that inflation, but they're not at all concerned about the inflation being caused by the billions being spent to make weapons of war. The original BBB package was supposed to be tied with the physical infrastructure legislation that has already passed. They were supposed to be approved in tandem, but they never were. This was a huge failure and huge mistake by the Biden administration which essentially sold out the progressive wing of its party in order to get something, anything, passed. As a result, physical infrastructure, but not human infrastructure, alone got passed, and, more importantly, a huge amount of the global warming infrastructure didn't get passed. So now why don't they tie BBB to the expenditure for more weapons for Ukraine?

According to resources.org:

"The [BBB] legislation allocates $1 billion over the next few years to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Highway Administration for efforts that support the use of low-carbon materials in highway construction projects. It authorizes $4.225 billion for the US General Services Administration (GSA) for its acquisition of green products and its portfolio of environmental sustainability programs, including initiatives that range from securing fuel-efficient vehicles for the federal fleet to setting net-zero energy and water targets for newly constructed GSA properties. An additional $8.98 billion are slated to go toward the purchase of electric vehicles (EVs) and associated infrastructure (e.g., charging stations) by the GSA and the US Postal Service."

Not too much to ask, really, to save the planet. By the way subsidizing the purchase of electric vehicles for consumers would help offset the price of gas at the pump. The US may help Ukraine to win the war or at least achieve a protracted stalemate, but at the same time it is letting global warming proceed with minimum intervention. So what is more important - influencing the outcome of a war between two countries or dooming every country on earth which is what will happen if we don't proceed full steam ahead to forestall global warming. Is funding the war in Ukraine being penny wise and pound foolish? Better, if all countries put their money towards combating global warming instead of weapons of war, there might be a slight chance of saving the planet. As it is now, the human race would rather fight wars than save the planet. War is one addiction the human race is not willing to give up even if it means our grandchildren will inherit a planetary hell.

Off the Top of My Head

Problems of American Democracy - Part 1

by John Lawrence

When my father was a high school teacher in Highland Park, NJ, he taught a course - Problems in American Democracy. So I'm hopefully carrying on a family tradition by trying to elucidate these problems which, to put it mildly, are probably much different today than they were in 1941! The big problem today is that so many people are detached from reality in terms of being in touch with what the real problems are. One of the real problems is climate change, how to get from here to net zero carbon emissions before planet earth becomes uninhabitable. Another real problem is homelessness and affordability of housing. Another real problem is the 80 million refugees in the world. Another real problem is for Americans to be concerned about world problems and not just confine their attention to what goes on inside the borders of the US.  Another real problem is physical and social infrastructure which will be addressed by Biden's Build Back Better bills. But the biggest problem of all, as I see it, is that elections every 2 years make continuity of direction for the US impossible especially when the 2 parties have become diametrically opposed. So today we have the reality that the American government could possibly swing back and forth between Trumpism and what we might call Bidenism. Back and forth between ignorance and enlightenment. To boot the American people are no longer tuned in to authoritative news sources. Too many are only tuned into social media which is greatly responsible for cultivating the divide between two American tribes - the no nothings and the do somethings.

People in the Trump camp could care less about voting for or against their own economic interests. You would think a lot of them would benefit from the initiatives that the Democrats have put forward. But either they are ignorant of them or are willing to vote against their interests just because of the tribe they belong to or out of spite. They are completely irrational. Rationality is not even on the table. Their hate and their spite rules everything as far as they are concerned. They are willing to go down numerous rabbit holes and believe all kinds of conspiracy theories because critical thinking or a concern about human welfare, their own and others, has no place in their consciousness. Their concern and understanding remains at the level of symbols like the American flag. A deeper understanding or analysis of situations is beyond them. What's more this misinformed and ignorant part of the population is significant in number and can easily be responsible for electing ignorant and conspiracy theory infused lawmakers who will do whatever is necessary to pander to their constituents. Thus America as a nation could swerve back and forth between ignorance and rationality as exemplified by Trump's withdrawal from Obama's climate initiatives like the Paris accords and Biden's reinstating them.

Contrast the instability of American democracy with the Chinese system of government in which stability is of utmost importance. They don't want anyone rocking the boat including tennis stars. While this heavy handedness does curtail some of the aspects of western notions of freedom, it preserves the priorities of the long term interests of China itself which has been going in what most experts concede is a very positive direction. According to the World Bank: "Since China began to open up and reform its economy in 1978, GDP growth has averaged almost 10 percent a year, and more than 800 million people have been lifted out of poverty. There have also been significant improvements in access to health, education, and other services over the same period." China has had the goal of eliminating poverty altogether and claims as of 2021 to have done so. According to a Chinese source which admittedly may be biased: "Through continuous efforts, the final 98.99 million impoverished rural residents in China had all been lifted out of poverty, and all 832 impoverished counties and 128,000 villages had been removed from the poverty list by the end of 2020. The strategy of targeted poverty alleviation is China's strongest "weapon" in its final battle against poverty, and a major innovation in the theory and practice of poverty reduction. China's success in poverty alleviation has proven that the problem of poverty, in essence, is how the people should be treated: the people-centered philosophy is the fundamental driving force behind this cause." Independent confirmation of these claims is unclear. The World Bank which is an unbiased source essentially agrees with the Chinese government at to its elimination of poverty: "In 1990 there were more than 750 million people in China living below the international poverty line - about two-thirds of the population. By 2012, that had fallen to fewer than 90 million, and by 2016 - the most recent year for which World Bank figures are available - it had fallen to 7.2 million people (0.5% of the population). So clearly, even in 2016 China was well on the way to reaching its target. This suggests that overall, 745 million fewer people were living in extreme poverty in China than there were 30 years ago. World Bank figures do not take us to the present day, but the trend is certainly in line with the Chinese government's announcement."

So what weapons does the US have in its arsenal for the alleviation of poverty and homelessness? Not many. Biden's Build Back Better plan will help, but the US in recent years has been more interested in funding weapons systems built by the military-industrial complex, weapons that destroy rather than weapons that build. It's only "progressives" that even care about solving the problems of poverty and homelessness in America or in doing something about climate change or about the refugee problem in the world and not just at our southern border. I note that not one Republican voted for Biden's Build Back Better bill in the House. Instead Republican leader Kevin McCarthy went on an 8 hour diatribe in a futile attempt to prevent the bill's passage.

Off the Top of My Head

Use the National Guard to Free Up the Supply Chain

by John Lawrence

We are 80,000 truck drivers short. We should use the National Guard on an emergency basis to drive trucks to get the contents of those containers out of port and on their way to consumers. Then there will be room for the waiting container ships to offload their contents. Why not? The National Guard has been used in other emergency situations. Why not this one? Marx theorized that the "industrial reserve army" was a necessary part of capitalism, and was composed of out of work people looking for work. This kept the cost of labor down. Only now the reverse situation is in effect. There are more jobs than people looking for them. Therefore, labor is in the driver's seat. Capital needs to pay labor more in order to get them to work. However, at the present time, although wages have come up somewhat, they have not come up enough to attract the needed truck drivers back into the work force. This will all eventually be ironed out as self-driving trucks which are already on the roads will increase substantially.

While the US has been sitting on its duff investing in the world's biggest military, China has been investing in infrastructure - ports and container ships in particular. According to Wikipedia:

"In 1961 China established a state-run maritime shipping company and subsequently signed shipping agreements with many countries, laying the foundation for developing the country's ocean transport. That organization developed into the present-day China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO). The Chinese government also invested heavily in water transport infrastructure, constructing new ports and rebuilding and enlarging older facilities. The number of container units handled by Chinese ports in 2011 reached more than 150 million. The country also manufactures 90% of the world's containers. The throughput of cargo and containers at China's ports has been the largest in the world for the past five years, with an annual growth rate of 35%."

China also manufactures more than 80 percent of the world’s ship-to-shore cranes, and own seven of the ten busiest ports in the world (including Hong Kong). The message is clear. While the US invested in battleships, China invested in container ships. The goods in those container ships are mainly manufactured in China. The US is addicted to them. Foreign demand for Chinese-made products has remained strong — both by companies’ accounts and official data. The customs agency said in the first half of this year, exports to the European Union rose 35.9% from a year ago to $233 billion, while those to the U.S. climbed 42.6% to $252.86 billion. The handwriting (and handwringing) is on the wall. The US can't continue to base its economy on a military-industrial complex while not producing the goods the American consumer economy wants to buy. By default China has sold many of the consumer goods into the ravenous American consumer economy which is 70% of the American economy while the US has invested in nothing but war. Now as the US has withdrawn from forever wars, the military is trying to gin up a Cold War with China. It won't work. Americans depend on China for consumer goods and get very mad when they're not readily available forcing prices up as we've seen from the container ship debacle.

The US has ceded leadership in many areas including ports, shipping and infrastructure while it has conducted its losing wars. Spending $300 million a day in Afghanistan only enriched defense contractors and corrupt politicians. With all that money being spent, today most Afghanis are simply begging for food. If that money had been spent on the Afghani people instead, today Afghani citizens would be enjoying a robust economy and a decent way of life. All that money was poured down a rat hole. Wasted money and time has only let China become the leader in the manufacture and transport of consumer goods. Climate change demands that the US and China cooperate - not compete - with each other. We need adults in the US government, and the only adults in the room are Democrats. Republicans have gone down the rabbit hole of Trumpism.

Off the Top of My Head

Getting Biden's Build Back Better Plan Over the Finish Line

by John Lawrence

These guys are experienced negotiators. You'd think by now they would have designed multiple plans containing most of the things progressives want and most of the things Joe Manchin wants. Obviously, he has to approve the final plan. There are various ways to get the cost down from eliminating entire programs to shortening the lengths of some or all programs. Also, as Manchin wants, you can means test some of the programs. I think the emphasis should be on children. That means the expansion of Medicare could go by the wayside. As a Medicare recipient, I wouldn't be too upset to see that happen. In its place, at a later time, I would like to see legislation to implement Biden's agenda item that calls for an increase in social security benefits. Under his plan, eligible workers would get a guaranteed minimum benefit equal to at least 125% of the federal poverty level. People who have received benefits for at least 20 years would get a 5% bump. Widows and widowers would receive about 20% more per month. The Federal poverty level for a single person is $12,760. 125% of that would be $15,950. The cost of living increase would add another 5.9% or $941.05 for a total of $16,891.05. This comes out to be $1407.59 a month. For 2020, the minimum Social Security benefit at 62 was $628. So Biden's agenda would call for more than doubling it. Of course the cost for Medicare Part B, which is $148.50 is deducted from your monthly social security check. This means that the minimum social security monthly check for some people is less than $500., hardly a living wage at the present time.

So leaving out benefits for seniors and means testing pre-K and community college could bring the price tag for Biden's Build Back Better plan considerably lower. Manchin wants to scale back the climate change component, but he's not wanting to cancel it altogether. Again, this item can be revisited later or as part of a separate bill. The child tax credits, which benefit lower income families, should be left in as well as the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit. The Earned Income Tax Credit Expansion could stay in as well as the benefit that lets seniors receive care at home rather than having to go to a nursing home. In short there are a lot of things in the American Families plan that could be modified or left out or revisited later. Climate change will be an ongoing issue that won't be resolved for at least 50 years. Since climate change is the main sticking point as far as Manchin is concerned, that provision, as important as it is, for sure needs to be modified.

Since there a lot of moving parts in the Build Back Better plan, there are lots of modifications that can be made. Several versions of these plans should be set out with the proviso that at least one of them needs to be agreed upon by all parties. The fact that Manchin and possibly Sinema has veto power needs to be accepted as reality, but some plan needs to be nailed down and soon. Playing chicken with Biden's Build Back Better plan is not acceptable. Democrats need to accept a win for all parties. They can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Watson-Watt, who developed early warning radar in Britain to counter the rapid growth of the Luftwaffe, propounded a "cult of the imperfect", which he stated as "Give them the third best to go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never comes." Economist George Stigler says that "If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport." Democrats need to pay the pipers (Manchin and Sinema) and get on with it. They are wasting too much time. It should be obvious where the compromise lines are to be drawn by this time.

While Roadblocking Party Agenda, Sinema Absconds to Europe for Fundraising

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) attends an event hosted by the Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry at the Arizona Biltmore Resort in Phoenix on May 17, 2019. (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/cc)

 

"She might as well start fundraising for McConnell at this point."

 

Jake Johnson

October 14, 2021

With President Joe Biden's popular legislative agenda hanging in the balance largely due to her obstruction, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema left the country this week to raise campaign cash in Europe—a trip that was reported as new polling showed she is completely underwater with Arizona voters.

"⁦She's not only endangering her own reelection, but the reelection of Dems across the board."

According to survey results

>released Thursday by the progressive polling outfit Data for Progress, 70% of likely Democratic primary voters in Arizona disapprove of Sinema's job performance and overwhelmingly prefer candidates floated as potential primary challengers—a sign that she's poised to lose her seat in 2024, assuming she runs for reelection.

Infuriated by Sinema's conduct throughout the reconciliation talks, Arizona activists who helped elect the Democratic senator are already laying the groundwork for a primary in an effort to ensure she doesn't win another six-year term.

"While 2024 may seem a long way away, the damage Sinema is doing is happening right now, and she’s acting this way because she thinks she won’t face political consequences," political strategist Steve Phillips wrote in a column for The Nation on Wednesday. "In fact, she thinks these actions will add up to electoral success. But her math is wrong, as is her moral compass."

In a summary of its new findings, Data for Progress noted that "Arizona Democratic primary voters say they would be more likely to support a candidate who votes in favor of every major provision of the Build Back Better plan we tested."

"From universal pre-K to expanding Medicare benefits," the group said, "Arizona voters—those Sinema would be courting in a 2024 primary—express they are more likely to support candidates who back these Build Back Better agenda items by wide-ranging margins."

Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, warned Thursday that by threatening tank Biden's popular Build Back Better reconciliation proposal, Sinema putting both her own political career and her party's fragile control of Congress at risk.

"She's not only endangering her own reelection, but the reelection of Dems across the board—thereby making it easier for the MAGA-hijacked GOP to regain power in '22," Epting argued on Twitter, pointing to the upcoming midterm elections.

Responding to Sinema's trip to Europe in the middle of negotiations over the reconciliation bill that she's holding up, Epting quipped, "⁦She might as well start fundraising for [Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell at this point."

Off the Top of My Head

American Troops Have Left Afghanistan. So Has American Money - $300 Million Per Day

by John Lawrence

Afghanistan's economy must be in freefall. The US was spending $300 million a day each and every day there for 20 years! Now the US is spending nothing. American troops have left and, more importantly, American money has left. So can we now cut the defense budget? It would have been better if, instead of sending in American troops 20 years ago, we had sent in the Peace Corps for a fraction of the money the American military presence has cost. By now much could have been accomplished like roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, water and sewage systems and other critical infrastructure. Instead we spent $300 million a day for 20 years blowing things up and getting blown up ourselves. It's a testament to the folly of warfare. Now, hopefully, diplomacy and resettlement of refugees and building infrastructure will take place both there and here at home where efforts in the domain of Peace are badly in need as well. The US has infrastructure needs, resettlement of refugee needs (think the growing homeless population), both hard and human infrastructure needs, building things up instead of blowing things up.

