Death toll rises to 4 in British Columbia flooding


An aerial photo shows damage from flooding on a highway in British Columbia, Canada. 

Photo courtesy of Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure/EPA-EFE

Nov. 20 (UPI) -- The death toll from torrential rains, flooding and mudslides in Canada's westernmost province, British Columbia, has risen to four people.

The bodies of three men were recovered from a mudslide on Duffy Lake Road, federal police confirmed Saturday, bringing the death toll to four after a woman's body was also recovered on Monday.

One of the male bodies was recovered on Wednesday and two more were recovered on Thursday, according to a statement from Lisa Lapointe, British Columbia's chief coroner.

Lapointe added that a forensic team also tried to locate a fifth missing person Friday, who they were unable to, the Vancouver Sun reported.

"Despite incredibly challenging conditions, the dedication and teamwork demonstrated by everyone involved in the search are a testament to the professionalism of each organization, and I wish to recognize the significant efforts of our partners throughout this difficult time," Lapointe said. "I also extend my heartfelt condolences to the families who are now grieving the sudden and unexpected death of their loved one, and to the family of the missing person we have so far been unable to locate."

Other roads impacted by the landslides this week included Coquihalla, and Highway 7, where 275 people were trapped in their vehicles between two slides before a helicopter rescue.

Premier John Horgan declared a state of emergency Wednesday, explaining in a press conference that the once-in-a-500-year natural disaster has devastated entire communities, forced thousands to evacuate, and road closures and mudslides stranded others.

The extreme weather also impacted supply chains.

The state of emergency was expected to last at least two weeks to help with rebuilding.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday military personnel were deployed to assist in the rescue and rebuilding efforts.

Doctors calling on Canadian government to take action against abusive treatment

CTV News Edmonton
Updated Nov. 18, 2021 

Dr. Alika Lafontaine in Grande Prairie, Alta., says he's been scratched, spit on, swung at and called a bad father at work.

The abuse, he says, comes from patients or their families, and sometimes random people on the internet, whose stress could be exacerbated by a health concern or the pandemic.

"When you come through those hospital doors, I recognize that in lots of ways I'm your lifeline and gateway to better health. And because of that, I personally always had a very high threshold for these types of incidents and situations. I think my colleagues, as well," he told CTV News Edmonton in an interview on Thursday.

The Canadian Medical Association says is asking the Canadian government for protection from those they are helping.

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"We do know when protests were happening outside hospitals not too long ago, that there were objects that were thrown. People were shoved. Other incidents that would be classified as physical violence in all other settings," Lafontaine said.

Specifically, the CMA wants the Liberals to follow through on a promise to legislate protections for hospitals and hospital workers. The association believes creating a new offence in the Criminal Code would disincentivize harassment, threats and violence by the public.

"Just because you walk onto hospital grounds or in hospital doors, the expectation should be that you act the same way as you would just interacting with an average Canadian," Lafontaine told CTV News Edmonton.

The CMA has no hard data about the frequency of these types of incidents.

In a study published earlier in the year, one in four American physicians reported being attacked on social media in 2019.

A related factor is that abusive treatment isn't recorded as often as it occurs, the CMA believes. Not only is it -- as Lafontaine himself said -- considered a part of the job, there is no clear mechanism to report and address a problem without fear of retaliation.

The Grande Prairie doctor says he knows colleagues who have shut down their social media accounts or created anonymous profiles because of online harassment, and others who avoid certain topics for fear of how patients will react.

"That doesn't happen in isolation. All these things kind of collect and aggregate together until they spill over into real world incidents that actually cause great harm," Lafontaine said.

"Threats of violence -- whether real or perceived -- are just another layer that will eventually lead to providers walking away from their jobs, changing the character of the type of clinical care that they provide. These are the types of things we can't afford in the midst of all these parallel crises."

Lafontaine says the CMA has heard positive feedback from the federal justice ministry, lending hope a change will soon be included in the legislative agenda.

In a statement, the press secretary of Canada's minister of justice and attorney general reiterated the government was committed to making it illegal to both block access to a health facility and intimidate or threaten health-care workers.

"We are currently looking at all options to make that promise a reality as soon as possible," Chantalle Aubertin wrote.

"There is absolutely no place for intimidation or threats to our hardworking health care workers and anyone seeking health services, particularly at hospitals and clinics."

The CMA is also asking websites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to develop a plan to combat the harassment and threats that take place on their platforms.

"At the end of the day, protecting health providers is really about helping and protecting patients, as well," Lafontaine said.

With files from CTV News Edmonton's Amanda Anderson

Dangerous and dirty: 7 myths about hydrogen power debunked

Hydrogen power is a large part of net-zero energy plans – but is it really cleaner than fossil fuels? And will it ever be economically viable?


By Marco Alverá

BBC
Published: 18th November, 2021 

Hydrogen’s story goes back 13.7 billion years, to a time when the Universe was new-born, and very hot.


Hydrogen emerged from that primordial furnace in far larger quantities than any other element, and even today it dominates the cosmos. It is the main ingredient of stars, including over 90 per cent of our Sun, and a thin mist of it is scattered through space. About 60 per cent of the atoms in our bodies are hydrogen, and of course it is one of the two key ingredients in water.

Hydrogen is the simplest atom: just a single proton orbited by a single electron. It is odourless, colourless and very energetic.

Hydrogen makes an excellent fuel. You can heat your home or cook a meal by burning hydrogen, the same way many homes burn natural gas. One kilogram of hydrogen can release enough energy to drive a typical car for 130km or provide two days of heating for an average household. And of course, when hydrogen is burned in air, the only emission is water.

Or you can convert its energy into electricity, in what’s called a fuel cell. It performs essentially the same chemistry as a flame: combining hydrogen with oxygen to make water and release energy; except that in a fuel cell the energy goes into electricity instead of heat.

