Net worth of the 8 Democrats who voted down $15 minimum wage:

Senator Kyrsten Sinema slammed after spokesperson says it’s sexist to discuss her ‘thumbs down’ vote - Raw Story - 

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Ken Klippenstein

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Net worth of the 8 Democrats who just voted down $15 minimum wage: Chris Coons: $10.13 million Angus King: $9.49 million Joe Manchin: $7.62 million Tom Carper: $5.73 million Jeanne Shaheen: $3.82 million Jon Tester: $3.67 million Maggie Hassan: $3.47 million Krysten Sinema: N/A

11:37 AM · Mar 5, 2021·Twitter Web App

New stimulus plan would leave out more than 600,000 Washington residents


BY DAVID LIGHTMAN
MARCH 05, 2021 

What to know about $600 or $1200 Economic Impact Payment Prepaid Cards

The U.S. Treasury Department is sending out debit cards to many Americans as one of the government's methods for sending out the $600 per person or $1,200 per couple Economic Impact Payment authorized by Congress in December 2020. BY U.S. CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION BUIREAU

WASHINGTON

More than 600,000 Washington state residents would get lower federal economic stimulus payments, or none at all, under a new Senate plan being debated this week, an economic research firm’s analysis found.

President Joe Biden has agreed to the plan, which has been sought by moderate Democrats. The payments are lower than those in legislation passed by the House.

An estimated 6.1 million Washington residents could get some stimulus money under the Senate proposal, according to data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The House plan would benefit 6.7 million state residents.

Qualifying taxpayers will still get $1,400 per person under the Senate version.

Qualified individuals with incomes of $75,000 or less and joint filers with incomes of $150,000 or less will get the full amount, just as they did in the House bill.

The big change is that in the new version, the payment will then be reduced until those earning $80,000 if filing individually and $160,000 if filing jointly will not get any money.

The House phaseout had gone up to $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for joint filers.

Taxpayers earning below the income caps would get the same payments they’d be due under the House version.

The biggest change from the House bill would be at higher income levels, the Washington, D.C.-based firm said. Washington state filers and their families with incomes of $135,700 to $290,600 could see their payment drop from an average of $1,940 in the House plan to an average of $1,340 in the new agreement.

 These are estimated average benefits for other Washington filers and their families under the plan:

 ▪ Lowest 20% income group, with incomes of less than $28,800, would receive $2,170. No change from previous proposal.

 ▪ Second 20% income group, with incomes ranging from $28,800 to $53,200, would receive $2,380. No change from previous proposal.

 ▪ Third 20% income group, with incomes ranging from $53,200 to $84,400 would receive $2,810 instead of the House’s $2,860. 

 ▪ Fourth 20% income group, with incomes ranging from $84,400 to $135,700, would receive $2,740, down from $2,840 in the House plan.

 The state’s economy would also see less money. The House plan could boost economic activity by an estimated $8.8 billion, while the new plan would provide about $8.4 billion, according to the analysis.

The Senate has begun considering the measure, part of a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief act, with final votes anticipated later in the week. The bill would then need approval again by the House.

Biden is aiming to sign legislation by mid-March

.

Another round of federal stimulus payments could be on the way, but weathier taxpayers won’t get as much in the Senate plan as they would in the House bill. ZACH GIBSON TNS

DAVID LIGHTMAN
is McClatchy’s chief congressional correspondent. He’s been writing, editing and teaching for 49 years, with stops in Hagerstown, Riverside, Calif., Annapolis, Baltimore and since 1981, Washington.

Swarm of 20,000 earthquakes could  make Iceland's volcanoes erupt

Residents have been 'waking up to earthquakes' every day for more than a week.

Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula has been shaken by more than 20,000 earthquakes this week. Scientists expect an imminent volcanic eruption. (Image credit: Getty Images)

By Brandon Specktor - Senior Writer 

More than 20,000 earthquakes have shaken southern Iceland this week, rattling the capital city of Reykjavik and keeping geologists on their toes as all signs point to a pending volcanic eruption, the Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO) reported on Thursday (March 4).