All the generals who were shuffled in and out of Afghanistan couldn't think of what we could have done better there because all they could think was in military terms. They couldn't conceive of the possibility that the reason they were all so unsuccessful was precisely because any and all military solutions were not the right ones. They could not conceive of building peace there, only fighting an enemy. Well, it got them substantial pay raises, and it made money for the military-industrial complex. Now we need a peace-industrial complex. If we want to save the planet and not just indulge the present American inhabitants of planet earth to the max, we need to build green infrastructure all over the world. But even before we do that, we need to solve the worldwide pandemic which we can not seem to solve even here at home because there are so many people who won't believe in the obvious solution until one of their family members dies.

Forever wars have stunted the mindsets of the American people leading them to embracing far right jingoistic and chauvinistic militarism. The mindset would be considerably different if the US had put as much energy as it has put into militarism into peace activities, if peace had even been given due consideration as an alternative to war. In fact it's not too much of a stretch to say War is Us. This mindset came to fruition on January 6 with the insurrection. Biden is trying to turn the corner but he can only do so much per unit time. He has done considerable so far ending the war in Afghanistan and doing everything humanly possible to end the pandemic. His human and hard infrastructure agenda is still pending, but I believe it will eventually pass because it has been set up in such a way that either everybody wins if it passes or everybody loses if it doesn't. The way the twin bills were constructed, one that will pass by budget reconciliation and one bipartisan, represents political ingenuity. It's making the most of the slim Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress. Even after those twin bills pass and get made into law, there is much to be done, voting rights reform in particular. I think Biden will get the major part of his agenda accomplished - probably in 2 years. After that who knows what will happen if Republicans win one or both Houses in the midterm elections.

The $3.5 Trillion Bill Corporate America is Terrified Of

by Robert Reich

Monday, September 13, 2021

Right now, Democrats are working to pass a $3.5 trillion package that will provide long overdue help for working Americans.

The final bill hasn’t yet been determined, so we don’t know the exact dollar amounts for all its policies. We’ll probably find that out in late September or early October. For now, the Democrats’ budget resolution frames what’s in the bill.  

First, on families:

The bill would make permanent key benefits for working families, including the expanded child tax credit in the pandemic relief plan that sends families up to $300 per child each month but is now set to expire in December, and is estimated to cut child poverty by half. 

It would also establish universal child care, for which low- and middle-income households would pay no more than 7 percent of their incomes. 

And provide a national program of paid leave — worth up to $4,000 a month — for workers who take time off because they are ill or caring for a relative.

Next, on education:

The bill would reduce educational inequality by establishing universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds, benefiting an estimated 5 million children, and providing tuition-free community college – essentially expanding free public education from 12 years to 16 years. 

It will also invest in historically Black colleges and universities and increase the maximum amount of Pell grants for students from lower-income families. 

On health care:

The bill expands Medicare to include dental, vision, and hearing benefits and lowers the eligibility age. It also expands Medicaid to cover people living in the 12 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid, and makes critical investments to improve healthcare for people of color. 

The big question is how far it will go to reduce prescription drug prices by, for example, allowing Medicare to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. That could reduce Medicare and Medicaid spending, and free up more money for other parts of the bill. But Big Pharma is dead-set against this.

Big corporations and the rich picking up the tab:

In another step toward fairness, all of these are to be financed by higher taxes on the rich and big corporations. 

The bill would also increase the Internal Revenue Service’s funding so the agency can properly audit wealthy tax cheats, who fail to report about a fifth of their income every year, thereby costing the government $105 billion annually. 

In addition, the bill tackles the climate crisis, which also especially burdens lower-income Americans: 

There are a range of solutions – subsidizing the use of solar, wind, nuclear and other forms of clean energy while financially penalizing the use of dirty energy like coal; helping families pay for electric cars and energy-efficient homes. 

The bill might include something known as a carbon border adjustment tax — a tax on imports whose production was carbon-intensive, like many from China.

The bill would also establish a Civilian Climate Corps, and invest in communities that bear the brunt of the climate crisis.

And the bill helps American workers:

It will hopefully contain much of the PRO Act, the toughest labor law reform in a generation. 

Finally, the bill includes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
This is all about making America fairer. 

Remember: we won’t know the exact details of the bill for at least a month, but these are the main areas that it will focus on. The big challenge will be ensuring Senate Democrats remain united to get it passed. All of us will need to fight like hell.

Don’t listen to spending hawks who claim it’s too expensive or too radical. For far too long, our government has ignored the needs of everyday Americans, catering instead to the demands of corporations and the super-rich. No more. 

It’s time to get this landmark bill passed and build a fairer America.

Off the Top of My Head

Good on President Biden for Using His Visit to the Flood Zones to Give a Tutorial on Climate Change

by John Lawrence

Previously, after a natural disaster no one mentioned climate change. There was much bemoaning and commiserating, but Biden took a different tack. He lectured the American people about climate change and how it contributed to the disasters that had befallen the unfortunate. What's more he said they would continue and get worse unless we undertake to do something about it. No more attributing the disasters to one in 500 year events. That language is totally out the window. No more statements like "I've never seen anything like this my entire life." Get used to it. People are going to see a lot more of these climate disasters from now on. As President Biden said, we can't prevent these disasters from happening on a regular basis, but we can do something about them getting a lot worse. Meanwhile the fossil fuel industry is running ads on TV about how wonderful the oil and gas industry is, and they are lobbying their evil little hearts out to get politicians on their side.

“The nation and the world are in peril,” President Biden said after touring storm damage in New York and Jersey. “And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”

"Folks — and we have to take some bold action now to tackle the accelerating effects of climate. If we don’t act — now I’m going to be heading, as Chuck knows, as the senator knows, I’m going to be heading from here to Glasgow, Scotland, for the COP meeting [United Nations Climate Change Conference], which is all the nations of the world getting together to decide what we are going to do about climate change. And John Kerry, the former secretary of state, is leading our effort, putting it together.

"We are determined, we are determined that we are going to deal with climate change and have zero emissions, net emissions by 2050. By 2020 [sic] (he meant 2030), make sure all our electricity is zero emissions. We’re going to be able to do these things. But we’ve got to move. We’ve got to move. And we’ve got to move the rest of the world. It’s not just the United States of America.

"And so, folks, this summer alone, communities with over 100 million Americans — 100 million Americans call home — have been struck by extreme weather. One in every three Americans has been victimized by severe weather. The hurricanes along the Gulf, the East Coast, up through this community. And I saw the human and physical cost firsthand, as I said, in Louisiana.

"And, folks, the evidence is clear. Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy, and the threat is here, it’s not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse? We can stop it from getting worse.

"And when I talk about building back better — and Chuck is fighting for my program, for our program on the Hill — when I talk about building back better, I mean you can’t build to what it was before this last storm. You got to build better so that if the storm occurred again, there would be no damage. There would be.

"But that’s not going to stop us, though, because if we just do that, it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse. Because the storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so, folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red.

"The nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact. They’ve been warning us the extreme weather would get more extreme over the decade, and we’re living in it real time now."

Biden is telling it like it is. The American people are in for a lot more of these climate disasters, and we can't stop them immediately. It's going to take decades to get this problem under control, and that's only if we go full steam ahead by taking measures to get it under control. Meanwhile, there are measures which can be taken to mitigate the costs both human and financial from these climate disasters. People must move out of flood plains and areas prone to forest fires. We must underground utilities so that the power doesn't go out during hurricanes and wildfires. That goes for cell phones and cable TV too. People have to have secure means of communication even during a climate disaster. Building codes need to be upgraded. Water management needs to improve so that torrential rains do not just become runoff that turns into floods. That water is precious and needs to be transported to parts of the country that are in more or less perpetual drought. The power grid needs to be hardened. Transportation needs to be electrified. Power generation needs to use renewable sources, and advanced nuclear needs to be developed. Ways of making steel and concrete need to be developed that don't use fossil fuels and the methods of doing so need to be scaled up and spread throughout the whole world. Agriculture needs to be made organic and factory farms eliminated. It's not enough for the US and the developed world to do the right things. Green infrastructure must be developed and spread to the whole world. We must partner with China in a Green Belt and Road Initiative. They are very advanced in building infrastructure throughout the world. While the US has been fighting needless wars, China has been building infrastructure albeit not green infrastructure. From now on coal fired power plants in India and China need to be eliminated and replaced with renewable energy and advanced nuclear power generation.

Off the Top of My Head

People Will Not Even Get a Vaccination to Fight the Pandemic. Would They Put Up With Rationing to Fight Climate Change?

by John Lawrence

In World War II, Americans sacrificed for the common good. Today some will not even get a free vaccination for the common good. On August 28, 1941, President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 8875 created the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA’s main responsibility was to place a ceiling on prices of most goods, and to limit consumption by rationing. The OPA rationed automobiles, tires, gasoline, fuel oil, coal, firewood, nylon, silk, and shoes. Americans used their ration cards and stamps to take their meager share of household staples including meat, dairy, coffee, dried fruits, jams, jellies, lard, shortening, and oils. Resources were devoted to the war effort and not to Americans' consumption. Today we live in a consumer society. Would Americans resist if they lost their freedom to consume? That's what freedom means to most Americans. What if those resources were needed in the fight against climate change?

Would Americans put up with a shift from a consumer society to an all hands on deck building infrastructure to mitigate climate change society? Advertising budgets would dry up because the purpose of advertising is to get you to buy more stuff. What if your consumption was limited to essentials as it was during WW II? Freedom in America is the freedom to consume whatever you have the money to buy. What if you couldn't do that any more? What if the purveyors of nonessential products didn't have the freedom to sell you stuff that you really don't need in order to devote resources both human and material to Biden's building back better agenda? Is it some people's right to consume while other people are wiped out due to extreme weather events like fires and flooding? Should the rich be restricted from spending their money on luxury items like private jets and yachts? Should they be taxed heavily to provide the financial resources for mitigation and adaptation to global warming? Would billionaires have to give up their rocket ships? Do thy even care about the world that our children and grandchildren will inherit?

So if people are protesting that getting a free vaccination is against their concept of what being a free American is, how much more are they going to complain if they had to go without some consumer activity that they have become accustomed to? They are just not the type to roll up their sleeves and pitch in to do their part to mitigate or adapt to global warming. Just as the dying unvaccinated finally wish that they had heeded the warnings and got vaccinated, as long as some extreme weather event hasn't destroyed their home or impacted them in any way, they will continue to stick their heads in the sand and deny that global warming really exists. For them it will just be another government conspiracy theory while they will find charlatans in social media who will reassure them that global warming is still a hoax.

How Sweden Delivered The World’s First Fossil Fuel-Free Steel

Aug 19, from Forbes

David Vetter

Senior Contributor

This post has been updated.

A shipment of fossil fuel-free steel, produced by a joint venture between three Swedish firms, was ... [+] HYBRIT/Magnus Kryssare

Sweden has delivered the world’s first shipment of steel produced without the use of fossil fuels, a major milestone on the road towards cutting carbon emissions from industry.

A shipment of the steel was delivered to Swedish truck maker Volvo AB, but industrial quantities of the stuff won’t be available until 2026.

The news is significant in the context of efforts to limit climate change. While much emphasis has been placed on the role of fossil fuels in electricity generation, research published by Carbon Brief shows that just 553 conventional steel plants worldwide are responsible for 9% of all carbon dioxide emissions, owing to the large quantities of fossil fuels—in particular coking coal—used to produce the alloy. The IEA forecasts that steel production globally will grow by a third through to 2050.

Speaking at a press conference, the Swedish minister for business, industry and innovation Ibrahim Baylan said he was “happy to be minister for enterprise and energy in a country where industry is bubbling with energy for a [green] reset.”

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Baylan further noted: “Industry and especially the steel industry create large emissions but are also an important part of the solution.”

The steel was created by a joint venture between Swedish steelmaker SSAB, energy company Vattenfall, and iron ore miner LKAB. A technology dubbed HYBRIT—a contraction of Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology—replaces fossil fuels both in the production of the iron pellets that are the key ingredient of steel, and in the removal of oxygen from the iron by replacing carbon and coke with green hydrogen. SSAB then uses that iron to produce steel slabs for delivery.

Comparison of conventional fossil fuel-based steelmaking process versus the new approach from ... [+]

HYBRIT

The whole country of Sweden produced just over 45 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in 2020, but across all its operations SSAB was responsible for almost 9 million. HYBRIT claims that by eliminating fossil fuels from the steelmaking process, it could reduce Sweden’s total CO2 emissions by “at least” 10%.

 

Martin Lindqvist, CEO of SSAB, told media: “The first fossil-free steel in the world is not only a breakthrough for SSAB, it represents proof that it’s possible to make the transition and significantly reduce the global carbon footprint of the steel industry. We hope that this will inspire others to also want to speed up the green transition.”

Anna Borg, CEO of Vattenfall, which is also responsible for some of Europe’s largest wind farms, said HYBRIT “shows how partnerships and collaboration can contribute to reducing emissions and building competitiveness for industries.”

SSAB, LKAB and Vattenfall say they will begin full industrial production of the new steel in 2026. Earlier this year, Volvo announced that it would be the first manufacturer to produce vehicles from fossil-free steel.

While this project might be the first to deliver, it’s far from the only project working on the challenge to create “green steel.” Other Swedes are racing to be the first to create industrial quantities, with H2 Green Steel claiming it will be up and running by 2024.

Outside Europe, China’s Baowu, the world’s largest steelmaker, has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050, and is beginning to develop hydrogen technologies as a way to cut fossil fuels out of production. India’s Tata steel has developed what it calls the HIsarna process, which still uses coal but claims to reduce emissions by 20%. Meanwhile, Japan’s COURSE 50 project uses a range of technologies to reduce emissions from the blast furnace.

Update 08/23/2021 BST0933: This post has been updated to clarify that the HYBRIT process covers the iron pelletizing and ironmaking stages of the process.

Right-Wing Dems Begin to Cave as Progressives Hold Their Ground on Reconciliation Vote

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) listen during an event on June 17, 2021 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

 

"No bipartisan infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill. They go together."

 

Jake Johnson

August 23, 2021, from Common Dreams

An effort by nine conservative House Democrats to force a quick vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill reportedly began to collapse over the weekend as progressive lawmakers—and Speaker Nancy Pelosi—made clear that they would not allow the legislation to advance until the Senate also passes a sweeping reconciliation package, a centerpiece of the majority party's agenda.

Earlier this month, Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and eight other Democrats sent a letter to Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatening to vote down a $3.5 trillion budget resolution—a measure that sets the stage for the reconciliation package—unless the House first passes a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that the Senate approved on August 11. Their stance won the support of powerful actors in Washington, most prominently the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending corporate lobbying organization in the country.

"This is the path forward: we're passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside the jobs and families package. Period."
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal

But with the House set to reconvene Monday to take up the multitrillion-dollar budget resolution, "several" members of the conservative group have decided to drop their threat to vote against the measure, the American Prospect reported.

While the Prospect's David Dayen stressed that "the situation is very malleable and fluid," it appears that House progressives' firm support for delaying a vote on the bipartisan bill is beginning to pay off.