A big bonus for fuel cells is that they are typically very efficient. About 60 per cent of the energy in hydrogen can be converted to electricity to drive a car, compared to only 20 per cent of the energy in petrol. So, hydrogen vehicles can be three times more efficient.

Hydrogen is now set to play a crucial role helping us to tackle the climate crisis and wean the world off greenhouse gas emissions. In a net-zero CO2 world, studies estimate that hydrogen could account for up to a quarter of our overall energy needs. Yet, despite its central role in our carbon-free future, a number of myths about hydrogen persist.

Myth #1: Hydrogen is too dangerous to ever be used on a large scale

The Hindenburg airship disaster and the explosive power of the hydrogen bomb (also known as the H-Bomb) have done little for hydrogen’s public safety image; but it’s an unwarranted reputation.

The 1937 Hindenburg disaster, in which an airship lifted by hydrogen gas caught fire, killing 36 people, is still held up as an example of the element’s explosive properties.

Whether the airship’s hydrogen supply was the source of the fire or not remains controversial – there are several forensic examinations of the live pictures which show the fabric cover of the airship burning for about half a minute as the airship descended slowly to the ground, not the hydrogen exploding. All this is somewhat beside the point: nobody today is talking about flying around using giant bags of hydrogen gas.

Read more about hydrogen power:
Why we need a hydrogen power network to reach net-zero carbon
UK’s first hydrogen train to make its debut
Airbus reveals zero-emission hydrogen plane concepts

Neither is today’s push for hydrogen power linked to the blast of the H-Bomb.

The H-bomb is based on nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun. This is only achieved under extreme temperature and pressure many thousands of times higher than anything that will ever happen in your car.

Like any technology, hydrogen is not and never will be completely risk-free. Hydrogen can ignite anywhere between 4 per cent and 74 per cent concentration, giving it the widest flammability range of any fuel. Hydrogen can also detonate into an explosion (where the flame travels at supersonic speed) at concentrations of 18 to 59 per cent. And it doesn’t need much of a spark. At its most flammable concentration, of 28 per cent, a tiny spark with just 0.02 millijoules of energy is enough to ignite the stuff. Its flame, which is invisible, propagates very quickly.

The good news with hydrogen is that it disperses quickly. If it leaks into the open air, it rises (being much lighter than air) and its concentration very rapidly falls below the explosive level.

In a hydrogen-powered car, the type of tanks being developed to store the fuel are virtually indestructible. And even if the tank is pierced, hydrogen dissipates almost immediately.

This means that hydrogen, carefully managed, need be no more risky than the fuels we use today.

Myth #2: Hydrogen is a dirty fuel that is part of the problem, not the solution

This myth comes from a misunderstanding. Proponents of this theory look at how hydrogen is traditionally produced, rather than the green technology that is beginning to take off.

Most hydrogen today is produced using a process called steam methane reforming, which combines methane and water to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2), a powerful greenhouse gas. The product is known as grey hydrogen. But that is changing.

Instead of using fossil methane as our hydrogen source, we can use electricity to break down water (H2O) into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2). If the electricity comes from a renewable or low-carbon source, then this is clean ‘green hydrogen’, with essentially zero carbon emissions.

Read more about green energy:
Renewables overtake fossil fuels for UK energy output
New simulation shows 100 per cent renewable energy future

Green hydrogen is becoming an increasingly attractive option because the cost of renewable energy is plummeting. Ten years ago, renewables such as wind and solar were expensive, at around £400 per megawatt hour. In 2021, a solar auction was won in Saudi Arabia, for the equivalent of around £7.30 per megawatt hour.

At the same time, the machines (electrolysers) used to make green hydrogen will become much cheaper as the industry grows in size, and develops more efficient equipment, or larger equipment with economies of scale. Green hydrogen can soon be cheaper than grey.

There are some other colourful options in the mix, too.

Blue hydrogen is made using methane (CH4) in a similar way to grey hydrogen, but instead of releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere, this is captured and buried underground or, even better, turned into new products such as plastic and construction materials. Blue hydrogen has low CO2 emissions provided the natural gas used to make it does not leak when it is produced and transported, and that a high proportion of the CO2 can be captured.

Next up is turquoise, which uses a process called pyrolysis to heat up methane in the absence of oxygen, leaving hydrogen and the carbon as a solid material that can be used for construction, as well as making tyres.

The rainbow is completed by pink hydrogen, which uses electricity powered by nuclear energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using the electrolysis process.

Myth #3: Hydrogen is inefficient and not economically viable

Of course, using renewable electricity directly is more energy-efficient than first converting it to hydrogen, then using that for power.

But for many things, direct electrification is impossible or unfeasible. Heavy industry such as steelmaking needs chemical inputs, and green hydrogen can replace CO2-emitting metallurgical coal or fossil-fuel based chemicals. Many industries also need high temperatures, which are expensive to produce with electrical heating. Long-range transport such as trains or shipping, and winter heating in many temperate areas such as the UK, have such huge energy demands than it is impractical to store enough electrical energy; but hydrogen is easy to store in pressurised tanks, or large caverns excavated in rock salt deep underground.

The Hindenburg airship caught fire in 1937 and sparked worries about using hydrogen in passenger vehicles © Getty Images

Using hydrogen to store or transport energy in a smart combination with renewables will lead to the lowest-cost energy system, especially considering that hydrogen is also set to become a lot cheaper.

As more countries set hydrogen targets in their energy system, more companies announce new hydrogen-based projects to switch from fossil carbon fuels, and more investors recognise the financial potential of hydrogen, the industry is scaling up at speed, and that will bring down the cost of electrolysers used to make hydrogen from water.

