Florida’s trend of experiencing population increases year over year is coming to an end as the state now sees a mass exodus of people fleeing the state. The main culprit is the lack of insurance companies that are willing to provide policies to homeowners in the state, leaving the hurricane-prone residents without a way to protect their property. Governor Ron DeSantis has done nothing to address this crisis as he continues his failing bid to become president. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.
I love the Majority Report with Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland. Here are some clips. People might wonder why so many at once. Because I have two monitors / computers. One I normally blog with and the other I constantly stream videos. Mostly news. If I am not in my Pink Palace I have my apple earbuds in listening to podcasts. I rarely do music. Those that follow me and know my history know that I have to constantly have that stream of new data, of idea and sound in to my head to stop the thoughts I don’t want. Granted, it has gotten less urgent over the last few years as I am getting better at coping, but I can not stand longish periods of only my own memories. The first thing I do when I leave my bed to get up is pull my hair back and put in my ear buds. At night when I go to bed I fill my mind with my own stories written based on the characters of books, movies, TV shows that I can fill my mind with writing my self into those stories, keeping the memories from coming up to the front of my mind or having a say. I had these videos ready to post for a while, but never found the time. Today is the time. I don’t expect everyone to watch all of them, but maybe bits or sections, or just the ones that interest you. Thank you for understanding. Hugs. Scottie
CNN’s Abby Phillip asks Sen. Lindsey Graham if there’s a threshold for him where he’d be supportive of holding off on offensives in Gaza to prevent further civilian casualties. Sen. Graham responds in part: “No, no, no!” He then compares the current state of affairs to World War II.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer spoke with international IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht about the Israeli strike carried out on the Jabalia refugee camp, and Blitzer asked whether the IDF was aware of the amount of Palestinian civilians in the area, despite the potential for a Hamas leader to be there as well. Hecht responds by saying: “This is the tragedy of war. We told them to move south.”
Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the University of Exeter and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, to discuss the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
Sen. John Fetterman is confronted at an event by human rights attorney Dan Kovalik about Fetterman’s unwillingness to call for a ceasefire in Israel/Gaza. Kovalik is then forcibly removed from the event by staff,
Jodan Peterson seemed to have a moment of clarity during this interview with comedian Jim Jeffries. Too bad it didn’t stick.
Ilan Pappe, professor of history at the University of Exeter and Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, to discuss the ongoing conflict in Israel and Gaza.
Homicides in the U.S. have seen a significant drop in 2022, and this trend has continued into 2023, placing the country on course for one of the largest recorded declines in homicides; although crime rose across the nation in 2020 and 2021 due to various factors including the pandemic and increased gun availability, there has been a notable decline in these figures in recent times. According to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics, homicides saw a 6% decrease in 2022, which surpassed expectations. Jeff Asher, a crime data analyst and consultant, indicates that so far in 2023, homicides have fallen by 11% to 12%. This trend extends to violent crime overall, aligning the U.S. with 2019 levels, although certain crime categories, such as auto thefts, have experienced increases in specific areas.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, to discuss the ongoing situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
After briefly touching on the international politics around the 2007 blockade and election of Hamas in Gaza, Shakir explores how the Israeli government has supported and maintained Hamas’ rule as a part of their “policy of separation” between Gaza and the West Bank, and a central tool against the establishment of a Palestinian state. Wrapping up, Omar explores the obvious parallels between the current assault on Palestinians in Gaza and the 1948 Nakba that began the occupation, the recent discovery of Israel’s use of white phosphorus, and what a push for a ceasefire and an end to apartheid could look like.
9News Colorado’s reports on Republican State Rep. Ron Weinberg telling a group of students that allowing trans kids to go by their preferred names could confuse police during a mass shooting.
Rep. Ilhan Omar was asked by a reporter why she wants a to push the Israelis to ceasefire their bombing of Gaza. Omar asks: “How many more killings is enough for you?” She says that’s a question that the press should ask New York Rep. Ritchie Torres that.
Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, to discuss the ongoing situation on the ground in the Gaza Strip.
Omar Shakir then joins as he jumps right into the history of the Gaza Strip, from the beginning of its occupation by Israel in 1967, through the establishment of their full blockade on people, goods, and aid in the wake of their military withdrawal in 2005, which launched the current era of strict apartheid and de facto Hamas rule.
Ever since Reagan’s presidency, the core of Republican positions on public education have been five-fold: 1. Let white students attend schools that are islands of white privilege where they don’t have to confront the true racial history of America, 2. Use public money to support private, for-profit, and religious schools that can accomplish this (and cycle some of that money back to Republican politicians), 3. Destroy public schools’ teachers’ unions, 4. End the teaching of science, critical thinking, evolution, and sex ed, and, 5. Bring fundamentalist Christianity into the classroom. Earlier this year, Republican Senator Marco Rubio called America’s public school system a “cesspool of Marxist indoctrination.” “Dangerous academic constructs like critical race theory and radical gender theory are being forced on elementary school children,” Rubio wrote for the American Conservative magazine, adding, “We need to ensure no federal funding is ever used to promote these radical ideas in schools.”
A bit on the long side, but really informative over what has happened and what is currently happening in this seeming never ending war on Public schools. Hugs. Scottie
Even protecting kids from killing themselves and bullying is the target of hate from the “Christian” right. Seriously, you would think the Pro-life crowd would rush to protect children from death, instead they pretend that someone dressed in a costume reading a story is the real danger to kids. Sickening and the world needs to wake up to the cesspool that X, Twitter, and right wing media has become. Hugs. Scottie
The Trevor Project, which has nearly 350,000 followers on the platform, said LGBTQ young people are “regularly victimized” on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The Trevor Project at the Los Angeles Pride Parade on June 11.Rodin Eckenroth / Getty Images file
The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, announced it is leaving X, formerly known as Twitter, because of “increasing hate & vitriol on the platform targeting the LGBTQ community.” The decision comes just over a year after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk finalized his $44 billion purchase of the company.
“LGBTQ young people are regularly victimized at the expense of their mental health, and X’s removal of certain moderation functions makes it more difficult for us to create a welcoming space for them on this platform,” the organization wrote in a tweet Thursday.
The Trevor Project, which has nearly 350,000 followers on X, said the decision to leave was made with “input from dozens of internal and external perspectives.” In particular, the group wrote, “we questioned whether leaving the platform would allow harmful narratives and rhetoric to prevail with one less voice to challenge them.” But in the end, the group decided that leaving was “the right thing to do.”
The Trevor Project has made the decision to close its account on X.
At the end of its message, the organization directed LGBTQ young people to TrevorSpace.org, its own social networking space for queer teens and young adults. The Trevor Project also noted that it will continue to maintain its presence on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Facebook.
X’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on The Trevor Project’s departure or its characterization of “hate & vitriol” on the platform.
As NBC News reported last month on the one-year anniversary of Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, many LGBTQ people say the once-hospitable home for community building has turned toxic.
This, they say, is due in part to a number of policy changes and business decisions at the company, including the layoff of employees who worked on reducing misinformation and harassment on the platform, and the removal of the site’s previous ban on intentionally using the incorrect pronouns or names for transgender people, practices known as misgendering and deadnaming.
GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy group, releases an annual Social Media Safety Index and Platform Scorecard that evaluates social media platforms’ policies for ensuring the safety of LGBTQ users. In its most recent scorecard, published in June, X ranked in last place among the major social media platforms.
Since Musk took over the platform, LGBTQ people running some of the most-followed X accounts have abandoned it. Elton John, who has over a million followers, announced he was leaving in December, and Ellen DeGeneres, who has 75 million followers, hasn’t tweeted since April.
And The Trevor Project is not the only LGBTQ nonprofit to leave. The San Francisco LGBT Center, LGBTQ Youth Scotland and the U.K.-based Mermaids, a transgender charity, have also left the platform, just to name a few.