On August 10, just days before Gottheimer's group sent its letter, the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) announced that a majority of respondents to an internal survey said they would be willing to withhold their votes for the bipartisan legislation until the Senate also passes a reconciliation bill, a move that's not expected until next month.

"This is the path forward: we're passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill alongside the jobs and families package. Period," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the CPC, said last week. "The American people expect us to deliver on child care, paid leave, housing, healthcare, climate action, and more—and we must."

Here Are the 9 Right-Wing Democrats Threatening to Tank Their Party's $3.5 Trillion Agenda

Jake Johnson

Progressives have openly voiced concern that passing the bipartisan measure before the Senate approves a reconciliation package would free conservative Democrats to vote against the latter bill, potentially imperiling trillions of dollars in green energy spending, Medicare expansion, paid family and medical leave, and other priorities.

"To my moderate colleagues: A vote against the Biden agenda this week is not only a slap in the face to the president, it will obstruct any shot at adopting the policies that define us as Democrats," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), a CPC member, tweeted Sunday.

Pelosi, for her part, has said for weeks that the bipartisan measure and the reconciliation package—which Democrats plan to pass without any Republican support—must move at the same time in order to ensure the passage of both, a position that progressive lawmakers and outside advocacy groups have endorsed.

"We cannot afford any political maneuvers that undermine a guaranteed path towards at least $3.5 trillion of investments to combat climate change, uplift American families, expand healthcare, and secure our economic future," the youth-led Sunrise Movement and other progressive organizations wrote to Pelosi last week, urging the Speaker to stick to her position.

On Monday, progressive groups launched a six-figure ad buy targeting the nine right-wing Democrats.

During a private call with her leadership team last week, Pelosi—who has just three votes to spare—derided the group of nine conservative Democrats, saying, "This is no time for amateur hour."

At least two of the letter's nine signatories—Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) and Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas)—attended Pelosi's annual fundraiser in Napa, California over the weekend, but it's unclear whether they were among the conservative Democrats who have reportedly dropped their threat to tank the budget resolution. It's also not clear what may have compelled the conservative Democrats to flip; the Washington Post reported Sunday that some of the nine lawmakers "sought to negotiate a potential end to the standoff" with Democratic leaders, but no deal has been publicized as of yet.

On Sunday night, the nine conservative Democrats penned an op-ed in the Post "urging House leadership and the president to move [the bipartisan infrastructure legislation] through the House quickly, sign the bill, and get shovels in the ground and people to work." They also raised "concerns about the level of spending" in the budget resolution and warned against holding the bipartisan bill "hostage to reconciliation," an indication that House Democrats could still have trouble passing the resolution this week.

In a letter to the House Democratic caucus on Saturday, Pelosi reiterated her commitment to passing "both the Build Back Better Plan and the bipartisan infrastructure bill before October 1st."

"Any delay to passing the budget resolution threatens the timetable for delivering the historic progress and the transformative vision that Democrats share," Pelosi wrote. "In support of President [Joe] Biden's vision to Build Back Better, we must move quickly to pass the budget resolution this week. It is essential that our caucus proceeds unified in our determination to deliver once-in-a-century progress for the children."

The House is expected to begin the process of approving the budget resolution on Monday. Passage of the measure would set in motion the process of converting top-line spending figures into legislative text, a likely contentious effort that progressive lawmakers hope will yield historic investments in climate action, healthcare, affordable housing, and more.

"Rebuilding our crumbling physical infrastructure is very important," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chief architect of the $3.5 trillion budget resolution, said on Sunday. "Rebuilding our human infrastructure, the needs of working families, the children, the elderly, and the sick, is more important. No bipartisan infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill. They go together."

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Severe Drought Threatens Hoover Dam Reservoir – And Water for US West

The wellspring of Lake Mead created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River has plummeted to an historic low as states in the west face hefty cuts in their water supplies

by Oliver Milman at Hoover dam

from the Guardian

 

Had the formidable white arc of the Hoover dam never held back the Colorado River, the US west would probably have no Los Angeles or Las Vegas as we know them today. No sprawling food bowl of wheat, alfalfa and corn. No dreams of relocating to live in a tamed desert. The river, and dam, made the west; now the climate crisis threatens to break it.

The situation here is emblematic of a planet slowly, inexorably overheating. And the catastrophic consequences of the extreme weather this brings.

Hoover dam is the height of a 60-story building and is 45ft thick at the top and 660ft at the bottom. Its construction, in the teeth of the Great Depression, was a source of such national pride that thousands of people journeyed through the hostile desert to witness the arrival of what has become an enduring monument to collective effort for the public good.

The engineering might of Hoover dam undoubtably reshaped America’s story, harnessing a raucous river to help carve huge cities and vast fields of crops into unforgiving terrain. But the wellspring of Lake Mead, created by the dam’s blocking of the Colorado River and with the capacity to hold enough water to cover the entire state of Connecticut 10ft deep, has now plummeted to an historic low. The states of the west, primarily Arizona and Nevada, now face hefty cuts in their water supplies amid a two-decade drought fiercer than anything seen in a millennium.

“We bent nature to suit our own needs,” said Brad Udall, a climate and water expert at Colorado State University. “And now nature is going to bend us.”

Surveying the dam’s sloping face from its curved parapet, Michael Bernardo, river operations manager at the US Bureau of Reclamation, admits the scarcity of water is out of bounds with historical norms. While there is no “average” year on the Colorado River, Bernardo and his colleagues were always able to estimate its flow within a certain range.

But since 2000, scientists say the river’s flow has dwindled by 20% compared to the previous century’s average. This year is the second driest on record, with the flow into Lake Mead just a quarter of what would be considered normal.

“These are scenarios that aren’t necessarily where we expect to be in our models,” said Bernardo, whose work helps deliver a reliable level of water to thirsty western states. Nearly 40 million people, including dozens of tribes, depend on the river’s water. “We’re getting those years that are at the extreme ends of the bell curve. We’ve seen extremes we haven’t seen before, we now have scenarios that are very, very dry.”

In June, the level of Lake Mead plunged below 1,075ft, a point that will trigger, for the first time, federally mandated cuts in water allocations next year. The Bureau of Reclamation (the government agency originally tasked with “reclaiming” this arid place for a new utopia of farmland and a booming western population), expects this historic low to spiral further, dropping to about 1,048ft by the end of 2022, a shallowness unprecedented since Lake Mead started filling up in the 1930s following Hoover dam’s completion. This will provoke a second, harsher, round of cuts.

“We’ve known this point will arrive because we’ve continued to use more water than the river provides for years,” said Kathryn Sorensen, a water policy expert at Arizona State University. “Things look pretty grim. Humans have always been good at moving water around but right now everyone will need to do what it takes to prevent the system from crashing.”

Seven states – California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada – and Mexico are bound by agreements that parcel out the river’s water but those considered “junior” partners in this arrangement will be hit first.

Should second tier cuts occur, Arizona will lose nearly a fifth of the water it gets from the Colorado River. Nevada’s first-round cut of 21,000 acre-ft (an acre-ft is an acre of water, one foot deep) is smaller, but its share is already diminutive due to an archaic allotment drawn up a century ago when the state was sparsely populated.

The latest era of cooperation between states that rely upon the Colorado River has now entered the “realm of lose-lose”, according to Colby Pellegrino, deputy general manager of resources for the Southern Nevada Water Authority. “Everyone’s going to have to do more with less, and that’s really going to be challenging for people,” she said. “‘Drought’ suggests to a lot of people something temporary we have to respond to, but this could permanently be the type of flows we see.”

The decline of Lake Mead is apparent even at a cursory glance. The US’s largest reservoir is now barely a third full, the dark basalt rock of its canyon walls blanched by a distinctive white calcium ring where the water level once was. This level has plunged by about 130ft in the past 20 years and is currently receding by about a foot a week as farms hit their peak irrigation period.

Guardian graphic | Source: Elevation data from Bureau of Reclamation Records for Lower Colorado River Operations.

The pace of change has been jarring to the millions of people who regularly boat, fish and swim on the lake, with the National Park Service recently laying down new steel platforms to extend launch ramps that no longer reach the water. Some marinas have been wrenched from their moorings and moved because they have been left marooned in baking sediment.

Seen from above in time lapse over the years, Lake Mead looks like a spindly puddle withering away in the Mojave Desert, as nearby Las Vegas, which gets almost all of its water from the lake and went a record 240 days last year without rain, balloons in size. The west’s ambitions have crunched into the searing reality of the Anthropocene.

The Colorado River rises in the lofty Rocky Mountains, before tumbling through 1,450 miles of mountains, canyons and deserts until it reaches the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. Seasonally melting snow has traditionally replenished the river but snowpack on mountaintops in the west has declined by an average of 19% since the 1950s, while soaring temperatures have dried out soils and caused more water to evaporate.

This morphing climate, plus the rampant extraction of water for everything from golf courses in Phoenix to vegetables growing in California to gardens in Denver, means the Colorado fizzles out in dry riverbed before it even reaches its Mexican delta.

Only 1.8% of the west is not in some level of drought, with California, Arizona and New Mexico all experiencing their lowest rainfalls on record over the previous 12 months. Lakes in Arizona are now so low they can’t be used to fight the fires themselves spurred by drought, while the retreat of Lake Folsom in California uncovered the wreckage of a plane that crashed 56 years ago. The governor of Utah has resorted to asking people to pray for rain.

The heat has been otherworldly, with Phoenix recently enduring a record six straight days above 115F (46.1C). A “heat dome” that settled over the usually mild Pacific north-west pushed temperatures to reach a record 108F (42.2C) in Seattle and caused power lines to melt and roads to buckle in Portland. A few hundred miles north, a fast-moving wildfire incinerated the town of Lytton in British Columbia the day after it set a Canadian temperature record of 121F (49.4C). Barely into summer, hundreds of people have already died from the heat along the west coast.

The west has gone through periods like this “megadrought” , with only occasional respite, for the past two decades. But scientists have made clear the current conditions would be virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, pointing to a longer-term “aridification” of the region. All of the water conservation efforts that have kept shortages at bay until now risk being surpassed by the rising heat.

“The amount of water now available across the US west is well below that of any time in modern civilization,” said Park Williams, a hydroclimatologist at Columbia University. Research by Williams and colleagues last year analyzed tree rings to discover the current dry period is rivaled only by a spell in the late 1500s in a history of drought that reaches back to around 800, with the climate crisis doubling the severity of the modern-day drought.

“As the globe warms up, the west will dry out,” said Williams. “The past two years have been shocking to me, I never thought I would see downtown LA reach 111F as it’s so close to the ocean, but we have some of the driest conditions in 1,200 years so the dice are loaded for more heatwaves and fires. This could be the tip of the iceberg, we may well see much longer, tougher droughts.”

In the guts of the Hoover dam, down bronze-clad elevators and through terrazzo corridors, a line of enormous turbines help funnel water out downstream, creating hydro-power electricity for more than 1m households in the process. Five of the 17 turbines, each weighing the same as seven blue whales, have been replaced in recent years with new fittings more suited to operating in lower lake levels.

Even with these adaptions, however, the decline of Lake Mead has caused the amount of hydro power generated by the dam to drop by around 25%. The drought is expected to cause the hydro facility at Lake Oroville, California, to completely shut down, prompting a warning from the United States Energy Association that a “megadrought-induced electricity shortage could be catastrophic, affecting everything from food production to industrial manufacturing”. The association added that such a scenario could even force people to move east, in what it called a “reverse Dust Bowl exodus”.

Bernardo said a similar shutdown of the Hoover dam would require more than 100ft in further water level retreat, which is not anticipated, although he finds himself constantly hoping for the rains that would ease the tightening shortages.

“We all want the nice weather but we need those good storms to build everything back up,” he said.

“We’d need three or four above average years, back to back, to restore the lake. Your guess is as good as mine whether we’ll get that. I’ll continue to watch the weather, every day.”

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Infrastructure Deal is Pure Political Genius

by John Lawrence

Joe Biden is a consummate deal maker. With slim majorities in Congress he is going to get his massive infrastrucure deal including human infrastructure done in a 2 step process. First he gets Manchin to agree that, if there's a bipartisan deal on conventional infrastructure, he will vote for an all Democrat budget reconciliation bill for human infrastructure. The genius is putting 11 Republicans on the bipartisan committee and then getting them to agree on the bill. That way they know that those 11 Republicans will vote for it in the Senate giving Democrats a veto proof win there (even if one renegs) and also proving that bipartisanship is possible. So the $1.2 trillion conventional infrastructure deal is locked in, and also Manchin is locked into the $3.5 trillion all Democrat reconciliation bill for human infrastructure. So it's a win-win in two steps - first getting 10 Republicans to vote for something, and then getting Joe Manchin to vote with Democrats so that they have 50 votes plus Kamala's tie breaking vote in the Senate for human infrastructure. Furthermore, part of the deal is that, if more than one of the 11 Republicans on the bipartisan committee renegs on their vote, Manchin will be on board with adding that $1.2 trillion to the $3.5 trillion for the budget reconciliation bill. It's pure political genius, and it had to revolve around Joe Manchin. It doesn't matter to Biden that he had to go out of his way to placate Manchin as long as in the final analysis his landmark infrastructure bill gets done.

So all the behind the scenes sausage making has paid off. It's a done deal even though all the i's have not yet bee dotted nor have all the t's been crossed. Chuck Schumer expects the legislation to be on Biden's desk before the August break. So this all bodes well for future legislation as Biden will continue to outsmart and outfox Republicans. Look next on the voting rights act. It will need either another budget reconciliation or a carve out of the filibuster. Again Manchin will be the key player that will have to be placated. Here's how it could happen. Another bipartisan committee that will settle on Manchin's own voting rights act, something Manchin has already put forward and which Stacey Abrams approves of. Shazam! Another done deal or else, if there is no successful outcome for the projected bipartisan committee, Manchin will agree to a carve out of the filibuster. The argument that, if Democrats negate the filibuster, then they will not have it as their prerogative when they are the minority party, is specious. Just because Democrats keep the filibuster in place is no guarantee that Republicans will not do away with it when they are the majority party. It can be eliminated by a simple majority vote of the party in power. And you can't count on any "gentlemen's agreements" with Republicans. So Democrats should do carve outs if Manchin will agree to them if he gets his own voting bill passed and after some bipartisan maneuverings that don't pan out.

So the lesson is let's be patient and let Biden and his teams work their political magic. I think it will work despite hostile Republican opposition to everything Democrats put forward. Democrats might as well go for broke on voting rights, immigration reform, police reform, gun reform and everything else they want to do providing they can placate the sentiments of Joe Manchin's sensibilities. They have learned their lesson that you can't expect any help from Republicans - that is unless you form a bipartisan committee first and then maybe not even then. But as long as you have all Democrats on board anything is possible. I also expect Biden to forgive student loan debt at least a portion of it as was his campaign promise right before the 2024 election if not before. Also please, Mr Biden, do what you promised regarding social security.

'No Reconciliation Bill, No Deal': Sanders Says Progressive Package Must Come With Bipartisan Plan

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at a "We Cant Wait Rally" on the National Mall on June 24, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

 

"There will not be a bipartisan infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill that substantially improves the lives of working families and combats the existential threat of climate change."