New, increasingly ambitious targets show hydrogen’s potential. Price is an important blockage, with blue hydrogen in 2021 costing about £5/kg. The Green Hydrogen Catapult, a coalition of companies, is aiming to contribute to more than halving the price of hydrogen to $2/kg (£1.50/kg) by 2026, and the Biden administration has launched an ‘Earthshot’ plan to see hydrogen priced at $1/1kg (£0.75/kg) by 2030.

Myth #4: Using hydrogen at scale will require a whole new energy infrastructure

This is fundamentally untrue, at least in Europe.

There was a concern that hydrogen could infiltrate the steel of pipelines, making them brittle. But experiments and analyses of existing pipes have shown that in softer grades of steel, this happens very slowly, and happily much of the long-distance pipeline grid in Europe is made from such soft steel, with very thick walls, which can safely hold hydrogen for several decades.

For low-pressure distribution in urban areas, much of the UK and some of Europe has since 2000 been quietly replacing iron gas pipes with yellow polythene pipes – which are butt-welded end-to-end for a perfect join.

This was started as a project to eliminate all the leaks in a natural gas distribution system, but it now turns out to be the perfect preparation to transmit hydrogen to businesses and homes. And it saves an estimate £20 billion in the UK, by not needing to dig up the roads and bury new pipes.

Myth #5: Transporting hydrogen over huge distances is very expensive

Again, this is false. Hydrogen is an excellent energy carrier. That means it can help us to harness the energy of the world’s windiest and sunniest places – from the hottest deserts to the wildest oceans.

Take a solar farm in North Africa. The best way of getting that energy under the Mediterranean Sea to Europe, where demand is high, is not an expensive new network of electricity cables but through existing natural gas pipelines.

It is really well understood that transporting liquids or gases over hundreds or several thousands of kilometres can be done by pipes with minimal gas losses and energy input to push the gas along – less than 1 per cent of the energy in the hydrogen fuel.

By contrast, shipping of hydrogen requires specialist expensive tanker boats, a lot of energy to compress and cool the hydrogen to liquid, and time to load and unload the tanks and energy to warm and re-gasify the hydrogen. This works, but is best for very long distances.

Read more about alternative energy sources:
The future of Formula E: Where next for electric motorsport?
How does solar energy actually work?
Europe has enough untapped windfarm capacity to meet global energy needs

Myth #6: Transport can be fully electrified, so why do we need hydrogen?

Some forms of transport can’t be fully electrified. Airliners need to carry enough energy to take them thousands of miles, which is impossible using batteries for the foreseeable future. Liquid green or blue hydrogen, or fuels based on hydrogen, can be a solution to clean air travel.

Cargo ships will struggle to cross great oceans on battery power, and again hydrogen can be the answer, in the form of ammonia, which is easy to store as a liquid, and can be used directly as fuel in slightly modified diesel engines.

On the ground, vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells have some advantages over battery EVs. Hydrogen is very quick to refill – in minutes, rather than hours for a battery charge. It is also far lighter than batteries, an important asset when it comes to a vehicle’s range and decreasing road damage. This makes it appealing to replace todays diesel heavy transport such as trucks and some trains, with Daimler, Volvo and Scania already looking at the technology.

Myth #7: If hydrogen is so fantastic, we would have started to use it years ago

In the 1874 novel The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne imagined that water, decomposed by electricity into its primitive elements, would “one day be employed as fuel, that the hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it… will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light.”

We’ve only recently started to make Verne’s vision a reality because, unlike ready-to-burn fossil fuels, clean hydrogen isn’t freely available: you have to put in energy to free it from its watery prison.

What’s changed is that renewable power has become cheap, the technology of electrolysers has matured, and we have finally woken up to the profound global peril of greenhouse gas emissions.

About our experts

Marco Alverá is the author of The Hydrogen Revolution (£20, Hachette) and currently CEO of Snam, one of the world’s leading energy infrastructure operators.

He studied at LSE reading economics and worked at Enel, the world’s largest renewable-energy company, before moving to Snam. He is currently a Visiting Fellow of the University of Oxford.

The accuracy of this article has been checked by Stuart Haszeldine, a Professor of Carbon Capture and Storage at the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh.

A LESSON FOR ALBERTA

‘Confusing blue and green hydrogen is dangerous’

Australia is ignoring the environmental impact of blue hydrogen when compared with its green alternative, claims a new study

Kiran Bose
Friday 19 November 2021

Image: Shutterstock

A new study picks apart Australia’s new hydrogen strategy, which will see it produce blue hydrogen made from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies – claiming it is not distinguishing the detrimental affect blue hydrogen can have on the planet, when compared with green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen is where hydrogen is produced through electrolysis that uses renewable energy.

The study from the Australian National University (ANU) warns that using the term ‘clean hydrogen’ when referring to both processes could lead to more emissions; as people become less aware that one poses a threat to the environment.

Author of the study, Dr Thomas Longden, explained: “Australia’s hydrogen strategy doesn’t make a distinction between green and blue hydrogen; what the strategy discusses is clean hydrogen.

“By using the term ‘clean’ for both renewable-based and natural gas-based hydrogen, the danger is that we could establish a hydrogen industry that actually leads to an increase in emissions.”

The study argues that blue hydrogen leads to more fugitive emissions, which is when methane is leaked into the environment as a by-product of extracting natural gas.

Methane is responsible for a third of human-induced global warming and more than 80 countries recently agreed to cut emissions levels by 30% at the COP26 climate summit, however, Australia was not one of them.

The paper argues that even though CCS is a good way to remove carbon from the atmosphere, using it to create hydrogen is worse for the amount of methane being emitted – as more natural gas is needed to fuel the process.

Co-author Dr Fiona Beck said: “Fugitive emissions are the second largest source of methane pollution and rates are rising due to the expansion of unconventional natural gas production that uses fracking.

“Developing a new, large-scale, low emission hydrogen industry based on natural gas undermines these efforts and ignores the dangers that fugitive emissions pose to our environment.”