I had shots into my shoulders today. Ron and I left the home, I had not been able to sleep so I was up most of the night. Ron just made a hamburger, Chili, french fry meal with all the fixings. Yes I helped.
Earlier today Ron took me to my pain doctor’s office, I got shots into my shoulder … yes steroids. While I was there he went to every store in our area that we shop in and got some soda for me. My soda is hard to get. I need a cola with no added sugars and no caffeine, and no aspartame. I get sick when I drink it. There are currently only two brands that we know of, Diet Rite Pure Zero, and Public Caffeine free diet soda. Both can be really hard to get. That is why when we find it, we buy them all.
We came home and Ron napped. I started blogging. But now I am tired, exhausted, so with Ron’s great meal in my belly I am now turning to Halo. Hopefully I will be able to keep my eyes open and my hearing coherent to get a few bad people before bed. Hugs / loves. Scottie.
I want to thank Ten Bears for the link. He often posts links to important information. This information needs to be spread far and wide. Hugs. Scottie
Here are a few quotes from the article.
“The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up,” Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. “It’s lower revenue that’s 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point.”
“Tax giveaways for the wealthy are continuing to starve the federal government of needed revenue: those passed by former Presidents Trump and Bush have added $10 trillion to the debt and account for 57 percent of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001,” read the statement. “If not for those tax cuts, U.S. debt would be declining as a share of the economy.”
“Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them.”
“Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them,” Sen. Whitehouse said at the time. “It is one of life’s great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least.”
President Donald Trump jokes with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.), Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) during an event celebrating the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on the South Lawn of the White House December 20, 2017 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans’ fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem that is driving up our national debt,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse in response to new Treasury Department figures.
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday released new figures related to the 2023 budget that showed a troubling drop in the nation’s tax revenue compared to GDP—a measure which fell to 16.5% despite a growing economy—and an annual deficit increase that essentially doubled from the previous year.
“After record U.S. government spending in 2020 and 2021” due to programs related to the economic fallout from the Covid-19 crisis, the Washington Postreports, “the deficit dropped from close to $3 trillion to close to $1 trillion in 2022. But rather than continue to fall to its pre-pandemic levels, the deficit unexpectedly jumped this year to roughly $2 trillion.”
While much of the reporting on the Treasury figures painted a picture of various and overlapping dynamics to explain the surge in the deficit—including higher payments on debt due to interest rates, tax filing waivers related to extreme weather events, the impact of a student loan forgiveness program that was later rescinded, or a dip in capital gains receipts—progressive tax experts say none of those complexities should act to shield what’s at the heart of a budget that brings in less than it spends: tax giveaways to the rich.
Bobby Kogan, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, has argued repeatedly that growing deficits in recent years have a clear and singular chief cause: Republican tax cuts that benefit mostly the wealthy and profitable corporations.
In response to the Treasury figures released Friday, Kogan said that “roughly 75%” of the surge in the deficit and the debt ratio, the amount of federal debt relative to the overall size of the economy, was due to revenue decreases resulting from GOP-approved tax cuts over recent decades. “Of the remaining 25%,” he said, “more than half” was higher interest payments on the debt related to Federal Reserve policy.
“We have a revenue problem, due to tax cuts,” said Kogan, pointing to the major tax laws enacted under the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump. “The Bush and Trump tax cuts broke our modern tax structure. Revenue is significantly lower and no longer grows much with the economy.” And he offered this visualization about a growing debt ratio:
“The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up,” Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. “It’s lower revenue that’s 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point.”
Holy moly! Revenues fell to 16.5% of GDP last year. They're only that low after tax cuts or the Great Recession. No wonder there's a deficit.