 

Jake Johnson, staff writer

June 28, 2021

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said Sunday that he will not support the bipartisan infrastructure plan that the Biden White House endorsed last week if it is not paired with a broader legislative package containing major investments in climate action and other progressive priorities.

"Let me be clear: There will not be a bipartisan infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill that substantially improves the lives of working families and combats the existential threat of climate change," Sanders tweeted. "No reconciliation bill, no deal. We need transformative change NOW."

"No reconciliation bill, no deal. We need transformative change NOW."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders

Sanders' comments came shortly after President Joe Biden walked back earlier remarks indicating he would not sign the bipartisan infrastructure legislation if it reached his desk without a reconciliation package that includes elements of his American Families Plan, a $1.8 trillion safety-net proposal that Republicans unanimously oppose.

Biden's comments last week characterizing the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a reconciliation package as components of a "tandem" deal that cannot be separated set off a firestorm of GOP outrage, with Republicans threatening to withdraw their support from the bipartisan measure without clarification from the White House.

The president soon obliged, issuing a statement Saturday in which he said he was not "issuing a veto threat" against the $579 billion bipartisan deal, which progressives have criticized for proposing inadequate spending and pay-fors that could lead to the privatization of public assets and cuts to unemployment insurance.

"I intend to work hard to get both of them passed, because our country needs both—and I ran a winning campaign for president that promised to deliver on both," Biden said, referring to the bipartisan bill and the reconciliation package. "No one should be surprised that that is precisely what I am doing."

The size and scope of the reconciliation package—so named because of the arcane budget process Democrats will attempt to use to pass it without Republican support—remain unclear as senators and House members haggle over the details in public and behind closed doors.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) vowed last week that her chamber will not take up the bipartisan infrastructure measure until the Senate also passes a reconciliation bill.

Sanders—who, as chair of the Senate's budget panel, has significant influence over the reconciliation process—is reportedly working to assemble a $6 trillion reconciliation package that would include an expansion of Medicare and investments in green energy, among other proposals.

In a tweet on Sunday, Sanders' staff director Warren Gunnels outlined progressive priorities for the emerging legislation:

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a freshman lawmaker, joined Sanders on Sunday in expressing his opposition to moving ahead with a bipartisan infrastructure package without simultaneously advancing a sweeping reconciliation bill that invests in green energy and other key areas that the bipartisan deal fails to address.

"We have to go big on infrastructure, we have to go big on climate, and we have to go big on racial equity and racial justice," Bowman said in an appearance on MSNBC Sunday morning.

The New York Democrat is expected to join hundreds of activists with the youth-led Sunrise Movement for a protest in front of the White House on Monday.

"That's fine if we want to have a bipartisan agreement," Bowman said Sunday. "But it has to be coupled with an agreement that's going to be very big, that Republicans probably are not going to agree to. But at this moment, Democrats were sent to Washington to do the work of the American people. That's our job. And we have to push very aggressively and boldly to get that done."

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'Move Forward' on Infrastructure, Ocasio-Cortez Says Amid GOP 'Fury' Over Two-Track Approach

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) talk as they arrive for a discussion about the potential benefits of a Civilian Climate Corps at the U.S. Capitol on June 23, 2021. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

 

She says to "rebuild infrastructure and draw down carbon, lower the age of Medicare and extend it to cover vision and dental, expand childcare and housing accessibility, and serve the American people."

 

Jessica Corbett, staff writer

June 26, 2021

Some progressives are celebrating President Joe Biden's commitment to a two-track approach to infrastructure despite reports of GOP "fury" over his comments that the $579 billion bipartisan deal and a Democratic reconciliation bill must come to his desk "in tandem."

In a pair of Friday tweets about the Republican reaction to Biden's remarks, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) addressed some of the progressive priorities that are expected in a reconciliation bill that could be passed by Democrats without any GOP support.

"It's time to move forward, rebuild infrastructure and draw down carbon, lower the age of Medicare and extend it to cover vision and dental, expand childcare and housing accessibility, and serve the American people," she said. "That is bipartisan too, with two-party support among the electorate."

The congresswoman also accused GOP lawmakers who may now withdraw their support of the bipartisan infrastructure deal—which focuses on physical infrastructure like roads and bridges and is far smaller than Biden's American Jobs Plan—of negotiating with the White House in bad faith:

Josh Miller-Lewis of More Perfect Union responded to her tweets with a video from Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)—who co-sponsors various climate legislation with Ocasio-Cortez—highlighting GOP behavior on a key climate bill over a decade ago.

"The last time Democrats were in power in Washington, I watched as climate action took a backseat to other legislative priorities, wasting precious time and political power," said Markey, then a member of the House. "We are in danger of making the same mistake."

Even though Democratic leadership in Congress has long been working on the dual-track approach, Biden's confirmation Thursday—the same day the bipartisan deal was officially announced—that he wouldn't sign just one of the bills thrilled progressives but outraged Republicans, including some who were involved in the recent negotiations.

The Washington Post revealed that senators who negotiated the bipartisan deal held a call about the president's position Friday afternoon.

"Many in the group were irritated about having stuck their necks out to back Biden's agreement in the first place and having just been at the White House less than 24 hours before," reported CNN. "Agreeing to the bipartisan deal was always going to put them at odds with some of their conservative colleagues, and they viewed the president's words as having undercut their good-faith deal."

According to Politico, "Democrats were privately confident afterward that their Republican colleagues would stay on board and that their outrage would pass."

Biden ally Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who endorsed the deal, told the outlet that "having spoken with several colleagues, I'm optimistic that despite some hiccups, the historic scope and widespread public support for this bipartisan infrastructure deal will keep it moving forward."

Despite that optimism, Biden's promise to block bipartisan legislation without a reconciliation bill could be "a potential dealbreaker" for Republicans, Politico noted, citing GOP aides:

One aide said that clearly linking the two infrastructure bills was never discussed—not within the group of 10 senators who met Biden on Thursday, the bigger group of 21 senators who endorsed their work, or with the White House. A second aide said that frustrations run far deeper than Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who began griping publicly late Thursday.

"In endorsing the deal, Biden praised the group for 'keeping their word,' but then immediately broke his," said a third Republican aide.

"No deal by extortion!" Graham, who had endorsed the deal, tweeted Friday. "It was never suggested to me during these negotiations that President Biden was holding hostage the bipartisan infrastructure proposal unless a liberal reconciliation package was also passed."

In a series of tweets, NBC News policy editor Benjy Sarlin noted that while everyone involved with the talks knew a reconciliation effort was possible, Biden's clear requirement that the bills come together is new.

Ocasio-Cortez and others, meanwhile, pointed to previous comments from the president as well as GOP lawmakers that suggested everyone involved expected both a bipartisan deal and a reconciliation bill.

In a call Friday with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who led the bipartisan talks along with Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), "the president reiterated strong support for both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and a reconciliation bill containing the American Families Plan moving forward on a two-track system," according to a readout from the White House.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki echoed that message during a Friday briefing, telling reporters, "I think the American people are quite focused on how we're getting work done on their behalf—less focused on the mechanics of the process."

"Now, it is up to Republicans… to decide if they are going to vote against a historic investment in infrastructure that's going to rebuild roads and railways and bridges in their communities simply because they don't like the mechanics of the process," she added. "That's a pretty absurd argument for them to make. Good luck on the political front on that argument."

Though progressives welcomed Biden's commitment to a reconciliation bill Thursday, the bipartisan deal has generated concerns on several fronts—including its potential impact on unemployment benefits, its push for privatization, and the fact that it could exacerbate the climate emergency. 

"On infrastructure, the Biden administration has now presented a package where the contents are so far from what needs to be done it's impossible to even celebrate the dollar value," Alexander Sammon wrote Thursday for The American Prospect.

"It would be better to let the country's crumbling, outmoded, fossil fuel-heavy infrastructure continue to fall into disrepair," Sammon suggested, "than to take a deal that would extend the life and use of calamitous land and water use patterns further."

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Off the Top of My Head

A House Built on Sand ...

by John Lawrence

There is the parable in the Bible about the person who built their house on a rock. The floods came, the rain fell, the wind blew and the house still stood. But as for the person who built their house on sand, it couldn't withstand the floods, rain and wind and it came tumbling down. Pretty much an exact analogy to the fallen condo in Florida. They even had a 3 year old structural engineer's report of the dire consequences of not acting to immediately shore up the structure. Evidently, the condo owners were too cheap to spend the money immediately with dire consequences. This high rise structure was built right on the beach close to salt water that can corrode concrete and steel. Sunny day flooding in Florida results in salt water coming up through the ground even on sunny days as the ocean water permeates under the structures. In addition the area was subject to subsidence which means that the ground was sinking. Since the building was supported by pillars, if the subsidence was uneven, some pillars would be supporting more weight than they were designed to support. "This collapse is a classic column failure. Which means the building itself was supported by a series of pillars. If the pillars fail, everything fails," said Kit Miyamoto, a structural engineer and California Seismic Safety Commission chairman.

Climate change and sea level rise are threatening not only this but a multitude of other beach front and seaside properties not only in Florida but all over the US. Multi story properties should not be built except on bedrock. There should be only shacks and houses built on Miami Beach real estate, but the fact that it so valuable means that developers want to capitalize on the value of the property by building multi story properties. As climate change continues to increase flooding, wind and rain, all these structures are at risk especially structures built on pillars where all the weight is concentrated in only a few places instead of spread out over the whole footprint of the building. If even one of these pillars fails or subsides unevenly, the whole structure is at risk.

Sunny day flooding puts all these buildings at risk. Sunny day flooding takes place because of climate change. According to NOAA:

"Coastal communities across the U.S. continued to see record-setting high-tide flooding last year, forcing their residents and visitors to deal with flooded shorelines, streets and basements — a trend that is expected to continue into 2021. The elevated water levels affected coastal economies, tourism and crucial infrastructure like waste and stormwater systems, according to a new NOAA report.

"High-tide flooding, often referred to as "nuisance" or “sunny day” flooding, is increasingly common due to years of relative sea level increases. It occurs when tides reach anywhere from 1.75 to 2 feet above the daily average high tide and start spilling onto streets or bubbling up from storm drains. As sea level rise continues, damaging floods that decades ago happened only during a storm now happen more regularly, such as during a full-moon tide or with a change in prevailing winds or currents.

“America’s coastal communities and their economies are suffering from the effects of high tide flooding, and it’s only going to increase in the future,” said Nicole LeBoeuf, acting director of NOAA’s National Ocean Service. “NOAA is committed to working with coastal communities to provide the information and data they need to tackle the problem of high tide flooding, both now and in the coming years as sea levels continue to rise.”"

The owners of the Champlain Towers South condos would have had to foot the very expensive bill for structural repairs to the condo. They weren't renters; evidently, they were owners. They could have proceeded with those repairs and a concomitant increase in their HOA dues immediately after the 2018 structural engineer's report, but they didn't. So there is really nobody that can be sued over this situation. No one is at fault except the condo owners themselves. NBC News reported:

"One condo owner sued the unit association for failing to fix the cracks in the outside wall of her unit in 2015, according to a lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade County. The condo owner, who could not be reached for comment, said the cracks led to water damage that cost $15,000. The court documents noted that because the cracks were a structural issue the building association was liable for the expense. Americans have built approximately $3 trillion worth of property on barrier islands and coastal floodplains, according to “The Geography of Risk,” a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Gilbert Gaul that analyzes the real estate investment in beach communities over the past century."

The whole Miami Beach barrier island community which contains trillions of dollars of real estate is a house built on sand. As climate change increases the likelihood that these expensive high rise condos are at risk of collapse, the developers themselves might be at risk of a law suit. At the very least insurance rates are going to go up. The best bet now is that there will be a flurry of activity by structural engineers examining in detail every building in the area. The best advice is for the owners of these condos not to hesitate if defects in the structure of their condo are pointed out.

'It's One Deal': Warren Says She Won't Vote for Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan Without Climate, Child Care

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) speaks to reporters prior to a vote on June 22, 2021 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Jake Johnson, staff writer

June 24, 2021

 

"We can't let the infrastructure train leave the station while child care and clean energy get left on the platform—or while billionaires and big corporations don't pay their fair share in taxes."

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren made clear late Wednesday that she will not go along with a newly announced bipartisan infrastructure framework unless the Democratic leadership simultaneously presses ahead with a legislative package that includes child care, major investments in green energy, and other progressive priorities that are excluded from the emerging deal with Republicans.

"They may be voted separately, but it is one infrastructure deal," Warren said in an appearance on MSNBC. "I can't vote for some small subset that, you know—the infrastructure train leaves the station and child care gets left on the platform, green energy gets left on the platform."

"It's that all of the pieces have to move because, ultimately, it's one deal," added the Massachusetts Democrat, who also cited tax hikes on the wealthy as a necessary component of any infrastructure agreement.

Warren's comments came just as a bipartisan group of senators led by Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) announced a tentative deal with White House aides on an infrastructure blueprint calling for $559 billion in new spending over the next five years—a package far smaller than President Joe Biden's original $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan.

"We demand no climate, no deal. Any Democrat who votes for this inadequate version of an infrastructure bill that doesn’t channel massive investments towards stopping the climate crisis is betraying our generation."
—Lauren Maunus, Sunrise Movement

While senators in the 21-member bipartisan group stressed that details still need to be ironed out at a meeting with Biden on Thursday, one unnamed source familiar with the negotiations told Politico that the agreement "is basically cooked."

"All that's left are the handshakes," Politico reported.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the two top Democrats in Congress, told reporters Wednesday that they "support the concepts that we have heard about" but are awaiting additional details on the bipartisan framework.

In an apparent effort to assuage progressives' fears that climate action and other key priorities could be left on the cutting room floor, the Democratic leaders vowed Wednesday to use the filibuster-proof budget reconciliation process to simultaneously advance legislation that includes key agenda items omitted from the bipartisan deal. Given Democrats' slim margins in the House and Senate, they cannot afford many defections, meaning progressives have significant leverage over infrastructure developments if they're willing to use it.

"We can't get the bipartisan bill done unless we're sure we're getting the budget reconciliation bill done," said Schumer, who has been working with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on a sprawling $6 trillion reconciliation package that includes Medicare expansion and major climate investments.

"We can't get the budget reconciliation bill done unless we're sure of the bipartisan," Schumer added, alluding to conservative Democrats' opposition to using reconciliation without a bipartisan infrastructure deal in hand. "I think our members are—you know, across the spectrum, realize that."

Asked when the public can expect a vote on the bipartisan deal in the House, Pelosi responded, "As soon as we see a reconciliation bill."

Pelosi made similar comments to reporters on Thursday. "We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill," she said. "If there is no bipartisan bill then we'll just go when the Senate passes a reconciliation bill. But I'm hopeful that we will have the bipartisan bill."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the whip for the nearly 100-member Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), welcomed Pelosi and Schumer's remarks as a positive sign, noting that "it was always unlikely for many members to support a bipartisan bill on infrastructure without a guarantee on a bold reconciliation bill moving simultaneously."