“High capture rates above 90% are needed for natural gas-based hydrogen to be considered low carbon,” Dr Longden concluded.

 

Warmer soil stores less carbon: study

by University of Exeter

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Global warming will cause the world's soil to release carbon, new research shows.

Scientists used data on more than 9,000 soil samples from around the world, and found that carbon storage "declines strongly" as average temperatures increase.

This is an example of a "positive feedback", where global warming causes more carbon to be released into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.

Importantly, the amount of carbon that could be released depends on the soil type, with coarse-textured (low-clay) soils losing three times as much carbon as fine-textured (clay-rich) soils.

The researchers, from the University of Exeter and Stockholm University, say their findings help to identify vulnerable carbon stocks and provide an opportunity to improve Earth System Models (ESMs) that simulate future climate change.

"Because there is more carbon stored in soils than there is in the atmosphere and all the trees on the planet combined, releasing even a small percentage could have a significant impact on our climate," said Professor Iain Hartley of Exeter's College of Life and Environmental Sciences.

"Our analysis identified the carbon stores in coarse-textured soils at high-latitudes (far from the Equator) as likely to be the most vulnerable to climate change.

"Such stores, therefore, may require particular attention given the high rates of warming taking place in cooler regions.

"In contrast, we found carbon stores in fine-textured soils in tropical areas to be less vulnerable to climate warming."

The data on the 9,300 soil profiles came from the World Soil Information database, with the study focusing on the top 50cm of soil.

By comparing carbon storage in places with different average temperatures, the researchers estimated the likely impact of global warming.

For every 10°C of increase in temperature, average carbon storage (across all soils) fell by more than 25%.

"Even bleak forecasts do not anticipate this level of warming, but we used this scale to give us confidence that the effects we observed were caused by temperature rather than other variables," Professor Hartley said.

"Our results make it clear that, as temperatures rise, more and more carbon is release from soil.

"It's important to note that our study did not examine the timescales involved, and further research is needed to investigate how much carbon could be released this century."

The researchers found that their results could not be represented by an established ESM.

"This suggests that there is an opportunity to use the patterns we have observed to improve how models represent soils, and further reduce uncertainty in their projections," Professor Hartley said.

The differences in carbon storage based on soil texture occur because finer soils provide more mineral surface area for carbon-based organic material to bond to, reducing the ability of microbes to access and decompose it.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, is entitled: "Temperature effects on carbon storage are controlled by soil stabilisation capacities."

Warming of 2 C would release billions of tons of soil carbon

More information: Temperature effects on carbon storage are controlled by soil stabilisation capacities, Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-27101-1

Journal information: Nature Communications 

Provided by University of Exeter 

Green jobs and the green transition: A long, bumpy but exciting journey


By Bertrand Piccard and Maroš Šefčovič
Nov 16, 2021

"If we prepare for and manage the turbulences ahead, the green transition can be the market opportunity of the century," write Maroš Šefčovič and Bertrand Piccard. [European Union, 2019 / Source: EC - Audiovisual Service]

The green transition will profoundly impact Europe’s labour markets. While a few regions will be exposed to job losses in fossil fuel-reliant sectors like coal mining, the energy transition will keep generating demand for low- and medium-skilled roles, write Maroš Šefčovič and Bertrand Piccard.

Maroš Šefčovič is vice-president of the European Commission in charge of interinstitutional relations and foresight. Bertrand Piccard is the initiator behind Solar Impulse, the very first airplane capable of flying perpetually without fuel

It was not so long ago that the notion of an ecological transition remained intangible. We were unsure what it would look like or what it would require. All that has changed.

The decision by the European Commission President von der Leyen – the European Green Deal strategy towards “net-zero” by 2050 – has shown the EU’s “green” global leadership and changed the way the climate question is regarded. It has forced governments worldwide to re-assess what an ecological transition will mean for their economies and political relationships.

With the direction of travel set, we have embarked on a long and bumpy, but exciting journey commonly known as the “green transition”. It is worth reminding that this shift is unprecedented for any government: it has never been done before, and we are learning along the way.

It is not dissimilar to flying a solar aircraft, where you at times fly blind and rely on your instruments to feed the correct information so that you can keep on course to your goal. We need to predict turbulences and be best prepared to navigate through the crucial transitions Europe has embarked upon.

But first we need those instruments. This is why President von der Leyen made the bold decision to embed Strategic Foresight into EU policymaking and have the first-ever College member in charge of it.

Foresight tells us the inconvenient truth that the green transition, as it is the case for most epochal shifts, will not be easy. It dispels the myth that this journey will be for free.

The European Green Deal can be the EU’s growth strategy, benefitting our economies and quality of life, but will require substantial targeted investments and the right policy mix to succeed.

For instance, the risk of carbon leakage – the global relocation of energy-intensive sectors to regions with lower environmental standards – is a major concern, to be managed with the right policy mechanisms.

On the other hand, clean investments are now able to provide attractive returns, and this is in large part because technology is no longer the obstacle it once was. The effort by the Solar Impulse Foundation to identify more than 1,000 solutions that protect the environment and spur growth by generating profit proves just that.

Taken together and implemented across all sectors, these solutions can make a difference for both Europe’s competitiveness and climate action.

From packaging material based on sustainable wood fibres in Finland; to aerogels superinsulation products from recycled construction and demolition waste in France; to sodium-based solutions to mitigate pollutants for air emission control in Belgium.

Each solution grabs a few percent of dangerous emissions, reduces electricity needs by a few kilowatts, and brings us closer to the moment when we can leave fossil fuels in the ground.

This is why the Commission’s 2022 Strategic Foresight Report will focus on the “twinning”, that is how the technological transition can help us reinforce the green one – and vice versa.

Another silver lining comes from the Commission’s recent Green Jobs foresight study.