This week's marathon of quakes continues a swarm of seismic activity that began on Feb. 24, when a 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck near Iceland's Reykjanes Peninsula — about 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the capital city.

Earthquakes in the 5.0- to 5.9-magnitude range are considered moderate, and can result in slight damage to nearby buildings, according to Michigan Technological University. Fortunately, the quake's epicenter was far enough from the island's populated areas that no damage or injuries were reported.

The vast majority of the thousands of quakes that have followed the Feb. 24 event have been minor, with only two temblors registering above magnitude 5.0, according to the IMO. Still, residents of Reykjavik have felt the shaking day after day, with some "waking up with an earthquake, others [going] to sleep with an earthquake," Thorvaldur Thordarson, a professor of volcanology at the University of Iceland, told The New York Times.

While disconcerting, there is "nothing to worry about," Thordarson added, as the quakes have all been minor and distant enough to leave Reykjavik unharmed. (Meanwhile, the IMO issued a warning of increased landslide risk on the Reykjanes Peninsula, but had no further guidance for city-dwellers.)

In the past, seismic swarms like this one have been observed ahead of volcanic eruptions in southern Iceland, according to the IMO. Magma movement at the boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet likely caused the tremors, the agency said, which could fuel the five active volcanoes on the Reykjanes Peninsula.

If any of southern Iceland's volcanoes do blow their tops in the coming weeks, the eruptions will be both expected and manageable. According to Thordarson, southern Iceland's volcanoes experience "pulses" of activity every 800 years or so, and the last pulse occurred between the 11th and 13th centuries. Iceland is "on time" for another eruption cycle, he added.

Like the earthquakes, these potential eruptions should also pose little threat to the inhabitants of Iceland. Such eruptions would look nothing like the explosive 2010 eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which sent an ash column more than 5 miles (9 km) into the sky, forced hundreds of people to evacuate and halted European air traffic for six days, volcanologist Dave McGarvie wrote in The Conversation.

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"Eruptions in southwest Iceland are of a fluid rock type called basalt. This results in slow-moving streams of lava fed from gently exploding craters and cones," wrote McGarvie, of Lancaster University in Lancashire, England. "In Iceland, these are warmly called 'tourist eruptions' as they are relatively safe and predictable."

Currently, tourists entering Iceland are subject to a five-day quarantine period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so hopeful volcano watchers will have move fast, or settle for the webcam view.

SPACE WEATHER

First Ever Space Hurricane Spotted in Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

The 600-mile-wide swirling cloud of charged particles rained down electrons from several hundred miles above the North Pole  

An illustration based on the satellite observation data from the first confirmed instance of a space hurricane. (Qing-He Zhang, Shandong University)

By Alex Fox
SMITHSONIANMAG.COM
MARCH 5, 2021 

Researchers have used satellite observations to identify what they’re calling a “space hurricane” in Earth’s upper atmosphere, Nature reports. The results, published last month in the journal Nature Communications, represent the first time a space hurricane has ever been detected over our planet.

The team spotted the churning mass of charged particles—ionized gas called plasma—hovering several hundred miles above the North Pole during a retrospective analysis of data collected in August 2014, reports Doyle Rice for USA Today.

“Until now, it was uncertain that space plasma hurricanes even existed, so to prove this with such a striking observation is incredible,” Mike Lockwood, an astrophysicist at the University of Reading and co-author of the paper, in a statement.

The space hurricane described in the paper measured roughly 600 miles across and rained down charged electrons instead of water for nearly eight hours as it spun counter-clockwise at speeds up to 4,700 miles-per-hour, per the paper.

The 2014 space hurricane occurred during a period of relatively low geomagnetic activity, which created a puzzle, since it meant the space hurricane wasn’t the result of Earth’s ionosphere being lashed by the solar winds of a stormy sun.

“Tropical storms are associated with huge amounts of energy, and these space hurricanes must be created by unusually large and rapid transfer of solar wind energy and charged particles into the Earth’s upper atmosphere,” explains Lockwood in the statement. To try to figure out what was going on the team created a computer model, which suggested that the rapid transfer of energy may have occurred because of reconnecting interplanetary magnetic field lines, reports Michelle Starr for Science Alert.

