Dispatches

TO KEEP WATER IN THE RIVERS, BIDEN’S PLAN IS CAPITALISM. This is one of those things that the Biden Administration is doing now that is unnoticed and important, and is going to be so critical in a few years that people will shake their heads and say, “Damn, when did that happen? What a break,” Charles Pierce noted at Esquire.com (10/17)

The Colorado River is perhaps the country’s most important waterway. It is a big part of the reason why we have Arizona, Nevada, and California at all—why we don’t have an empty quarter between Des Moines and Los Angeles—and the Colorado is too damn close to being exhausted. The country’s largest reservoir, Lake Mead (created by dropping the Hoover Dam onto the Colorado), has dropped two inches a day since February, exposing all kinds of long-forgotten detritus—most recently, prehistoric volcanic ash. None of which can be poured into a glass to consume on a hot Nevada day. Try dropping prehistoric volcanic ash on your alfalfa field and see what grows. From CNBC:

The Interior Department this week announced that it will use some of the $4 billion in drought mitigation funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to pay farmers, cities and Indigenous tribes for drawing less water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The program will focus on pushing for voluntary water cuts in the three lower Colorado River Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada, the department said ... The plan will pay applicants a set amount of money per acre-foot of water that they voluntarily don’t draw from Lake Mead, the country’s largest reservoir. One acre-foot of water supplies roughly two households each year.

As part of the new plan, applicants will receive higher payments for longer periods of voluntary water cutbacks, the department said. A one-year agreement will pay $330 per acre-foot, a two-year agreement will pay $365 per acre-foot and a three-year agreement will pay $400 per acre-foot. The federal government in August announced a second round of mandatory cuts for Arizona, Nevada and Mexico from the Colorado River, which supplies water and power for more than 40 million people across the West.

If paying people not to use water sounds counterintuitive, get used to it. The climate crisis is already far enough along that a lot of what might have been unthinkable 20 years ago is going to be necessary now and in the future.

If you need more proof, check out what’s happening in one of the country’s other iconic rivers. From weather.com:

The Mississippi is at the lowest level George Flaggs has seen in almost 70 years.”It’s definitely having an impact on the local economy, because the commercial use of this river has almost completely stopped,” Flaggs, the mayor of Vicksburg, Mississippi, told WAPT-TV. At Tiptonville, Tennessee, about 90 miles north of Memphis, the mighty river looks more like a creek. But the impacts won’t be felt just by people living and working along the 2,350-mile-long river.

The Mississippi River Basin produces 92% of US agricultural exports and 78% of the world’s exports in feed grains and soybeans, according to the National Park Service. Much of that is shipped by barges, as are other products like fertilizer, coal, oil and petroleum and metals. For the last few weeks, barges have been running aground because the river is so low. More than 2,250 barges sat idle near Vicksburg last week while waiting for dredging to make the river deeper, Bloomberg reported.

The collapse of a vital supply chain isn’t the only consequence of the Mississippi running dry.

Meanwhile, more than 50 communities rely on the Mississippi for daily water supply, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The river’s low levels have caused a big problem for one of those communities. Salt water from the Gulf of Mexico is able to move upstream into the river channel because of the lower, slower flow of the river, said David Ramirez, chief of the River Engineering Branch of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Plaquemines Parish, which sits on the tip of Louisiana, has warned residents that the ‘saltwater wedge that is moving up the Mississippi River’ is causing higher levels of sodium and chloride in the parish’s water supply. Parish officials cautioned that the sodium and chloride could cause problems for people who are on dialysis or low-sodium diets because of health issues like high blood pressure or kidney diseases. And it’s not just a health issue. “The salt water can cause corrosion to pipes and can cause a change in the taste of the water for municipal use, so ... that’s why we’re involved to mitigate that,” Ramirez told Fox 8 News.

“Long ago, the flourishing indigenous people of the Mississippi waterway considered the river to be sacred and treated it as such. They may have had something there,” Pierce wrote.

MAR-A-LAGO DOCUMENTS HELD SECRETS ABOUT IRANIAN MISSILES AND INTEL OPERATIONS IN CHINA. Every time more information appears about just what was in those documents that Donald Trump stole from the White House and illegally held at Mar-a-Lago, the worse it seems, Mark Sumner noted at DailyKos (10/21). The latest information comes from The Washington Post, which reports that, among other things, the documents Trump is trying to claim were personal property contain, in part, information about Iran’s missile program, as well as secrets involving “highly sensitive intelligence work” involving China.

What kind of case might be made that Trump has a right to documents on either subject is simple: There is none. Simply holding these documents outside a secure area represents a national security threat. Either document might also contain information that reveals US sources and methods, meaning that showing these documents to anyone represents not just a threat to international stability, but a direct risk to human intelligence and a setback for intelligence research.