The green transition will profoundly impact Europe’s labour markets. For example, more ambitious climate targets alone, delivering a 55% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in the EU by 2030, could lead to a net increase of up to 884,000 jobs.

This is positive, considering that entire industries may be left behind. It suggests that the green transition is mainly about managing the transformation across sectors and regions, as employment is redirected towards cleaner production to fuel Europe’s flight towards the net-zero.

Regionally, the job impact of the green transition will be unevenly spread: a few regions will be exposed to job losses in fossil fuel-based sectors, like coal mining and manufactured fuels, due to the need to promote alternative fuels in transportation. Other regions will see new jobs in renewable energy and the Circular Economy.

Interestingly, if all countries stick to the climate targets in the Paris Agreement, the Fit-for-55 Package could also lead to employment gains in energy-intensive industries, such as a 7 % rise in the ferrous metals sector.

An important conclusion of the foresight study is related to skills: the green transition is not only about jobs for highly-skilled people, with all the rest automated. Rather, it will keep generating demand for low- and medium-skilled roles in the renewable energy sector, with 75% of employees expected to be manual workers and technicians in 2050.

As such, technological skills will be in high demand, and education and retraining will be key to ensure successful job migration from polluting activities to growing green sectors.

In conclusion, the significant economic shift related to the green transition in Europe will come – if Foresight guides our future policies, including re-skilling – with a net gain in jobs in a fair sectoral and regional rebalancing.

Moreover, new technologies can fuel our journey towards net-zero in a cost-effective manner.

That really is an extraordinary silver lining unveiled by Strategic Foresight, which, bouncing forward from inconvenient truths ahead, lends credence to the idea that, if we prepare for and manage the turbulences ahead, the green transition can be the market opportunity of the century.

DISCLAIMER: All opinions in this column reflect the views of the author(s), not of EURACTIV Media network.

America's Terrible God Is a Weapons-Maker

Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you worship. In that context, there can't be the slightest doubt.


U.S. tanks appear during a military training exercise in May of 2016 in Vaziani, Georgia. (Photo: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

WILLIAM ASTORE

November 16, 2021 by TomDispatch

Who is America's god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn't serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of "turn the other cheek"? The one who found his disciples among society's outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break.

There can't be the slightest doubt: America worships its Pentagod and the weapons and wars that feed it.

America's true god is a deity of wrath, whose keenest followers profit mightily from war and see such gains as virtuous, while its most militant disciples, a crew of losing generals and failed Washington officials, routinely employ murderous violence across the globe. It contains multitudes, its name is legion, but if this deity must have one name, citing a need for some restraint, let it be known as the Pentagod.

Yes, the Pentagon is America's true god. Consider that the Biden administration requested a whopping $753 billion for military spending in fiscal year 2022 even as the Afghan War was cratering. Consider that the House Armed Services Committee then boosted that blockbuster budget to $778 billion in September. Twenty-five billion dollars extra for "defense," hardly debated, easily passed, with strong bipartisan support in Congress. How else, if not religious belief, to explain this, despite the Pentagod's prodigal $8 trillion wars over the last two decades that ended so disastrously? How else to account for future budget projections showing that all-American deity getting another $8 trillion or so over the next decade, even as the political parties fight like rabid dogs over roughly 15% of that figure for much-needed domestic improvements?

Paraphrasing Joe Biden, show me your budget and I'll tell you what you worship. In that context, there can't be the slightest doubt: America worships its Pentagod and the weapons and wars that feed it.

Prefabricated War, Made in the U.S.A.

I confess that I'm floored by this simple fact: for two decades in which "forever war" has served as an apt descriptor of America's true state of the union, the Pentagod has failed to deliver on any of its promises. Iraq and Afghanistan? Just the most obvious of a series of war-on-terror quagmires and failures galore.

That ultimate deity can't even pass a simple financial audit to account for what it does with those endless funds shoved its way, yet our representatives in Washington keep doing so by the trillions. Spectacular failure after spectacular failure and yet that all-American god just rolls on, seemingly unstoppable, unquenchable, rarely questioned, never penalized, always on top.

Talk about blind faith!

The Pentagod advances a peculiar form of war, one that would puzzle most classic military strategists. In fact, its version of war is beyond strategy of the Clausewitzian sort. I think of it as prefabricated war, borrowing a term from the inestimable Ann Jones's recent piece for TomDispatch on our Afghan disaster. It's a term pregnant with meaning.

Prefabricated war is how the Pentagod has ruled for so endlessly long. There is, as a start, the fabrication of false causes for war. In Vietnam, it was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the "attacks" on U.S. Navy ships that never happened. In Afghanistan, it was vengeance for the 9/11 attacks against a people who neither planned nor committed them. In Iraq, it was the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein didn't have. Real causes don't matter much to America's war god since false ones can always be fabricated, after which enough true believers—especially in Congress—will embrace them fervently and faithfully.

But prefabricated war doesn't just start with or consist of manufactured causes. It's fabricated far ahead of time in a colossal cathedral of violence—President Eisenhower's military-industrial-congressional complex—that sends its missionaries and minions around the planet on a mission of global reach, global power, and full-spectrum dominance. War is prefabricated on 750 military bases scattered across the globe on every continent except Antarctica, in America's giant arms corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon, and by Special Operations forces that act much like the Jesuits of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, spreading the one true faith to 150 countries.

Since America's war god is also a jealous deity, it insists on dominating all domains—not just land, sea, and air but space as well. Even more ethereal realms like cyberspace and virtual/augmented realities must be captured and controlled. It seeks omnipotence and omniscience in the name of your safety and, if you let it, will also know everything about you, while having the power to smite you, should you stop blindly worshipping it and feeding it more money.

Yet, as strong as it may be, its urge to fabricate threats and exaggerate vulnerabilities never ends. China and Russia are allegedly the biggest threats of the moment, two "near-peer" rivals supposedly driving a new cold war. China, for example, now reportedly has a navy of 355 ships, an ostensibly alarming development (even if those vessels are nowhere near as powerful as their American equivalents). That naturally requires yet more shipbuilding by the U.S. Navy.