"It's time to deliver big on behalf of our constituents," Omar added.

Speaking to Punchbowl News on Wednesday, CPC chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) stressed that both the bipartisan package and the Democrat-only reconciliation bill—which can pass with a simple-majority vote—must advance at the same time to win her support, preemptively rejecting any leadership promises to tackle the reconciliation bill at some later date.

“We don't have a lot of faith in, 'I promise I'll do this,'" said Jayapal.

Huge questions remain about the contents of both packages as lawmakers continue to haggle over the details and demand inclusion of their priorities.

In recent days, as Common Dreams reported, advocacy organizations have raised concerns about the bipartisan group's proposal to finance their infrastructure package using so-called public-private partnerships and "asset recycling," practices that progressives rejected as thinly veiled attempts to hand public infrastructure over to corporations and Wall Street investors.

It's unclear whether progressives in Congress would be willing to tank the bipartisan deal over objections to those proposed pay-fors, which have not yet been finalized.

In a statement on Thursday, the youth-led Sunrise Movement reiterated its position that any agreement on infrastructure must come with substantial public investments in combating the climate crisis as the Western United States experiences a record-breaking heat wave and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reach all-time highs.

"Not since 2009 have Democrats held control of both houses of Congress and the White House. This is a historic, narrow opportunity to combat the climate crisis, and we can't afford to kick the can down the road any further," said Lauren Maunus, Sunrise's advocacy director. "We demand no climate, no deal. Any Democrat who votes for this inadequate version of an infrastructure bill that doesn’t channel massive investments towards stopping the climate crisis is betraying our generation."

“Our leaders must step up," Maunus added. "We expect Schumer to pass the boldest budget resolution as soon as possible, go through reconciliation in July, and pass a robust infrastructure package by August recess. There can be no compromise and no excuses to get this done for the American people."

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Ocasio-Cortez Says 'Elephant in the Room' Is Senate Democrats Blocking Their Own Party's Agenda

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) appearing on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday morning, June 14, 2021. (Photo: Screenshot/CNN)

 

"The argument that we need to make here," the New York Democrat said of bipartisanship's dead end, "is that it's worth going it alone if we can do more for working people in this country."

June 13, 2021

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave voice Sunday to the growing frustration among progressives due to Democratic Senators who have become the clear obstructionists in enacting the bold agenda they promised U.S. voters in last year's election.

Following a morning appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," Ocasio-Cortez said Democrats "have an obligation to do the most we can for working people, civil right, and the planet with the power people have entrusted us, and stressed during her television appearance that her side of the aisle should bend no further to the demands of a minority Republican Party that has a demonstrated history of acting in bad faith while making clear that defeating progress on key issues like infrastructure, healthcare, climate action, and pro-democracy reforms is its top priority.

"I do think that we need to talk about the elephant in the room, which is Senate Democrats blocking crucial items in a Democratic agenda for reasons that I don't think hold a lot of water."

Asked if she would possibly vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal unveiled last week by a small group of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate—one that features just $580 billion in new spending, compared to the Biden administration's original $2.3 trillion package, and includes no new taxes—Ocasio-Cortez said, "I doubt it, frankly" as she highlighted the specific lack of climate action contained in the deal.

"I think one of the things that's really important to communicate is this isn't just $1.7 trillion," the congresswoman said. "This is about an overall investment spread out anywhere between eight and 10 years, which is a very, very low amount of money. It's not going to create the millions of union jobs that we need in this country, particularly to recover from the pandemic. And it's not going to get us closer to meeting our climate goals, which are crucially important at this point in time."

While CNN host Dana Bash pushed Ocasio-Cortez on whether she would vote for a compromised, watered-down infrastructure plan if progressives are told that's the best it's going to get, the New York Democrat responded, "Well, I think the thing is, is that this isn't the best that we can get." And then she turned her focus to Democrats like Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Jon Tester of Montana, and others in the caucus—who have refused to embrace a more bold and visionary set of policies in the name of compromise with the GOP.

"I do think that we need to talk about the elephant in the room," said Ocasio-Cortez, "which is Senate Democrats blocking crucial items in a Democratic agenda for reasons that I don't think hold a lot of water."

"And for folks saying, 'OK, where are you going to get these 50 votes?'" she continued, "I think we really need to start asking some of these Democratic senators where they plan on getting 60 votes. These 10 Republican senators that there is a theory that we're going to get support for that out there, I think, is a claim that doesn't really hold water, particularly when we can't even get 10 senators to support a January 6 commission."

Ocasio-Cortez went on to say that the U.S. is now at a "fork in the road" and asked the question: "Do we settle for much less and an infrastructure package that has been largely designed by Republicans in order to get 60 votes, or can we really transform this country, create millions of union jobs, revamp our power grid, get people's bridges fixed and schools rebuilt with 51 or 50 Democratic votes?"

"The argument that we need to make here," she said, "is that it's worth going it alone if we can do more for working people in this country. You know, with 50 votes, we have the potential to lower the age of Medicare eligibility, so that more people can be covered and guaranteed to their right to health care, as opposed to 60 votes, where we do very, very little, and the scope of that is defined by a Republican minority that has not been elected to lead."

"For folks saying, 'OK, where are you going to get these 50 votes, I think we really need to start asking some of these Democratic senators where they plan on getting 60 votes."

After the bipartisan group put out a rough framework of its infrastructure deal last week, progressive lawmakers like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) made clear they would oppose any bill that short-changed the climate crisis.

Asked Sunday about Manchin's stance in particular—including his opposition not only to filibuster reform and a bold infrastructure package but also his vow to block The For the People Act, the Democrat's key voting rights legislation—Ocasio-Cortez did not shy away from recent comments she made insinuating that the West Virginia Democrat's positions are due, at least in part, to his subservience to corporate interests and deep-pocketed funders like billionaire Charles Koch and his network of dark money groups.

"I believe that we have the influence of big money that impacts not just one party, but both parties in the United States Congress," she said. "And I do believe that that old way of politics has absolutely an influence in Joe Manchin's thinking and the way he navigates the body."

There's a reason, she said, that "the Koch brothers and associated organizations from the Koch brothers are really doing victory laps about Joe Manchin's opposition to the filibuster."

Watch the full interview:

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Off the Top of My Head

The Infrastructure Bill and How to Pay for It Are Two Separate and Distinct Issues That Have Nothing to Do With Each Other

by John Lawrence

We know that the US government does not have to tax in order to spend since the US has a sovereign currency (See Modern Monetary Theory), and the Federal Reserve can just place the requisite amount of money for the infrastructure bill in the Treasury's account at the Fed. The problem is that, according to US law, if there is not enough money in the Treasury's account to pay for stuff, it must issue and sell Treasury bonds to make up the difference. These bonds then contribute to the deficit which is added to the national debt. We also know that the national debt never needs to be paid off, but Treasury bonds do need to be paid when the holder asks for the money when they come due. In addition interest does need to be paid on them. If the Fed keeps the interest rate for Treasuries at zero, this is not a problem. So why would anyone purchase Treasury bonds if they get zero interest? Well, countries that peg their currencies to the dollar (like China) need dollars in order to conduct business. Besides if someone comes to them with a basket full of renminbi and asks for US dollars, they have to be able to pay them the dollars and accept the renminbi. So there is always a market for US Treasury bonds. Even if there wasn't, the Fed would end up purchasing them and taking them onto its balance sheet where they would essentially disappear into a black hole never having to be paid back.

So what is the problem with just having the Fed create the money and place it in the Treasury's account without "paying for" it with taxes. No problem really. Joe Biden just wants to kill two birds with one stone. The first bird is the money for infrastructure. The second bird is doing something about the widening economic inequality by taxing the rich. There is no actual need to issue Treasuries in the first place except that US law requires it. The money could just go directly on the Fed's balance sheet without the intermediate step of selling Treasuries. There are however some good reasons for not taking too much advantage of this possibility. One is inflation. As more money floods into the economy through deficit spending, inflation could heat up whether or not the money comes from taxes. The other issue is that as other countries accumulate more and more Treasury bonds with or without interest being paid on them, they start to have the ability to use those dollars to purchase US assets. It's not inconceivable that a particular country - let's say China - couldn't accumulate enough Treasuries to buy up cities.

New York City has the most valuable real estate in the U.S. at $2.8 trillion — slightly more than the entire GDP of the United Kingdom for 2019. In fact, this is greater than the GDP of all but just five countries — India, Germany, Japan, China and the United States. The value of New York is comparable to the combined market value of tech giants Apple and Microsoft. China owns about $1.1 trillion in US Treasuries. If they demanded it all tomorrow, the Fed would have no problem paying them, but then they could buy up more than a third of New York City or almost all of San Francisco valued at $1.3 trillion. This could eventually become a problem so it would be better not to even make up the difference by issuing Treasuries in the first place. The alternative is for the Fed just to create the money and place it in the Treasury's account as authorized by Congress without the Treasury having to sell bonds to make up the difference between the amount of taxes and the amount of the authorization.

Then the issue becomes inflation. There is already wage inflation as employers are forced to pay more for employees, for a number of reasons, thus raising the price of products and services. This is "good" inflation since wage earners have not seen an increase in their income for 40 years. There is also "bad" inflation in that the increasing wealth of the upper 10% , and especially the upper 1%, is causing asset inflation in terms of the increasing cost of real estate and rent. Asset inflation is also happening in the stock market although it's hard to see how this is a bad thing except for the fact that about 50% of the people don't own stocks so that gap between rich and poor is only increasing. The third form of inflation occurs when there is too much money chasing too few goods and services. This could be caused by too much deficit spending. The fourth kind is the "super bad" inflation known as hyperinflation. This is the kind of inflation that affected the Weimar republic in Germany before the Second World War and also affects poor countries. It also recently affected Greece because Greece gave up its sovereign currency when it adopted the euro. Hyperinflation occurs when a country needs to borrow money from the capital markets subject to increasing interest rates. As their economy declines interest rates go up until finally they are paying more in interest than their economies can keep up with. The US can never be put in this position since it never has to go to the capital markets to borrow money. The Federal Reserve can just issue whatever money is needed and can set its own interest rate since the US dollar is a sovereign currency.

So while there are limits to the amount of prudent deficit spending, one of them is not paying for it through taxes. The US Federal government never has to tax in order to spend. It can pass a bill to build infrastructure with the only limitation being the physical and material resources that are available to do it.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2019/03/01/stephanie-kelton-explains-modern-monetary-theory.html

 

Off the Top of My Head

How to Pay For Infrastructure

by John Lawrence

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) points out that neither social programs nor tax cuts need to be "paid for." A government such as the US with a sovereign currency can issue the money without having to tax first. Taxes are only necessary to control inflation. The biggest amount of inflation in the economy right now is the inflation of billionaires' wealth assets because their increases in wealth are not taxable. The IRS only taxes workers' incomes, not billionaires increasing asset wealth. That's why economic inequality is growing by leaps and bounds, and we need a wealth tax. But as for infrastructure, the Fed can just create the money in the Treasury's account at the Fed with a few keystrokes on a computer like it did when it bailed out Wall Street in 2008.

In The Deficit Myth, Stephanie Kelton writes (circa 2015):

"No one [on Capitol Hill] questioned the significant need for infrastructure investment. A trillion dollars, while ambitious, would have only taken a bite out of the problem. No one blanched at the price tag, but there was considerable debate about whether (and how) to pay for it.

"Before I tell you about that debate, it's important to understand what those words mean to lawmakers and their staffers on Capitol Hill. In truth, there is only one way to pay for anything. All federal spending is carried out in exactly the same way - that is, the Federal Reserve credits the appropriate bank account(s). But in Washington speak, you "pay for" your spending by showing that you can "find" enough money to cover the cost of whatever it is you're proposing to spend. It's all a game, really, and it's rooted in the flawed mental model [that the government needs to tax and/or borrow before it spends] that holds back so much of our potential. To avoid adding to the deficit, lawmakers look for ways to cover the costs of their proposed spending without borrowing. That means they usually go looking for new tax revenue."

As Kelton points out, the US doesn't need to tax before it can spend. Biden's wanting to pay for infrastructure by taxing the rich is not necessary to pay for infrastructure per se, but it is necessary to get unbounded economic inequality under control.

Kelton continues:

"So back to the debate over the trillion-dollar infrastructure ill. The conversation began with staffers being asked whether we thought a so-called pay-for should be attached to the bill. It was my first week on the job, so I was relieved when another staffer spoke up first. "No," this person began, "I think we should just do it as a clean bill." A clean bill meant writing a spending bill that didn't include any language abut how to pay for it. Another staffer agreed, and soon I echoed their sentiments. Our country desperately needed to make these investments. There was clearly enough fiscal space to do it, and infrastructure is one of the things that has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support. Since the GOP was in control of the Senate, we reasoned, the bill would need at least some support from Republicans to pass. [Ha. Ha] Proposing a tax increase would guarantee defeat. Not everyone agreed. Another staffer objected that the press wouldn't take the legislation seriously unless it specified exactly how it would be paid for. In the end, the bill included a proposal to raise revenue by closing a variety of tax loopholes that overwhelmingly benefit the rich. Needless to say, the legislation did not pass. Meanwhile, the latest ASCE [American Society of Civil Engineers] report card shows how deferred maintenance is catching up with us, as the cost of our needed improvements has climbed to a whopping $4.59 trillion."

Is it deja vu all over again? Is it gridlock or spinning our wheels as infinitum? Is it Republicans thinking it is more important to defeat Obama's and now Biden's agendas than it is to prevent bridge collapses?

Kelton's point is that the US doesn't really need to "pay for" anything by taxing first or finding the money first. "In 2017, a 1215-page bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, sailed through the Senate with a vote of 89-9. The White House had requested $700 billion, but the Senate had authorized $737 billion, kicking in another $37 billion without hint of concern about where to "find" the money. They simply voted in an overwhelmingly bipartisan way to increase the Pentagon's discretionary budget."

Yet the Pentagon budget has not protected us from international ransomware attacks nor domestic terrorists. May I submit that the money is misspent and misdirected? Instead of going where the money is really needed it goes to the vested interests in the military-industrial complex who continue to justify war in order to line their own pockets.

Kelton continues: "That might seem like a double standard. As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it, "We write unlimited blank checks for war. We just wrote a $2 trillion check for the GOP tax cut, and nobody asked those folks, 'How are they going to pay for it?' She's right. Somehow, there's always money for war and tax cuts. For just about everything else, however, lawmakers are expected to show that they can "pay for" their spending."