According to the Post, the documents concerning China and Iran were among the third batch of classified documents removed from Mar-a-Lago, those that were located only after an FBI team searched both a storage room and Trump’s office. According to their description, the documents connected to China are among the most classified possible.

These documents reportedly cover special access programs, known only to the president and select cabinet members, and “detail top-secret US operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are not informed about them.”

These are precisely the kind of programs likely to generate the highest value information, and also those which are the most sensitive to any lapse in security. Such documents don’t have to list the names of informants and other sources to make them know. Just the nature of the information revealed—details of a conversation, a piece of technical data, images, or analysis—can be enough for Chinese or Iranian officials to finger those at the other end of such programs. At best, those assets are now worthless. At worst, they are dead; possibly after being “played back” to feed false information to US intelligence.

Not only are these among the most sensitive documents that could have been in Trump’s possession, they’re also the least likely to have any legitimate possible reason to be found outside a secure environment. These are not Trump’s love letters from Kim Jong-un, or even some exchange concerning Jan. 6. What possible reason could there be for Trump to be holding documents detailing the plans for Iran’s missile program? It’s not as if he did the analysis, or even that these documents will help him site his next golf resort. This is information that only has value if Trump is giving it to those who will use it to weaken the US.

As a side note, Russia is now negotiating to purchase Iranian missiles for use in Ukraine. They probably didn’t need Trump to give them a shopping list, but there may well be information in the classified documents which would be of value to Vladimir Putin in sizing up his purchases.

BIDEN GOES DARK BRANDON ON MAGA REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY AROUND STUDENT DEBT. President Biden was in Delaware (10/21), where he gave a speech talking about the Democratic administration’s successes in creating a student loan forgiveness program while also lowering the country’s deficit. While worrying about the deficit is a bogus conservative metaphysical occupation, Biden’s mention of it was in contrast to the single thing the GOP did for “Americans”: cut taxes for the wealthiest among us. Walter Einenkel noted at DailyKos (10/21).

Biden has been a on roll over the past few months, going after Republican leadership more directly for their abject hypocrisy over just about everything. Whether or not Biden can focus the electorate to come out and vote for Democratic candidates and incumbents across the country in the next few weeks remains to be seen, but he has been doing a lot better over the past few weeks, with more focused  statements and messaging on what Democrats have done and what Republicans continue to never do—help the American people.

One section of Biden’s speech went to the heart of the matter: Student loan forgiveness is successful, with almost 22 million people applying right out of the gate. It is popular, and a better use of our country’s money than anything the GOP has ever had to offer.

The 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals put a temporary block on the program (10/21) while it considers an appeal from six Republican-led states to prohibit the relief entirely.

In the online version, Biden talked about the launch of the online application and how in the short time the website has been live, just under 9 million people have signed up.

Biden also spoke to how popular and successful student loan forgiveness has already been

And then President Biden went in on the disingenuous Republican criticisms:

“I will never apologize for helping working- and middle-class Americans as they recover from the pandemic, especially not to the same Republican officials who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy Americans and the biggest corporations that wasn’t paid for, and racked up our deficit. I don’t want to hear it from MAGA Republicans, officials who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, even millions of dollars in pandemic relief loans forgiven, who now are attacking, attacking me for helping working-class and middle-class Americans.

“My team at the White House posted a video, a video of these folks online. You should check it out. Marjorie Taylor Greene, she got over, she and her husband got $180,000 in business loans forgiven from the PPP program. She said it’s completely unfair for us to forgive student loans for working- and middle-class Americans.

“Representative Vern Buchanan of Florida said our plan was ‘reckless.’ Guess how much he got in that program? Forgiven? Two million 300 thousand dollars. That’s not a joke. Can’t make this stuff up. Republican governors wrote me a letter saying this relief is, only helps the ‘elite few.’

“Y’all know you’re the ‘elite few?’ I knew you were really special, but no, you’re the ‘elite few.’ I’m serious.

“Ted Cruz, the great senator from Texas. He said, it’s for slackers, quote, ‘slackers who don’t deserve relief.’ Who in the hell do they think they are?”

ABBOTT BLAMES BETO FOR BAIL BOND GONE BAD. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott is running an ad with the mother of a murdered teenager warning voters against supporting Democrat Beto O’Rourke for governor because he backs bail reform similar to what Harris County (Houston) had in place, which let her son’s accused killer be released on bond in April 2021 to shoot another person. The accused killer violated the terms of his release on $270,000, which stipulated he should have been confined to his home with a GPS monitor. And O’Rourke does not support allowing violent offenders out on bail, his campaign says. His past support for cash bail reforms is only for low-level, nonviolent crimes.