Russia may have an economy that's smaller than California's, but it's allegedly leading in hypersonic missile development (and China, too, has now entered the fray with, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs put it recently, something "very close" to a "Sputnik moment"). As a result, the Pentagod demands yet more money to bridge this alleged missile gap. Like earlier bomber and missile gaps from the previous Cold War, such vulnerabilities exist mostly in the minds of its proselytizers.

And in that context, here's an article of faith rarely questioned by true believers: while America prides itself on having the world's best and most powerful military, it perennially declares itself in danger of being overmatched. As a result, from aircraft carriers to stealth bombers to nuclear missiles, ever more weaponry must be fabricated. Who cares that it takes the next 11 nations combined to come close to matching the American "defense" budget. Beware the cry, "O ye of little faith!" should you dare to question any of the Pentagod's fabricated "needs."

The notion of prefab war goes deeper still, notes Ann Jones. As she wrote me recently:

"I would also carry the implications of prefabricated war to its source in the industrial world that does the material fabrication that dictates the strategy and style of war and pockets the profits.

"In Afghanistan prefabrication meant forcing Afghan soldiers to drop their trusty Kalashnikovs and retrain endlessly on new U.S. rifles (I forget the model) so heavy and temperamental as to be close to useless; they were particularly sensitive to dust, which in Afghanistan is the principal constituent of the air. The U.S. also trained Afghan soldiers how to enter houses, to search inside and kill every occupant; it erected on the training ground some prefabricated wooden houses for the practice of home invasions. (I witnessed this stuff myself.)"

To her point, I'd add the notion of a prefab "government in a box," a bizarre aspect of the Afghan surge early in President Barack Obama's first term in office. The idea was to drop ready-made mini-democracies into less-than-stable regions of Afghanistan that had been conditionally secured by U.S. troops. Those prefab governments would then supposedly provide a democratic toehold, freeing American troops to do what they did best: apply "kinetic" force elsewhere through massive firepower.

But the Pentagod didn't deliver democracy in a box to Afghanistan. Instead, it brought prefab war, made in the U.S.A., exported globally. Or, as Ann Jones put it to me, "The Afghan war was pulled from a box to be used to pave the way for the Big Box war already planned for Iraq by the Bush/Cheney administration." That such a "Big Box" war then failed so dismally led, of course, to no diminution in the Pentagod's power or authority, blind devotion being what it is.

Judging by the Vietnam, Afghan, and Iraq wars, a shoddy yet destructive form of prefab war has been the ultimate American export of these years.

Losing My Religion

I was once an acolyte of the Pentagod. I served for 20 years in the U.S. Air Force, working in Cheyenne Mountain near the end of the original Cold War. I hunkered down there waiting for the nuclear Armageddon that fortunately never came (though the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was certainly a near miss). A cathedral of power, Cheyenne Mountain could have served as the ultimate temple of doom, but America ultimately "won" the Cold War when the Soviet Union imploded after a disastrous conflict in Afghanistan. That proved a setback indeed for a deity that feared the very thought of a "peace dividend" in the wind. Fortunately, that singular moment of victory proved only temporary, as America's incessant conflicts since Desert Storm in 1991 have shown.

In 1992, the year after the Soviet collapse, I found myself walking around the Trinity test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where the first atomic blast rumbled and roared in July 1945. You might say that, before using two atomic bombs on the Japanese, this country used the first one on ourselves, or at least on all the creatures living near ground zero at that desert site.

"I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," mused J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, after his "gadget" exploded, irradiating the surrounding desert in a historically unprecedented way. Oppenheimer himself emerged a changed man. He tried unsuccessfully to block the development of the far more powerful hydrogen bomb, an act of clarity and conscience for which, he would be accused of communist sympathies in 1953 and stripped of his security clearance. He and others who followed learned how unwise it is to resist America's god of war and its drive for yet more power.

During that same trip in 1992, I visited Los Alamos National Laboratory, the site where those atomic "gadgets" were first assembled. Fifty years earlier, during World War II, America began to bring together its best and brightest to create a device more destructive than any ever built. They succeeded, in a sense, in tapping into the power of the gods, even if in a remarkably one-sided fashion, gaining an astonishing ability to destroy, but none whatsoever to create. Armageddon, not genesis, became and remains the Pentagod's ultimate power.

Back in 1992, the mood at Los Alamos was glum. A national laboratory to create ever newer, more powerful nuclear warheads and weapons didn't seem to have a promising future with the demise of the Soviet Union. Where, then, did the future lie? Perhaps the best and brightest could turn their thoughts from bombs to consumer goods, or computers, or even what we today call green-energy technologies?

But no such luck. So here I sit, 30 years later, a bit heavier, my hair and beard greying, having lost whatever faith I had. Why? Because the god I served always wanted more. Even now, it wants to spend up to $2 trillion in the coming decades to build "modernized" versions of the nuclear weaponry that I knew, even then, could only create a darker future.

Consider the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, or GBSD. It's an innocuous acronym for what someday will be hundreds of land-based nuclear missiles, one leg of this country's nuclear "triad" (the others being the Navy's Trident submarine force and the Air Force's strategic bombers). Deploying the GBSD, the Air Force plans to replace its "aging" ICBMs with "youthful" ones, even though such missiles, old or new, were rendered redundant decades ago by equally accurate ones that could be launched from stealthy submarines.

No matter. Northrop Grumman won the contract at a potential lifecycle cost of $264 billion. Think of those future missiles and the silos where the present ones sit in flyover states like Wyoming and North Dakota as so many subterranean chapels of utter destructive power, serviced by dedicated Air Force crews who believe that deterrence is best achieved by a policy that once was all-too-accurately known as MAD, or mutual assured destruction.