As MMT has shown, the US government does not need to tax or borrow in order to spend. Taxation is necessary to control inflation, to extract money from the economy if there is too much of it out there chasing too few goods or services. Right now there is too much money out there in the hands of billionaires that should be extracted in order to prevent runaway financial inequality. But it is not necessary to tax before money can be spent on infrastructure or anything else. There are limits, and the limits are the material and human resources that are available to soak up that money by providing constructive economic activity like building infrastructure. Hyperinflation like what happened in the Weimar Republic or even Greece cannot happen in the US because the US never has to go to the capital markets to borrow money at prevailng interest rates. The US central bank, the Fed, issues whatever money is necessary to pay US bills and that includes any money appropriated by Congress whether for war, tax cuts or building infrastructure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9pAPIUYXxQ

 

Off the Top of My Head

Our Grandchildren Won't Have to Pay Back Money Spent on a Green New Deal, But They Will Pay With Their Lives if We Don't Do It Now

by John Lawrence

It's a myth that a sovereign country with a sovereign currency and a floating exchange rate has to borrow money to pay its bills. The US can just issue the money. It doesn't need to tax in order to spend. So why isn't the US as well as all the other nations with sovereign currencies such as Japan, Britain and China going all out to supply as much money as necessary to prevent global warming from "going viral" as they say? The only restraint is the question of whether the human and physical resources to do the work are available. In a society such as China, if the government wanted its people to stop whatever they were doing and become part of the work force to forestall global warming, it would be done. In the US it would not be so easy to commandeer workers to leave their jobs as servers, bartenders, chefs, dealers, workers at Disneyland, workers on cruise ships etc to leave their jobs and go to work in Joe Biden's global warming and infrastructure rebuilding work force. The businesses large and small would have a conniption fit like they're having now getting these workers back to work because their pandemic unemployment has not run out.

The only time when workers went all out to solve a major global problem was World War II. Rosie the Riveter and all the others joined the work force to defeat Hitler. They even were willing to defer consumption so that the financial and material resources that were necessary weren't spent in the consumption market thus letting the necessary physical resources be available for the war effort. Today we have a nation consisting of a bunch of spoiled brats who wouldn't do anything the government asked them to do crying that their "freedom" to do whatever they wanted was paramount. We live in a society composed of consumers who demand to be endlessly entertained by movies, TV, theme parks cruise ships, athletes, restaurants, social media and Las Vegas. Half the country works as servers, baristas, bartenders, housekeepers, actors, athletes, dealers, entertainers and such like jobs to entertain the top half. Some of these are highly paid; most are not. Such was the nature of the "full employment" society before COVID hit. It was a full employment society consisting of trivial jobs at minimum wages for the most part. Biden will have to persuade workers to leave their jobs in the "entertainment" industry in order to create actual results in the real world such as building green infrastructure. The entertainment industry will not be pleased nor will the upper half of society which demands to be continually entertained. 70% of US GNP is consumption and a lot of what people want to consume is encompassed by sports bars, travel and tourism, the leisure and hospitality industry in general. The spoiled brats think its their birthright to have such services available, and the last thing they want to do is to roll up their sleeves and join a union.

Together with the presumed right to be entertained, we have a large percentage of the country that has been processed through the military and developed this consciousness that military prerogatives should prevail uber alles. These are the insurrectionists and Trump supporters that want civilian society to reinforce military values such as command and control. They want an autocrat for President. Freedom is the only value that counts for them. Democracy, equality, fraternity, social equity don't matter. They want to preserve the American way of life which, in addition to a right to be entertained wherever and whenever they have the resources to consume, includes also the right to exclude the prerogatives of minorities for social justice. Is it any wonder that the insurrectionists in January 6 contained a large number of current and former members of the military and police forces? Their attitude is that whatever is good for the military is good for American society in general. The military has become a way of life and consciousness for them. They think that, because they served, they are entitled. Spoiled brat militarists I'll call them. The endless wars, bloated military-industrial complex budget and the military bases in practically every country in the world provides the economic and job base of the nation unfortunately.

Biden thinks he is out to prove that American democracy can compete in the civilian world on an equally competent basis with other countries. That will be a hard nut to crack. The US is dooming itself in two ways: the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. Let's take the Second Amendment first. In no other major country in the world do citizens have a right to unlimited uncontrolled gun ownership including military style weapons. This is producing news cycles when, hardly is one mass murder out of the way, than another one comes along to dominate the news. The news channels can hardly keep up with them all. No other society including The US' major competitors would tolerate such a situation. The Second Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and in and of itself is enough to doom the US to second class status. In addition to that the First Amendment has become toxic and perverted, and the major reason for that is social media. Social media makes possible the vicious spread of toxic lies and untruths. Witness Trump's use of Twitter to corral and consolidate his followers around the thesis that he, not Biden, actually won the election. Social media allowed him to rally his supporters based on angry themes and memes connected with white supremacy and a return to the good old days when white, Protestant Anglo Saxons ran the country, the good old days when Negroes knew their place in society, the good old days when you didn't have multiple nationalities and religious groups asserting their rights under the Constitution to live freely and enjoy all the perquisites of American society, the good old days when gas guzzlers were the only vehicles in town and no one need be concerned about anything except maximizing their profits and living the American Dream, where the American Dream consisted of having more stuff than your parents did.

Joe Biden's first 100 days have been remarkable in that he has been able to get as much accomplished with slim majorities in both Houses of Congress. Is this enough though to move America forward at the pace that China, for instance, is moving? China is a more or less unified society. 99% or more of Chinese citizens are on the same page as the Chinese government. China is winning friends and allies all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative while the US withers away its resources on endless wars and confuses its allies with the possibility of radical swings with each change of administrations. China's military budget of $183.5 billion is dwarfed by a US military budget 5 times that amount. The US is a divided country where one of the major parties base their appeal on lies and deception, and its supporters are only too willing to eat it up because it's entertaining and represents military values of command and control. Good government, as Biden has illustrated, is somewhat boring because it is based on solving real human problems. Let's hope that Biden's version of reality based on truth and problem solving wins out over the lies based reality of the other side, and the US, even if it doesn't remain the world's dominant power, can become a constructive member of the world community helping to solve problems at home and abroad.

Off the Top of My Head

Joe Biden's Trillion Dollar Budget Plan

by John Lawrence

Don't worry about how to pay for it. Any nation with a sovereign currency (let alone the world's reserve currency) and a floating exchange rate can never go bankrupt. The Federal Reserve can issue the money. In fact in the real world this is exactly how it works for any budgetary legislation passed by Congress and signed by the President. Let's say, for example, Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan is signed by him into law. The US Treasury has an account at the Federal Reserve bank. Let's say there is only a trillion dollars in that account. What happens next is that the Fed just augments the Treasury's account by a trillion dollars by means of a few keystrokes on a computer. Bingo the government now has all the money it needs to spend on infrastructure. It didn't have to receive tax money in advance of the money it needed to spend. At the same time the Treasury Department creates a trillion dollars worth of Treasury bonds and sells them to the primary dealers who are required by law to buy them. These are mainly big Wall Street banks. These banks sell the bonds in the secondary market. If they can't find enough buyers, the Fed "adds liquidity to the market" by taking the Treasuries onto its balance sheet in return for marking up the Wall Street banks accounts at the Fed with the appropriate amounts of cash. Now everybody is happy. The US government has the money it needs in its Treasury's account at the Fed. The Wall Street banks have plenty of liquidity in their reserve accounts at the Fed, and the amazing thing is that it didn't require any money from additional taxes.

Another amazing thing is that most politicians are totally ignorant about how government financing actually works. The Republican Governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine gets on TV and opines about the fact that the US is going into too much debt and how will our grandchildren ever pay it off. "Here in Ohio," I'm paraphrasing," we have to pay our bills and pay down our debts. Every household has to be fiscally responsible and pay their debts." Well households and states are in a different category from the Federal government. They actually do have to pay their debts. So what he is claiming is a half truth. States and households cannot issue a sovereign currency whereas the Federal government can. States and households use the Federal government's currency. The big lie, however, is that the US government has to pay off its debts. It never does, and no entity can force it to do so. The other constraint that Larry Summers and others worry about is inflation or currency devaluation. Inflation could be a problem, and that problem, should it arise, can be dealt with by sucking money out of the economy by means of taxes. Biden's plan to tax the rich will suck some of their superfluous wealth out of the economy thus forestalling inflation while tending to reduce the runaway economic inequality that is now threatening democracy in the US.

The Federal government is not like a household or a state. Households and states actually do have to pay back the money they borrow plus interest. That's why it's so important that the various COVID rescue plans provide the states and municipalities with money. Otherwise, they could become financially insolvent and go bankrupt like Orange County in California did a few years ago. Birmingham, AL also got itself in hot water and went bankrupt. Countries in the Euro zone have the same problem as states in the US. They gave up their sovereign currencies when they joined the EU. So now countries like Greece and Italy have to beg the European Central Bank for relief, relief they could have provided for themselves if they had retained their sovereign currencies like Britain did. Britain will not have any problem with financial shortages because, like the US, its government can issue whatever currency is deemed necessary to weather any storm.

So in addition to the Big Lie that Trump won the election, politicians of both parties are perpetrating another Big Lie that the US actually has to borrow the money to pay for Biden's trillion dollar infrastructure and safety net programs. Some politicians, like Bernie Sanders and AOC, actually know the truth, and, evidently, they have convinced Joe Biden thereof as well although they won't actually come out and say it to the media: the US government can just issue money into the private economy. It doesn't need to borrow it or even tax for it in advance in order to spend. So the real policy of the Biden administration is not tax and spend. It's spend and maybe tax later, but target those taxes on the wealthiest among us. As opposed to the Republican philosophy of giving tax breaks to the wealthy and taking the social safety net away from the poor.

Off the Top of My Head

America to End Forever War in Afghanistan Thanks to Joe Biden

by John Lawrence, April 15, 2021

So far Biden is making all the right moves, and I'm sure he has more up his sleeve. He's playing 3 dimensional chess while the Republicans haven't even learned to play checkers yet. The military-industrial complex is crying, "Oh, no," because they justify the huge expenditures on them by the need for continuance of forever wars. They are aghast at the prospect that their trillion dollar annual budget will be inevitably reduced. It has become obvious that the biggest threat to the US is not international terrorism but domestic terrorism. The FBI and the National Guard will deal with that very nicely; they don't need the Pentagon. The FBI is doing a remarkable job cleaning up the terrorists who took part in the January 6 bungled coup attempt. Over 400 arrests and counting so far. The idiots self videoed their own arrest warrants.

The US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. As an added service they also train the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys and the Three Percenters. The military-industrial complex has done a lot to militarize the consciousnesses of young Americans, especially young non-college bound Americans. College graduates, especially in engineering, often end up, like I did, in the military-industrial complex working for companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman and General Dynamics. As a country we have been spending our money in all the wrong places, but the military-industrial complex wants to hang on to its prerogatives. When I was an employee of General Dynamics many years ago, they encouraged you to vote Republican. Otherwise their budgets might be cut and there might be a RIF (Reduction in Force). When the military-industrial complex is cut down to size, right sized as they say, the Republican party will lose its raison d'être, its justification, because that's all in reality that it stands for - large defense budgets and tax cuts for the wealthy.

If we really want to compete with China, then we should cut our defense budget down to the size of China's and spend our money in more constructive ways like China is doing like building infrastructure with its Belt and Road initiative. The only infrastructure the US has been doing in foreign countries has been the building of military bases of which there are approximately 800 in practically every country in the world. Meanwhile, China has one military base in a foreign country - in Djibouti! If the US wants to compete with China, it will take a page out of China's book and build infrastructure not military bases. China and the US need to cooperate on problems facing the whole earth like global warming. It's no consolation to win the competitive war while the home we all live in goes up in flames or drowns as the case may be.

Republicans want Biden to tell them how he's going to pay for all his ambitious social programs? Let's see. Let me count the ways. Taxes on the rich - that's a good one. Reduce the size of the military-industrial complex budget. Even better. Military contractors, among others, provide the campaign donations for the Republican party as long as the guys they are providing the financial jet fuel for are hardliners for a "strong" defense. Well now, maybe they should stand up for transferring the money to the FBI so they can deal with domestic terrorism instead of a useless military engaged in forever wars which are only killing civilians, destroying real estate and creating refugees. The world doesn't need an America which thinks it has the self-appointed job of being the world's policeman or moral arbiter. There is something in the Bible about taking the beam out of our own eye before telling our neighbor to take the mote out of theirs.

The US bloated military is wasting our money while militarizing the consciousness of our young men many of whom think their patriotism justifies invading and laying waste to our Capitol. Lawmakers were shocked, shocked to find out that the invaders of the People's House were present and former members of the military and police forces! Patriots! This is what happens when you define patriotism in military terms. The true patriots are the doctors and nurses, supermarket workers, delivery drivers, meat packers and others who put their lives at risk to help us get through this pandemic. True patriotism consists of reducing our military-industrial complex and defense budget to a reasonable size comparative with other countries and the real threats in the world while building up our infrastructure assets and social safety net programs as every other advanced country has already done. Joe Biden is on the road to doing this. May he prosper and prevail. And God bless our doctors and nurses.

Off the Top of My Head

If Republican Voters Want the Infrastructure Bill, Why Don't Republican Lawmakers?

by John Lawrence, April 12, 2021

Is this a failure of representative democracy? Polls show that a majority of Republican voters support Biden's infrastructure plan including the "care" components thereof. Yet Republican Senators are dead set against it, and the bill will probably not garner one Republican vote. It can still pass the Senate based on budget reconciliation which only requires a majority vote as long as all Democrats vote for it. Other Biden proposals involving voter's rights and gun control would require at least 10 Republican votes in the Senate under the current rules which involve the filibuster for non-budgetary items. In a representative democracy, a party should represent its voters. Otherwise, you don't really have a representative democracy which the US purports itself to be. So at present the US is in the position of being a government swerving back and forth from a representative democracy as long as Democrats control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency and a dictatorship of an elite when Republicans control either party or the Presidency.

The same applies to other issues like gun control, voter's rights and immigration which aren't subject to budgetary reconciliation and must garner 60 votes in the Senate. One of the minimum elements of democracy is majority rule. Because the filibuster is anti-majoritarian, this leaves the American democracy in the position of not really being a democracy at all in terms of non-budgetary items. So the US is on its way to being an authoritarian regime if Republicans control the Presidency and both Houses of Congress. All that would be necessary is a President like Trump with authoritarian tendencies. Then the US government becomes a government that's all about the use of power to get its way internationally and domestically, not about making the world a better place. Unfortunately, this leaves the US in the eyes of other nations as being untrustworthy since there is no consistent policy going forward. Other countries have more consistent leadership and hence are considered more trustworthy.

China, on the other hand, has very consistent policies going far into the future. China isn't perfect but most of the Chinese people and the leadership are on the same wavelength. US leadership likes to make a big deal of the plight of the Uyghurs, a Chinese minority that represents less than 1% of the Chinese population. So it's pretty remarkable that the only problem China seems to have with a minority that resents Chinese leadership  is with a minority that composes 0.31% of the population. The US should be so lucky yet the US harps on the Chinese over this situation of which little is actually know by the western world. China has pilled 800 million people out of poverty since 1990, one of the outstanding feats in human history, yet the US leadership continues to harp about the Uyghurs while giving no credit to China on poverty reduction. During the same time period the wages of US workers has stagnated. Kishore Mahbubani, author of the book, "Has China Won" writes: "In contrast to America's stagnation, China's culture, self-concept, and morale are being transformed at a rapid pace - mostly for the better." Rather than China's recent success being an assessment of the comparative values of Marxist-Leninist doctrines vis a vis American democracy, The Chinese Communist Party could more appropriately be called the Chinese Civilization Party since it reflects the 2000 year history of China more than it does Communist ideology.