Meanwhile, Abbott has refused the requests of parents of 19 children who were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, to support raising the minimum age to buy assault rifles from 18 to 21. Instead, Abbott has arranged to distribute DNA sampling kits to the parents of schoolchildren so they can take samples and keep them to help in identifying their children in case their heads are blown off by a troubled teenager with an AR-15 and their remains are unrecognizable, as at least two Uvalde children were decapitated in the school massacre.

JUDGE WHO RULED AGAINST CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUREAU TOOK WALL STREET CASH: WATCHDOG. A federal judge who ruled that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s funding structure is unconstitutional was a longtime recipient of campaign cash from Wall Street bankers—including several whose banks were held accountable by the bureau for abusive practices—a government watchdog revealed, Julia Conley noted at CommonDreams (10/20).

Accountable.US released an analysis of campaign contributions received by Judge Cory Wilson of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals between 2014 and 2018, when he was a Republican candidate and member of the Mississippi House of Representatives.

According to the group, Wilson took at least $10,500 from Wall Street bankers.

The analysis was released a day after Wilson handed down a ruling in a case filed by payday lending groups against the CFPB. The judge claimed in his decision that it is unconstitutional for the CFPB to be funded by the Federal Reserve System rather than by Congress, drawing condemnation from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other consumer advocates.

The case “shows just how far predatory lenders are willing to go to avert any accountability for their abusive practices,” said Liz Zelnick, director of economic security and corporate power for Accountable.US. “It’s no surprise this lawsuit was brought by an industry with an ax to grind against the CFPB after facing numerous fines mistreating consumers.”

Beyond that, Zelnick added, the group’s findings regarding Wilson’s financial ties to the industry CFPB regulates shows the case “was advanced by a judge who’s taken thousands from the banking industry that too is determined to weaken the bureau’s authority.”

As the Revolving Door Project at the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted, Wilson’s contributions included at least $2,500 from Trustmark National Bank, which was recently fined by the CFPB for discriminatory practices.

“The financial services industry’s relentless attacks on the CFPB proves its work protecting consumers is more vital than ever,” said Zelnick.

JUDGE’S RULING TAKES TRUMP ONE STEP CLOSER TO INDICTMENT ON CONSPIRACY CHARGE. US District Court Judge David Carter handed down another blunt ruling (10/19), stripping away attorney-client privilege from communications between Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman. These documents relate directly to claims that Eastman made before the Georgia state senate in an effort to justify reversing the results of the 2020 election and to support a scheme to halt the final certification of electors on Jan. 6, Mark Sumner noted at DailyKos (10/20).

Eastman had tried to protect the documents by claiming they were either directly created as legal advice for Trump or as a means of communicating strategy in case of litigation—which are protected categories of communication. In fact, the court found that almost everything Eastman had written fell into the category of “providing legal opinion.” This kind of work, Judge Carter noted, “is virtually undiscoverable.” That is, almost never allowed to be entered into evidence. However, there is one big factor that negates any such claims, and Judge Carter thought that factor was very clear when it comes to some of the documents in this case.

“The crime-fraud exception applies when (1) a “client consults an attorney for advice that will serve [them] in the commission of a fraud or crime,” and (2) the communications are “sufficiently related to” and were made “in furtherance of” the crime.”

And now, 33 documents from Eastman are no longer protected.

Back in March, Judge Carter made an initial ruling about the information Eastman presented, and the support it received from Trump. In particular, he noted that Trump had signed his name to a suit that included a series of claims about voter fraud, even though it seemed clear from communications already made public that Trump understood the numbers being used were simply pulled out of thin air. That led to this moment in Carter’s ruling:

“As the Court discussed at length above, the evidence demonstrates that President Trump likely attempted to obstruct the Joint Session of Congress on January 6, 2021.”

Carter went on to note that this obstruction was intended to obstruct a “lawful proceeding” and to block a “lawful function of government.” Both of which are felonies. There has been no other ruling in which a federal judge found a former executive is likely guilty of a felony, not even in the case of Richard Nixon.

In the Oct. 19 ruling, Carter was equally frank about Trump and Eastman’s actions.

“… President Trump was more likely than not engaged in or planning an obstruction of an official proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2), and a conspiracy to defraud the United States, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371, when he sought the advice of Dr. Eastman.”

Overall, Carter ruled that 24 documents did not amount to protected work. Another eight documents were released on the basis that the crime-fraud exception erased any attorney-client privilege that might otherwise exist.

In the case of these eight documents, Carter didn’t just find that they were related to Trump’s scheme to overturn the election in Georgia, but that they were created in furtherance of that scheme. This still leaves over 500 documents that were created by Eastman, for Trump, in the period after the election. Those documents remain hidden. For now.