Yet, before I bled Air Force blue, before I was stationed in a cathedral of military power under who knows how many tons of solid granite, I was raised a Roman Catholic. Recently, I caught the words of Pope Francis, God's representative on earth for Catholic believers. Among other entreaties, he asked "in the name of God" for "arms manufacturers and dealers to completely stop their activity, because it foments violence and war, it contributes to those awful geopolitical games which cost millions of lives displaced and millions dead."

Which country has the most arms manufacturers? Which routinely and proudly leads the world in weapons exports? And which spends more on wars and weaponry than any other, with hardly a challenge from Congress or a demurral from the mainstream media?

And as I stared into the abyss created by those questions, who stared back at me but, of course, the Pentagod.

© 2021 TomDispatch.com

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), who has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.

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'Now Fire DeJoy': Biden Moves to Replace Trump-Picked Postal Board Members

"We need a Postal Service board of governors that is committed to replacing Mr. DeJoy with a postmaster general who will protect and strengthen the Postal Service, not undermine and sabotage it."


U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on February 24, 2021. (Photo: Jim Watson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON

November 19, 2021

President Joe Biden won applause Friday for moving to replace Ron Bloom and John Barger, two members of the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors who've shown unwavering loyalty to scandal-plagued Postmaster General Louis DeJoy even as he's dramatically worsened mail delivery performance.

"It's affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were 'tickled pink' with DeJoy's actions."

But replacing Bloom—a Democrat and the USPS board's current chairman—and Barger, a Republican, is just the first step toward rescuing the mail service from the ongoing right-wing assault, progressive advocates and Democratic lawmakers stressed Friday.

Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) called Biden's decision to replace Bloom "great news," slamming the outgoing postal board chair as DeJoy's "chief enabler and cheerleader."

"Now fire DeJoy," Pascrell added.

On Friday, Biden nominated former General Services Administration official Daniel Tangherlini and Derek Kan—a Republican and the former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget—to replace Bloom and Barger.

If Biden's picks are confirmed by the Senate, his nominees will have a majority on the nine-member postal board—enough votes to remove DeJoy.



Bloom and Barger were both nominated to the postal board by former President Donald Trump, who repeatedly attempted to sabotage the USPS ahead of the 2020 presidential election, which relied heavily on mail-in ballots amid the coronavirus pandemic.

DeJoy—a Trump donor—was selected to head the USPS by the postal board in May of 2020. Upon taking charge of the agency in June, DeJoy wasted little time moving to overhaul mail service operations and slow package delivery.

Last month, DeJoy's decade-long plan for the USPS took effect as experts and Democratic lawmakers warned the changes would ensure the continued decline of Postal Service performance for years to come.

Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, told Common Dreams on Friday that Bloom and Barger "disqualified themselves from serving in positions of public trust by their enthusiastic support for Trump donor Louis DeJoy despite all the ways DeJoy has harmed the American people through his dictates, including charging people more for slower and less reliable mail."

"They failed to object to his 'ten-year' plan to weaken the service standards or to DeJoy continuing to receive millions each year from an arrangement he has with his former company, a contractor of the Postal Service that got a $100+ million contract to outsource postal work, among other things," Graves noted. "It's affirmatively good to remove Bloom and Barger from the board, men who said they were 'tickled pink' with DeJoy's actions."

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While Graves expressed concern over Biden's choice to replace Bloom and Barger with Tangherlini and Kan—calling them "not the right people at all" for the roles—she said the transition will be "an opportunity for the Postal Service to move in a new direction, given the destructive path chosen by DeJoy and enabled by Trump's appointees."

The Washington Post reported Friday that Biden's decision to remove Bloom—who's currently serving a one-year holdover term that expires in December—"came as a surprise to the postal industry and policymakers in Washington."

"Bloom as recently as last week told confidants he expected to be renominated," according to the Post. "Last week, Trump appointees on the governing board reelected him as chairman over the objections of Biden-appointed Democrats."

The Post noted that at least four members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—have pointed to Bloom's enthusiastic support for DeJoy as a reason to oust him from the postal board.

"We need a Postal Service board of governors that is committed to replacing Mr. DeJoy with a postmaster general who will protect and strengthen the Postal Service, not undermine and sabotage it," Sanders told the Post.

In a statement on Friday, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said he's "tickled pink that two DeJoy enablers" are on the verge of being replaced.

"This action is a good thing for the Postal Service and, most importantly, a great thing for the American people," he added.

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Biden nominates two to USPS board of governors, replacing DeJoy allies


U.S. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on February 24. 

File Photo by Graeme Jennings/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 19 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden on Friday nominated two Derek Kan and Daniel Tangherlini to positions on the U.S. Postal Service's governing board.

They'll replace two allies of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy whose terms are expiring -- Ron Bloom and John Barger.

The announcement comes after more than a year of scrutiny of DeJoy, whose plans to cut costs at the USPS have led to slower mail delivery times and worries over mail-in ballots ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

The FBI, meanwhile, launched an investigation over the summer into DeJoy over an alleged private sector campaign finance scheme. He was accused of pressuring employees to donate to Republican candidates in exchange for reimbursement through bonuses while he was leading North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics from 2000-14.

The USPS board of governors selects the postmaster general and even after the replacement of two of DeJoy's allies, his position is likely still secure. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that Biden doesn't have the authority to replace DeJoy, but that the administration is "deeply troubled" by the job he's doing.

Biden Applauded for Reversing Trump Assault on 'Priceless' Tongass National Forest

"The Tongass National Forest's indispensable habitats serve as home to a multitude of species and also play a vital role in helping fight global warming," said one conservation advocate.