Since 1962: 1965: after tax cuts 2003-04: after Bush tax cuts 2009-2012: after Great Recession 2018-2020: after Trump tax cuts
In his tweet, Kogan offered the following chart to show recent and projected levels of both federal revenue and spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP):
In a detailed analysis produced in March, Kogan explained that, “If not for the Bush tax cuts and their extensions—as well as the Trump tax cuts—revenues would be on track to keep pace with spending indefinitely, and the debt ratio (debt as a percentage of the economy) would be declining. Instead, these tax cuts have added $10 trillion to the debt since their enactment and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001, and more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if the one-time costs of bills responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession are excluded.”
On Friday, the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) cited those same numbers in a press release responding to the Treasury’s new report.
“Tax giveaways for the wealthy are continuing to starve the federal government of needed revenue: those passed by former Presidents Trump and Bush have added $10 trillion to the debt and account for 57 percent of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001,” read the statement. “If not for those tax cuts, U.S. debt would be declining as a share of the economy.”
Trump tax cuts went overwhelmingly to the richest (and foreign investors), cost hundreds of billions each year, ballooned the deficit and gave $49,000 to each one percenter. Get the details here. #GOPDebatehttps://t.co/1u9K8Cfsv1
Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, said the dip in federal revenue and growth in the overall deficit both have the same primary cause: GOP fealty to the wealthy individuals and powerful corporations that bankroll their campaigns.
“In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans’ fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem that is driving up our national debt,” Whitehouse said Friday night. “Even as federal spending fell over the last year relative to the size of the economy, the deficit increased because Republicans have rigged the tax code so that big corporations and the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share.”
Offering a solution, Whitehouse said, “Fixing our corrupted tax code and cracking down on wealthy tax cheats would help bring down the deficit. It would also ensure teachers and firefighters don’t pay higher tax rates than billionaires, level the playing field for small businesses, and promote a stronger economy for all.”
None of the latest figures—those showing that tax cuts have injured revenues and therefore spiked deficits and increased debt—should be a surprise.
In 2018, shortly after the Trump tax cuts were signed into law, a Congressional Budget Office (CBo) report predicted precisely this result: that revenues would plummet; annual deficits would grow; and not even the promise of economic growth made by Republicans to justify the giveaway would be enough to make up the difference in the budget.
“The CBO’s latest report exposes the scam behind the rosy rhetoric from Republicans that their tax bill would pay for itself,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and now Senate Majority Leader, said at the time.
“Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them.”
In its 2018 report, the CBO predicted the deficit would rise to $804 billion by the end of that fiscal year. Now, for all the empty promises and howling from the GOP and their allied deficit hawks, the economic prescription they forced through Congress has resulted in an annual deficit of more than double that, all while demanding the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable pay the price by demanding key social programs—including food aid, education budgets, unemployment benefits, and housing assistance—be slashed.
Meanwhile, the GOP majority in the U.S. House—with or without a Speaker currently holding the gavel—still has plans to extend the Trump tax cuts if given half a chance. In May, a CBO analysis of that pending legislation found that such an extension would add an additional $3.5 trillion to the national debt.
“Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them,” Sen. Whitehouse said at the time. “It is one of life’s great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least.”
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There are metallic deposits scattered throughout our ocean floors — among hydrothermal vents, under the crust of seamounts, and scattered along sea plains in the form of rocks. As it happens, in our search for climate solutions, these metals have become more critical than ever to help us transition away from fossil fuels. We need them for everything like electric car batteries, copper wiring for electrification and wind turbines. Our land-based deposits have met our needs so far, but it’s unclear whether they will continue to, or whether we’ll want to keep destroying the environment to do so.
This video explains the history and the debate over mining metals in the deep sea and why one Canadian company, The Metals Company, is leading the rush there. There are huge environmental implications for digging up seafloor ecosystems as well as ethical ones: Metal-rich zones like the Clarion-Clipperton Zone lie in international waters that technically belong to everyone. A United Nations body located in Kingston, Jamaica, the International Seabed Authority, is faced with an urgent dilemma over how to regulate mining, whether the environmental harm is worth the benefits to solving our climate crisis, and how to fairly share the profits from this shared resource.