So the response of the US to the progress of China in the last 30 years, instead of congratulating them on their remarkable accomplishments, is to be fearful that China is getting ahead of us. Well, duh, if you compare a society that is mostly all on the same wavelength and making remarkable steps forward with one that is divided and experienced a certain segment almost accomplishing a coup d'etat in a recent insurrection which threatened the lives of lawmakers in the seat of democracy itself. However, rather than viewing the world situation as a competition between the US and China, a more fruitful approach would be to cooperate with China with regard to climate change and pandemics, two things that affect the whole world and which require fast action, not a lackadaisical approach in which maybe we'll cooperate down the road, but in the meantime we have to compete. There's no time for that. The planet earth has almost passed an inflection point after which there will be no more time available.

Off the Top of My Head

The Caring Component of Biden's Infrastructure Plan

by John Lawrence, April 6, 2021

It's about time that the need for a caring infrastructure is addressed. Caring used to be supplied almost entirely by wives when wives didn't work outside the house. However, they did considerable work inside the house caring for children, sick relatives and elders in addition to taking care of their husband's needs. Now that most wives are required by economic necessity to work outside the home, there is a need for child care for young children not old enough to attend school. There is a need for pre-K education plus babysitting services. Older family members have special needs for care giving as well. Who is to provide for this if wives are in the work force? Rich people can pay tuition for pre-K and child care as well as hiring caregivers for older relatives or paying for senior living facilities. For poorer people, wives have to do all this themselves in addition to working to provide income for the family.

That's why Biden's initiatives provides for a caring infrastructure. However, it is insufficient. The Guardian reported:

Just as our physical infrastructure is crumbling and requires substantial reinvestment in a 21st-century economy, our care infrastructure is fundamentally broken. As the only industrialized country in the world without a national paid family and medical leave program, only 17% of our people have paid family leave through their employers. Hundreds of thousands face daunting waitlists for essential home care. Childcare is the highest household expense for families in much of the United States. And the median annual pay of childcare and home care workers is $25,510 and $17,200, respectively, leading to high turnover and reliance on public assistance.

In the past most elderly people on Medicaid that needed care giving were forced into institutional care like nursing homes. There was no comparable funding level that provided care givers for people to stay in their own homes. Biden's care infrastructure corrects this anomaly by providing money for care givers to provide care outside of nursing homes and other institutions. However, the limitation is that people who qualify for either nursing homes or home care must be on Medicaid. Basically, this means that they have no assets. They could stay in their own home only if they don't own it. If they owned it, that would be considered an asset that would disqualify them from being on Medicaid. So older people on Medicare, but not Medicaid would not qualify under Biden's "care infrastructure" initiative. People with assets like home ownership usually want to pass those assets on to their children. It represents the intergenerational transfer of wealth. That's how white people have built wealth over the generations whereas black people, who were by and large prevented from owning their own homes after WW II, are by and large renters.

Elderly renters are mainly poor people who live off of social security which hardly provides for a decent living much less the intergenerational transfer of assets once the person dies. Biden's pre-election agenda called for an uping of social security payments so that people could have a decent existence just based on social security alone. It also called for an increased amount of social security for people who had been on social security for 20 years, in other words, the really old. The Boston Globe reported:

A critical part of Biden’s campaign plan was not only raising funds for Social Security but also expanding the benefits to reduce poverty among elderly Americans. It would, for example, ensure that benefits for workers who were in the labor force for 30 years or more would be at least 125 percent of the federal poverty line. The oldest beneficiaries would also receive a bump to offset dwindling retirement savings, and widows and widowers would receive a 20 percent increase so that their Social Security benefits don’t get cut in half when their partner dies.

The reason that Biden didn't include this in his "caring infrastructure" initiative is that the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax would (in the minds of politicians) have to be raised to "pay for" it, and Biden has promised not raising taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 annually. Right now, payroll taxes that go toward funding Social Security are capped at the first $142,800 of a taxpayer’s income. First of all the social security trust fund is basically a hoax. Money is available for social security in the same way that money is available for COVID relief, infrastructure and even tax cuts. As Modern Monetary Theory points out, the Federal Reserve creates the money without the need of taxes to pay for it. The same is true for social security. But Biden did not want to complicate the discussion around his infrastructure plan so he left his plan for social security increases behind presumably to be brought up at a later date.

There is much talk about enlisting the help of Republicans for Biden's infrastructure initiative, but it is a not a secret that Republicans will help with nothing Democrats want to do. The working across the aisle thing is a loosely held fiction. Democrats know that they must pass all Biden's bills just with the slim Democratic majority. That gives Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the most conservative Democrat, enormous power. You can bet your booty that West Virginia will get more than their fair share of roads and bridges. He wants to not raise the corporate tax rate to 28% as Biden as suggested. Big deal! Again tax money is not required for government spending. The Federal Reserve just issues the money, and then the Treasury Department sells the bonds. What bonds can't be sold to individuals or foreign governments end up on the Fed's balance sheet. The deficit between money spent and tax money collected is irrelevant. Taxes are only relevant to reduce income inequality as long as they are targeted on the rich. The Fed controls the interest rate, and as long as it keeps it at about zero, the Federal government can keep the amount of money it spends on interest under control.

Off the Top of My Head

The Stock Market is Too Big to Fail

by John Lawrence, April 2, 2021

Just as the big Wall Street banks are too big to fail, so now is the stock market. The stock market will never take another radical dive downward because the Federal Reserve won't let it. The way the economy is shaping up Treasury bonds, which hardly pay any interest, are just a safe place to store your money and also for foreign nations which need the world's reserve currency (the US dollar) to have a savings account because they need dollars to conduct business. There is no worry that the US will have to pay off the trillion dollars in Treasuries that China owns because they need those dollars to do business with the US and other nations. If they did want to dump all their Treasuries for some reason the Fed could just create the money to pay them and effectively take the Treasuries on its own balance sheet.

So the stock market is the only game in town for those who want to actually "invest" their money. There is so much 401(k) money in the stock market that that is reason enough to never let it fail. Instead it will continue on its merry way upward while the Fed keeps interest rates at approximately zero so that not much in the way of interest will have to be paid on US debt. There is no reason to fear that Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan will bankrupt the US. Since the US dollar is a sovereign currency, the Fed can print as much money as it wants. If international investors don't want to buy this debt, it ends up on the Fed's balance sheet which is an effective black hole from which it never has to emerge.

Then why is there all this kibuki theater about "how to pay for it," the $2 trillion infrastructure plan I mean. It's just that most Americans including most Congressmen are under the illusion that a country with a sovereign currency like the US faces any constraints in paying for anything. Well, there is one constraint - inflation. This is probably of little concern as long as the money is targeted at the lower middle class an the poor which haven't seen wages rise in 40 years. The real inflation in the economy is the asset inflation that the rich are mostly responsible for. That includes the stock market and real estate. Inflation in the stock market will be carefully controlled by the Fed. We've seen that the stock market moved up even during the pandemic. The real problem is inflation in the real estate market which has made housing unaffordable for many. It continues to get worse as the extra dollars the wealthy have to invest are driving up prices. That's why it makes sense to tax the rich ostensibly to pay for the infrastructure bill. The real reason, however, is that inequality is getting out of hand in the American and the world economy. Taxing the rich is the only effective means to reduce inequality to a reasonable level. It will also help to bring inflation in the real estate market under control.

The real problem that Biden's infrastructure bill will have to deal with is changing the nature of the US economy. When the economy was in full employment under Trump, there were still 4% unemployed. 5% unemployment is considered "full employment," but that still leaves about 15 million people out of work. Biden's infrastructure plan will put those 5% back to work. It had been considered by conservative neoliberal economists that 5% unemployment was necessary to ward off inflation, but that theory has been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory. While inflation will still be a concern with all of Biden's stimulus spending, the main concern is restructuring the US economy from an entertainment economy to a constructive labor economy. Trump's economy was arguably a full employment economy (except for the 4% unemployed), but it was an economy the jobs of which were mainly in the entertainment and military industries. In other words, in my opinion, it was an economy based on false unbeneficial values. An economy based on labor participation rebuilding American infrastructure will be an economy based on necessary and fundamentally beneficial values. This might mean that some of those presently employed in frivolous industries might be incentivized to change jobs. Reducing the entertainment and military sectors while increasing those employed rebuilding infrastructure would be, in my opinion, be a good thing.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Biden's Infrastructure Initiative: Don't Worry About How To Pay For It

by John Lawrence, March 30, 2021

Even Republicans agree that there is a need to upgrade the infrastructure of the US. But they don't want to raise taxes to pay for it. Good news! You don't need to pay for it with tax money. The US dollar is a sovereign currency. That means that the central bank, in this case the Fed, can just create the money. In fact this is how it's always been done. The deficit is just an accounting regime. Money created by the Fed need never be paid back. It just goes on the Fed's balance sheet. This is a fact known and agreed to by most economists but many politicians and the American public are totally ignorant of this basic fact about how the economy works. Modern Monetary Theory has attempted to explain it in books like "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton. So why does Biden also propose tax increases on the rich to pay for it? These are really two separate issues. Taxes need to be raised on the rich to try to bring into balance the skyrocketing financial inequality that has been occurring, not to pay for the infrastructure bill. Why do politicians including President Biden continue to perpetuate the myth that appropriations bills need to be "paid for." Why don't they just come out and say the truth - that a nation with a sovereign currency can never run out of money?

When just a few people own most of the wealth, we're back in a neo-feudal society where the rich control the political process, and the rest of the people are merely peons who don't really have a stake in the society at all. The Republican attempts to change the voting laws to suppress the minority vote is a way to cement that fact in American society. That's why it's so important to liberalize the voting laws so that every American citizen is encouraged to vote, not discouraged from it. So the infrastructure initiative is really two or even three pronged: rebuild infrastructure such as roads, bridges, ports, rail lines, airports and broadband thus putting millions back to work in good paying jobs. Secondly, to build back better in the sense that, insofar as possible, address the problem of global warming, and, thirdly, to make a first step in addressing economic inequality. All these things are important.

The only thing to watch out for while spending all this money is inflation, and some economists like Larry Summers are already sounding alarm bells over that. By taxing the rich and corporations money will be sucked out of the economy thus tending to reduce inflation. If sucking money out of the economy reduces inflation, then the sucking must be addressed to those areas where excess money really exists: namely, the rich and corporations who have been getting away with murder for years under both Republic and Democratic administrations. Forbes reported that "The 3 Richest Americans Hold More Wealth Than Bottom 50% Of The Country." Forbes ought to know. Perhaps with Biden's plan to tax the rich, it'll take 10 of the richest to equal the bottom 50%'s share. As for inflation, so much money in so few hands has already produced asset inflation in the form of rising housing and rent prices making it problematic for the young and the poor to support themselves especially at a minimum wage that hasn't increased in 50 years. What Summers doesn't understand is that the inflation that has occurred has been in the money that has been made by the rich which is actually wealth inflation, not in the form of wage inflation of the poor and middle class. Therefore, in turning this process around Biden's infrastructure bill is actually pointing the American economy in the correct direction.

Off the Top of My Head

Inflation Probably Not a Problem If Biden Programs Are Carefully Targeted

by John Lawrence, March 14, 2021

Critics have said, "Oh, My your children and grandchildren are going to have to pay back all these trillions of dollars that have been spent by both the Trump and Biden administrations on COVID relief and to get the economy going again." Not True! Modern Monetary Theory has shown that the Federal Reserve can just create the money and the Treasury Department can just spend it without ever worrying about paying it back. Finance is not the problem. The problem is potentially inflation which economist Larry Summers has sounded the alarm about. Most of Biden's relief bill is targeted at the poor which means that that money will be sucked up to pay past due rent and mortgage bills as well as providing a decent lifestyle which should not be inflationary except if you believe the nonsense of the neoliberal Phillips curve which supposedly proves that a certain segment of the population has to live in poverty and penury in order to fight inflation. That has also been debunked by Modern Monetary Theory although most politicians are still on the wavelength of neoliberal economics which has been shown to be fallacious in this and many other regards.

State and local governments likewise will just suck up the money in the relief bill to bail themselves out of debt and provide an adequate level of social services. This also is not inflationary because the money will not be just sloshing around in the economy with nowhere to go. What is inflationary is tax breaks for the rich, but this money can be sucked out of the economy by taxing the rich. What Larry Summers fails to take into account is that the US and much of the rest of the world has a two tier economy. The rich and upper middle class are doing very well, thank you, while the lower middle class and the poor are suffering. The COVID pandemic illustrated this in even starker terms with the so-called K-shaped recovery. The upper classes made money; the lower classes are on the verge of losing whatever financial gains they had made during the Trump economy. Inflation is caused by too much money sloshing around in the economic system. Most of that inflationary money is held by the rich in assets like stocks and real estate. Money injected into the economic system targeted at the poor is immediately sucked out of the system to pay debts and to provide basic necessities. There is enough physical and material capacity in the system to provide basic necessities so this money is not inflationary.

Inflation is caused when there is too much money chasing too few goods. As long as there is the material and human capacity, money directed at those sectors of the economy will not cause inflation. The real problem in future Biden administration bills involving infrastructure and the Green New Deal is that the materials to build out infrastructure, namely, steel, cement and plastics, require fossil fuels to manufacture and the manufacturing processes themselves are inherently carbon dioxide emitting. This comes about from basic chemistry which involves the carbon and oxygen atoms every step of the way. Most basic materials are composed of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, and the chemistry involved in manufacturing releases large amounts of carbon dioxide. The manufacture of solar panels requires mining high quality quartz and combining it with coal. It's hard to get away from fossil fuels as the Michael Moore movie, Planet of the Humans, pointed out. For this reason spending large amounts of money on infrastructure involving cement, steel, plastics and other materials could actually produce more global warming rather than preventing it. The finances are available; the proper materials are not. The manufacture of wind turbines and solar panels require the release of large amounts of greenhouse gasses.

Because of these fundamental limitations regarding materials, it doesn't make sense to throw trillions of dollars at either infrastructure or global warming mitigation. That would be either inflationary or misguided in the sense that large projects in these areas could produce even more global warming. As Bill Gates has pointed out, money should be invested in promising startups and research that can solve these basic problems and into digital nuclear which is the only renewable energy source that won't result in a lot of greenhouse gasses being created in the first place. Advanced nuclear is the most promising source of clean energy. Gates has invested in a company TerraPower which does research on advanced nuclear reactors. Their mission statement reads:

"TerraPower was founded by Bill Gates and a group of like-minded visionaries that decided the private sector needed to take action in developing advanced nuclear energy to meet growing electricity needs, mitigate climate change and lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are now possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are innovating in nuclear to improve the lives of people everywhere and to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today."