NEW REPORT VINDICATES CRITICS OF 2015 REPEAL OF US OIL AND GAS EXPORT BAN. In 2015, fossil fuel industry executives and lobbyists adamantly claimed that lifting a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports would benefit consumers in the form of lower prices at the pump.

Environmentalists and consumer advocates disagreed, warning gasoline costs would likely rise for the sake of higher industry profits.

A report published Oct. 17—nearly seven years after former President Barack Obama signed a measure that lifted the export ban—makes the case that recent events have vindicated opponents of the industry-led repeal effort as gas prices rise and fossil fuel corporations celebrate record profits, Jake Johnson noted at CommonDreams (10/17).

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made clear that the boom in U.S. production and exports has not removed Americans from the wild swings of energy markets,” reads the report released by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, part of the coalition that mobilized against ending the export ban originally enacted in 1975.

“Indeed, with the U.S. economy now more tightly interlinked with global energy markets, consumers are even more vulnerable to international supply shocks and punishing price swings,” the report argues. “In the long run, we must as a planet wean ourselves from our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels that have sowed turmoil and chaos, as has been so evident during this tumultuous year.”

The new report details how the U.S. has gone from exporting “nearly zero liquefied natural gas” to becoming “the world’s largest natural gas exporter” in the years since Republican lawmakers and Obama teamed up to repeal the export ban, unleashing pollution in frontline communities at home and more climate chaos abroad.

As oil and gas companies have sold their products for higher prices in foreign countries than they could domestically, “the promised benefits of the end to the U.S. export ban” for American consumers “either failed to materialize or were much less impressive than touted by industry,” argued report author Alan Zibel, research director at Public Citizen.

Over the past decade, the fossil fuel industry has reoriented itself to prioritize profits from consumers overseas, jacking up prices for American consumers, while putting the climate at peril, exploiting public lands, and leaving marginalized Gulf Coast communities in the lurch,” Zibel said in a statement. “The Biden administration must start thinking seriously about ways to gauge whether exports are in the public interest, and start making the interests of frontline communities, public lands and the climate a much higher priority.”

Public Citizen’s report highlights a study commissioned by former President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy that “claimed, preposterously, that consumers would benefit” from U.S. gas exports “due to their natural gas industry stock market investments,” just one example of the promised benefits of ending the export ban.

“The study failed to mention that few low-income people own any stock, let alone shares of natural gas exporters,” the report adds.

“It is not in the public interest to justify exports overseas that result in increased energy poverty and energy insecurity for tens of millions.”

In 2022, amid global energy market chaos spurred by Russia’s assault on Ukraine, U.S. crude oil exports have surged, with roughly 29% of production going overseas in the first half of the year, according to Public Citizen’s analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“That is more than double the 12% exported in 2017 and quadruple the 7% exported in 2016, the first full year of unrestricted crude oil exports,” the report notes. “Unprecedented exports of natural gas contribute directly to soaring U.S. natural gas prices, tying the prices families in the U.S. pay for heating their homes to global calamities.”

Meanwhile, Public Citizen points out, data indicates that heating costs for U.S. households using natural gas will be around 28% higher compared to last year. The residential price of electricity is also projected to rise by 7.5%.

“The fossil fuel industry has hailed the twin booms in oil and natural gas exports, claiming that they will be a boon to American consumers and national security,” the report continues. “But the economic instability and damage to local communities and the planet created by this rapid export expansion are only now becoming clear.”

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, said in a statement that “the consequence of America becoming the largest fossil fuel exporter in the world has upended domestic energy markets, and exposes U.S. households to punishing energy burdens.”

“It is not in the public interest to justify exports overseas that result in increased energy poverty and energy insecurity for tens of millions of Americans,” said Slocum.

The destructive impacts of surging oil and gas exports hardly come as a surprise to Slocum, who warned Congress during July 2015 congressional testimony that lifting the longstanding export ban would “result in higher gasoline prices for U.S. motorists and small businesses.”

Public Citizen’s report was published as U.S. gas prices are ticking up again ahead of the winter season following Saudi-led OPEC’s decision to slash oil production by two million barrels a day starting in November.

Green groups argued that the U.S. should respond to OPEC’s move by reinstating the ban on oil exports, but the Biden administration has yet to do so as the fossil fuel industry lobbies against the proposal.

Short of reviving the export ban, Public Citizen on Monday called on the Biden administration and Congress to impose a windfall profits tax on oil and gas producers and exporters, “subject crude oil exports to regulatory oversight,” and block the approval of any new liquefied natural gas export terminals.

From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2022

Populist.com