The researchers say finding a space hurricane during a period of low geomagnetic activity increases the likelihood they are a common occurrence in the universe.

“Plasma and magnetic fields in the atmosphere of planets exist throughout the universe, so the findings suggest space hurricanes should be a widespread phenomena,” says Lockwood in the statement.

Researchers say this first observation is unlikely to be the last. Qing-He Zhang, a space scientist at Shandong University who led the new research, tells Becky Ferreira of Vice that his team has already identified “tens of space hurricane events” in the same trove of satellite data that produced this first confirmed instance of the phenomenon.

Studying these other space hurricanes is of interest not just for the sake of gaining knowledge about the universe, but because it could help us get better at predicting space weather, which can disrupt satellites, radar and communication systems vital to life on Earth.

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls QAnon followers 'gentle' patriots

Carlson says conspiracy theory believers – many of whom took part in Capitol attack – are ‘gentle people waving American flags’

Tucker Carlson’s comments about QAnon believers echoed remarks by Trump. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Martin Pengelly in New York

@MartinPengelly

Sat 6 Mar 2021 THE GUARDIAN

Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are “gentle people waving American flags”, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed on Friday night – two months since many joined a mob that stormed the US Capitol seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat, a riot in which five people died.

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“Do you ever notice,” Carlson asked his primetime audience, “how all the scary internet conspiracy theorists – the radical QAnon people – when you actually see them on camera or in jail cells, as a lot of them now are, are maybe kind of confused with the wrong ideas, but they’re all kind of gentle people now waving American flags? They like this country.”

Five people died as a direct result of the Capitol attack, one a police officer struck with a fire extinguisher, one a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement. The Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was reported to have followed internet conspiracy theories including QAnon.

Another rioter, Roseanne Boyland, was trampled by the mob while holding a Gadsden flag, a revolutionary era symbol of a snake and the legend “Don’t tread on me”. A friend said she had “watched her decline and go on these rabbit trails … this all really fucked with her head – the QAnon conspiracy theories, the elections, the unrest, the violence”.

The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that Trump is America’s true leader against a cabal of satanic liberal child-killers and paedophiles. He is not. No such cabal exists. Nonetheless, the theory has proliferated – even finding a sympathiser in Congress, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.

On 6 January, before the Capitol riot, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, which he claims was the result of massive electoral fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court. He escaped conviction in an impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the riot. But federal authorities have made more than 300 arrests.

Carlson spoke on Friday came a day after the US Capitol was closed, as law enforcement agencies warned of a threat from rightwing groups around the QAnon theory that Trump would return to power on 4 March. He did not. No attack materialised.

Carlson mocked reactions by Democrats and media coverage of the closure, adding familiar racially loaded provocation.

“By the time night fell and the city remained quiet,” he said, “except, of course, in the poor neighbourhoods where people are still shooting one another in ever-growing numbers and no one is noticing, MSNBC had decided that, in fact, they had saved the day.”

Carlson also said QAnon followers were “not torching Wendy’s. They’re not looting retail stores. They’re not shooting cops. No, that’s not them, it’s the other people doing that.”

Last summer, protests against police brutality and institutional racism sometimes produced civil unrest. A Wendy’s fast food restaurant burned in Atlanta; looting occurred in some cities. Police officers have been shot and sometimes killed amid tension and protest over police killings mostly of African American men.

The protests of 2020, which spread internationally after officers in Minneapolis killed an African American man, George Floyd, were multi-racial. Carlson’s other racially loaded comments on his prime time show include that immigration makes the US “dirtier”, a remark which prompted some advertisers to withdraw.

In some quarters, the Fox News host is seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, if Trump does not run again. Carlson’s comments about QAnon believers echoed remarks by Trump, who last August told reporters: “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.”

At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, Carlson scored 3% in a straw poll regarding the next presidential pick – way behind Trump but ahead of Mike Pence, the former vice-president some in the Capitol mob said they wanted to hang. QAnon followers promise that fate for many of Trump’s opponents.