So when the Biden administration gets around to their initiatives on infrastructure and global warming, they need to heed Bill Gates' warning about traditional manufacturing methods involving cement, steel and plastic. Energy from solar and wind are inadequate to solve the problem for many reasons. Large scale demonstration and build out of nuclear energy reactors should be the order of the day, They are the only clean energy source that has the potential for diminishing the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

Off the Top of My Head

Green New Deal: We Have a Problem and Its Not Money

by John Lawrence, March 5, 2021

Modern Monetary Theory has shown that a nation with a sovereign currency such as the US dollar need never fear running out of money, and that Federal spending does not depend on tax receipts. However, it does depend on whether the human and material resources are available. Just pouring money on the problem will cause inflation unless it is soaked up by available resources. The problem is that the material resources are not available. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, the problem cannot be solved by the renewable energy resources that are now available, namely wind and solar. Building wind turbines requires immense amounts of concrete for the bases and steel for the turbines, and the manufacture of those resources emits tons of greenhouse gasses. Manufacturing solar panels requires mining of quartz sand and coating with ethylene-vinyl acetate. This manufacturing requires energy—most often derived from the burning of fossil fuels, as the Michael Moore film, Planet of the Humans, has pointed out.

Solving the problem of global warming can't be undertaken by using the available resources of concrete, steel and plastic the manufacture of which emits huge amounts of greenhouse gasses. So even though the financial resources are available, the material resources are not. The human resources, however, are arguably available. Wray and Tcherneva  write in a paper How to Pay for the Green New Deal:

"In the neoliberal era, we chronically operate below full employment. That is obvious in Euroland, which is probably operating 25 percent or more below full capacity. Even the US today has substantial excess capacity, in spite of claims that we have achieved full employment. Over the past quarter century, we have had to readjust our estimate for the natural rate of unemployment—the rate below which inflation is supposed to pick up—in every recovery, because inflation never arrives as unemployment falls. Most recently, in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, economists claimed that the natural rate of unemployment had increased to over 5 percent. Yet, the unemployment rate kept coming down, while inflation never materialized. We will not know precisely where the inflation barrier is until we ramp up aggregate demand."

So given that human resources are available, it is clear that the material resources are not. Bill Gates recommends spending the money on research to develop new non-greenhouse emitting substitutes for steel, concrete and plastic. That would require high level scientists who might be less available than low level workers. Assuming a full court press requiring large numbers of university and scientific human power, this project is probably feasible although it would not require trillions of dollars of financial resources at least in the initial phases. Later development would require more and finally building out renewable energy resources using these newly developed materials would require more money. So the problem is not that finance is not available. The problem is dispensing it in appropriate amounts over time. There is one promising energy source that would not require such a huge investment in research and development because that has largely been done and that is what we might call digital nuclear. Bill Gates has invested in a company called TerraPower which claims:

"With the growing demand for electricity, TerraPower entered the nuclear energy arena to lift billions out of poverty. Advanced reactors and other isotopic applications are possible with technology and enhanced computing capabilities that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. At TerraPower, we are ready to build the clean energy of tomorrow – today. TerraPower leads in advanced nuclear energy because it has spent the last decade investing in innovative technologies to solve some of the biggest challenges facing humanity."

Two things are clear. Much work has already been done on an advanced nuclear reactor that solves the problems of dangerous explosions such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima and also the problem of spent fuel radioactive storage. Using high level computing power and advanced digital technology which wasn't available to previous generations of nuclear reactors, Gates maintains that a safe design for nuclear power generation is close to being available. Considering the problems with solar, wind and biofuels which have a longer time horizon before being solved, it seems that nuclear is further along in its development phase and also has greater potential for being a carbon free source of energy. “Nuclear has actually been safer than any other source of [power] generation,” Gates told [CNBC's Andrew] Sorkin. “You know, coal plants, coal particulate, natural gas pipelines blowing up. The deaths per unit of power on these other approaches are — are far higher,” Gates said, a fact he also references in his new book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.”

In their section, “COSTING” THE GREEN NEW DEAL," Wray and Tcherneva write:

"Milton Ezrati, writing for Forbes, offers his own estimates for the various components of the GND, citing different sources (Ezrati 2019). Here we only use his estimates for “greening” projects. Based on estimates by physicist Christopher Clark, the cost of expanding renewable energy to 100 percent would be $2 trillion over 10 years. The smart power grid would cost an additional $400 billion over 10 years (estimate from the Electric Power Institute).13 Upgrading and retrofitting buildings would cost between $2.5 trillion and $3.9 trillion ($3.2 trillion midpoint estimate) over 10 years. The total cost of greening projects comes to $5.6 trillion over 10 years ($560 billion per year, or 2.87 percent of 2017 GDP)."

This is only one of the costing estimates that Wray and Tcherneva provide, but these costing estimates need to be further examined in terms of how much fossil fuels are necessary to build them out and manufacture them. Materials that require large amounts of carbon dioxide emission for their manufacture must be rejected. In the final analysis the Job Guarantee (JG) that Wray and Tcherneva advocate is partially limited to "what Tcherneva calls “care for community” and “care for people” projects: service projects related to senior and youth care, teacher’s helpers, neighborhood and park cleanup, artistic projects, and so on. Thus, the JG program can provide resources needed for green projects in an amount equal to 1 percent of GDP (and resources equal to another 1 percent of GDP for other care services). These would largely be in upgrading buildings and homes to improve energy efficiency, although some could be used in nontechnical maintenance of energy projects (landscape maintenance, for example)." So the mix of high level workers like scientists could be combined with a significant number of low level workers to provide a comprehensive approach."

The bottom line is that we had better get cracking, financing a Green New Deal is no problem because as Modern Monetary Theory has shown, the money is available, but resources must be carefully allocated to avoid the pitfalls of inflation and making the problem worse by using large amounts of traditional materials like concrete, steel and plastics. Nuclear is probably the best bet for power generation and it must be deployed quickly especially in India and China where coal fired power generating plants are still being deployed at a rapid rate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwbDETx3zo0

 

Off the Top of My Head

Bill Gates Needs to Get Up To Speed on Modern Monetary Theory

by John Lawrence, February, 28, 2021

Bill Gates is a smart guy. He has singlehandedly been the most influential person on pandemics and now on climate change with his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. In this book the most important thing he points out in my opinion is that it is not enough to put electric cars on the road and to use renewables to power electricity generating plants. There is also much carbon dioxide emission coming from manufacturing and agriculture. In particular the manufacture of cement, steel and plastic produce as much or more carbon dioxide ton for ton as those products themselves. In addition beef and dairy cows produce a lot of methane due to the fact that they are ruminants with a certain kind of digestive system. Gates believes that much innovation, research and development is needed to come up with substitute products in all these areas as well as electrifying everything and running it all with renewables including a new digitized nuclear system.

The one thing that this polymath doesn't seem up to speed on is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) which is important because all this innovation, research and development requires vast amounts of money. He personally can't provide it all although he has used his fortune in very constructive ways in terms of health care around the world and also seeding promising startups. The Gates Foundation is concerned with all these problems on a world wide basis and not only in the US. He is a globalist and not an America First type of guy which is altogether appropriate because pandemics and particularly global warming are universal problems affecting every country and all people on earth, and their solutions require a world wide approach.

Bill Gates like some economists is somewhat concerned about inflation after all these trillions of dollars are spent by the US government first on COVID relief and then on infrastructure and a Green New Deal. If they study MMT they would know that MMT shares that concern, but addresses it in terms of the amount of idle resources there are in the economy. For instance, if there is 5% unemployment (what is considered full employment by conventional economists), there are still over 15 million people available for work. If there are material resources available such as cement, steel and glass, the price of these items is not likely to be bid up causing inflation. However, while some material resources are readily available, their substitutes which don't cause carbon dioxide emissions in the manufacturing process are not. A large infrastructure project which requires huge amounts of concrete with rebar such as is necessary in constructing a bridge, for example, will also cause large amounts of carbon dioxide to be emitted into the atmosphere. As Gates points out, making things which require cement, steel and plastic adds about 31% of the total of greenhouse gasses which are emitted annually. For every ton of steel produced we emit 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide. For every ton of plastic, the figure is 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide, and for every ton of cement, we emit a ton of carbon dioxide.

With figures like that how is the US going to do a $4 trillion (which is the amount our infrastructure is in deficit) infrastructure project without producing even more billions of tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs)? We need huge R&D projects funded by the government first before we can scale up the production of carbon free products which replace these traditional construction materials. Financing the R&D is not a problem as these human resources are widely considered to be available. This would cause no inflation. Getting the material resources when little or none of them is available would cause inflation. Nevertheless, the US ramped up production of ships and airplanes for World War II without causing much inflation. To deal with global warming or climate change is a thornier problem. If money is just poured into the economy on a non-targeted basis, it will cause inflation so it makes sense at least initially to pour the money into R&D as Bill Gates suggests. Doing a large infrastructure project without using the proper materials could make global warming even worse.

Off the Top of My Head

Why Should Blue Collar Workers Have to Pay Taxes to Bail Out White Collar Student Loan Debt?

by John Lawrence

Short answer: There is no need for the Federal government to tax in order to spend. That has been demonstrated by Modern Monetary Theory. However, taxation, if imposed in order to fight inflation, needs to be imposed primarily on the rich and upper middle class, not on the poor or lower middle class. The smart thing for the Biden administration to do would be to decrease taxes on the lower middle class ^i.e. blue collar workers before 2022 thus drawing them away from the Trump camp. In general the American people need to be educated that deficits don't matter except just as accounting entries on the Fed's balance sheet. Biden's COVID relief initiative of $1.9 billion will not raise taxes nor will his follow-on trillion dollar initiative for the build-out of green infrastructure.

The question, "Can We Afford to Pay for the Green New Deal?" is equivalent to the question "Can We Afford to Pay the Costs of Avoiding Annihilation?". In the past we have been able to afford a massive build-up to pay for the Second World War. The climate challenge is the moral equivalent of war. If we lose this war we lose not just our freedom. We lose the habitability of the entire planet. Various attempts have been made to cost out the components of a Green New Deal. Green power generation and transportation are not sufficient in themselves to get to net zero carbon emission, but they are a start. As Bill Gates has pointed out in his recent book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, major industrial processes also generate much greenhouse gas emission. For instance, every ton of cement that is produced contributes one ton of carbon dioxide which goes into the atmosphere. Every ton of steel produced results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, and every ton of plastics produced emits 1.3 tons of carbon dioxide. So it's not enough just to deal with green transportation (electric vehicles) and green power generation (solar and wind).

The cost of "greening" these industrial processes is pretty steep. Capturing carbon dioxide at the site of the manufacturing process is possible, but there is no cheap way to do it. Bill Gates is investing in promising start-ups and is counting on innovation to come up with new processes and materials which will not result in so much carbon dioxide being released into the air. Gates points out that we need to electrify every possible manufacturing process and make sure that all that electricity is generated cleanly. He advocates a new generation of nuclear power sources as wind and solar can not possible fill every energy need mainly because they are intermittent. Nuclear can fill the gap for consistent power generation when solar and/or wind are offline. Smart nuclear power which Bill Gates has been instrumental in developing would solve the problems encountered so far of explosion and what to do with nuclear waste. As a last resort Direct Air Capture of carbon dioxide from the air is possible but also costly.

What it all boils down to is this: we will need on the order of a trillion dollars a year for 10 years commitment to address climate change if we have a prayer for avoiding the worst consequences. What's more a lot of this commitment must be made in cooperation with China which is one of the worst polluters. Rivalry and even a Cold War must be set aside if the world is to avoid the worst outcome from global warming. India and China are building coal fired power generation plants at a rapid pace because coal fired power plants are so cheap comparatively and those countries are developing so quickly. It's not enough just to "green" the US. It has to be cooperation on a world wide basis. Competition has to be set aside and replaced by cooperation. The ownership of intellectual property is irrelevant when it comes to saving the planet.

A national budget for a Green New Deal shouldn't contribute to inflation since there are currently so many unemployed people available for work, and particularly because so many of the small businesses that were lost during the pandemic are not coming back. Also further robotizing of manufacturing processes will eliminate whatever blue collar workers are left working in those fields. In World War II there was some postponement of consumption in order to fight inflation. That may be necessary for the moral equivalent of war which the Green New Deal represents. If so, workers in certain nonessential industries may have to be repurposed and retrained for industries involved in combating climate change.

Off the Top of My Head

Former Energy Secretary Proposes Going to Capital Markets for Money to Upgrade Energy Grid Infrastructure: Is This Wise?

by John Lawrence, February 21, 2021

Clinton's Energy Secretary, Bill Richardson, proposes going to the capital markets since the government has been spending so much money on COVID relief. He suggests a public-private partnership. Evidently, Mr. Richardson, like most politicians and dignitaries, is totally ignorant of Modern Monetary Theory. The Federal Reserve can create interest free money with a few computer keystrokes while the capital markets will charge interest, and not only that. Once you enter the Wall Street casino you're subject to all the vagaries of the financial markets like securitzation, credit default obligations, interest rate swaps, betting against the success of various programs and much more. These are the kind of financial activities that caused the 2008 Great Recession and the bankruptcy of Orange County, Birmingham, Milan Italy and the misery in Greece. What's more going to the capital markets causes the same inflation risks as having the Fed create the money because inflation is caused by the amount of money sloshing around in the economy not who supplies it.

Larry Summers is worried about Biden's big spending bills causing inflation. What he doesn't get is that these bills are targeted. It's not just money pumped into the economy. The money going to states and municipalities, for example, is going to pay off debts. That holds for all the money going to families who are behind on their rents and mortgages. Paying off debts is deflationary not inflationary. Money going to unemployment insurance is just money that allows people to consume as if they had a job. That is not inflationary. Money going to businesses to prevent them from failing and putting employees back to work is not inflationary because having these businesses fail and employees without jobs is deflationary. All those flights and cruises not taken, all the money not spent going to movie theaters, all the money not spent on consumption when consumption is 70% of the economy - is deflationary. In fact there is so much deflation during a recession that that is the main worry - not inflation.

But reorienting priorities should also play a part in controlling inflation. Decreasing the trillion dollar budget of the military and military-industrial complex would help to offset inflation and pay for infrastructure repair. It would also free up the human resources needed for a build out of green infrastructure because wage inflation is caused by not enough human resources being available thus bidding up wages. The integrity of the US dollar could also be increased by eliminating sanctions on other countries. The US is using the fact of sanctioning other countries because the US dollar is the world's reserve currency causing the diminution of the use of the US currency as sanctioned countries find workarounds using other currencies. In America's Other Forever War, Peter Beinart explains that these sanctions do not accomplish anything except to hurt the people that happen to be living in the countries that are sanctioned. The chickens will come home to roost as the US dollar looses value in the international currency markets as the euro, yen and reminbi are used more for international trade. As Beinart writes, "“It is past time,” Joe Biden pledged last year, “to end the forever wars.” He’s right. But his definition of war is too narrow."

A careful analysis of Biden's spending plans  as well as reorienting current spending priorities needs to be carried out so that runaway inflation does not occur. Certainly putting people back to work is not inflationary. Federal money targeted toward paying off debts by states, municipalities and families is not inflationary. Federal money spent on infrastructure is not inflationary providing that the human and material resources are available. Since the Federal Reserve can create US dollars without the need for taxes, Modern Monetary Theory has shown and economists widely agree that the only limit on Federal so-called "deficit" spending is inflation. Stephanie Kelton has explained that Deficits Don't Matter in her book, The Deficit Myth. People like Bill Richardson and most liberal and conservative politicians need to study up on economics. Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are some of the few people that already have.