A brown bear fishing for salmon in a creek at Pavlof Harbor in Chatham Strait, Tongass National Forest in Alaska. (Photo: Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images)

JULIA CONLEY

November 19, 2021

Environmental protection groups on Friday applauded the United States Department of Agriculture's proposal to reinstate a 20-year-old rule protecting North America's largest temperate rainforest, the Tongass National Forest in Alaska—which climate scientists say plays a crucial role in keeping carbon from entering the atmosphere.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the administration plans to restore the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, commonly known as the "roadless rule," which was originally put in place by the Clinton administration in 2001, aiming to protect about 9.3 million acres in the forest from development by loggers and other industries.

"We need to continue to protect old forests and big trees, such as those in the Tongass, to ensure our future includes essential species and a livable climate."
If finalized, the rule will protect more than half of the 17-acre forest, which contains about five million acres of old-growth trees.

Alaska Native leaders and conservation groups have long demanded the federal government maintain the roadless rule and other protections for the forest, which ensures food sovereignty for tribes including the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and provides a habitat for more than 400 species of fish and other wildlife.

"Having protections for close to 10 million acres of old growth means that we have the resources needed to continue teaching our traditional practices, continue harvesting our traditional foods and medicines and to not only prosper as Indigenous people, but to come to the world's aid right now so people can learn our ways of living and our ways of being," Marina Anderson, tribal administrator for the Organized Village of Kasaan, told The Washington Post. "In the future, we would hope that tribal governments are listened to, and properly consulted with, in the beginning."

The roadless rule was rescinded by former President Donald Trump last fall—a decision that was condemned as "vandalism" by climate activist and author Bill McKibben. The gutting of the rule left the forest vulnerable to the pollution that comes with logging and road building as well as soil erosion and the destruction of natural habitats.

Tongass also serves as an important carbon sink for North America, with its trees absorbing 8% of the carbon stored in all of the continental United States' forests combined. More than 95% of the public comments submitted to the U.S. Forest Service regarding Trump's decision were in favor of the roadless rule.


"We applaud the Biden administration for listening to the voices of Southeast Alaska communities who have been relentless in their advocacy to protect the livelihoods, local economies, and wildlife that depend on the Tongass," said Sierra Club Alaska chapter director Andrea Feniger in a statement. "The Tongass is a priceless resource and a critical tool in the fight against climate change, and this action brings us one step closer to ensuring that our forest wildlands remain protected for good.”
Environment America said it was "thrilled" with the administration's proposal.


"We've had our fingers crossed, hoping this would be announced soon," said Ellen Montgomery, public lands director for the group. "The Tongass National Forest's indispensable habitats serve as home to a multitude of species and also play a vital role in helping fight global warming. We need to continue to protect old forests and big trees, such as those in the Tongass, to ensure our future includes essential species and a livable climate."

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Vilsack's announcement came four months after the administration said it would ban large-scale logging for the entire 16 million acres of forest and invest $25 million in sustainable community development to improve the health of the forest. Officials also announced plans in July to cancel a timber sale from three major old-growth forests, including ones on Prince of Wales Island and Revillagigedo Island in the Tongass, while continuing to auction off newer trees.

The proposal also comes days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled against the state of Alaska in its attempt to have the roadless rule vacated, with the court saying it would be "entirely inappropriate" to issue an opinion pushing the USDA to keep Trump's rollback of the rule intact.

By reversing the rule, Alaska Wilderness League said the administration "will preserve a natural climate solution that benefits communities around the globe," and help support Alaska's economy—contrary to claims by the logging industry and its supporters.

"The Tongass is the linchpin of Southeast Alaska's economy, supporting a $2 billion sustainable economy and more than one-quarter of jobs in the region," said Andy Moderow, Alaska director for the group. "The forest attracts people from around the world for world-class recreation, hunting, and sport and commercial salmon fishing. And it remains as essential now as it has for thousands of years to Indigenous communities that continue to rely on the forest for their cultural and subsistence traditions."

"We look forward to the upcoming public process and working with the administration to make sure the diverse constituencies of the Tongass are heard and that America's largest national forest and one of the largest remaining temperate rainforests in the world remains intact," he continued.

Vilsack's proposal kicked off a 60-day public comment period, and advocates urged Americans to speak out on behalf of the Tongass.

"We hope that Americans head to their computers and submit lots of public comments in favor of both this forest and the idea that we need more nature," said Montgomery.

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The Corporate Plan to Murder Medicare Runs Through Medicare Advantage

If they can move more than half of Americans off traditional Medicare and onto these corporate plans, it’ll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether—and they're nearly there now.

George W. Bush visits New Britain, Connecticut on June 12, 2003 to Pitch a Plan to Strengthen Medicare at New Britain General Hospital. (Photo: James Devaney/WireImage)

THOM HARTMANN

November 19, 2021

In 2003, George W Bush set up the destruction and privatization of Medicare. The end of "real Medicare" is getting closer every day, and Congress and Medicare's administrators are doing nothing.

Last Friday the Centers for Medicare Services (CMS) announced a 14.5% increase in Medicare Part B premiums, raising the monthly payments by the lowest-income Medicare recipients from $148.50 a month to $170.10 a month next year.

Congress must stop these for-profit parasites who are steadily draining "real" Medicare of funds and resources while producing billions in profits and often outright stolen funds for the insurance industry.

If you're trying to live on the bottom rung of Social Security (about $365/month), that's consequential. People with Medigap policies are also seeing their policy price rises announced this month.

Two months ago I wrote about the Medicare Advantage Scam and how it can screw consumers. This price hike, though, raises the larger issue of what's happening to Medicare itself and whether the entire system may be out of business in a few years, in part because our government is being robbed blind by all these so-called "Advantage" plans.

It all began with George W. Bush, who'd spent most of his life openly and proudly campaigning to privatize Medicare and Social Security.

In 2003 Congress and the Bush administration rolled out a privatization option, allowing private for-profit insurance companies to sell policies branded as "Medicare Advantage" to gullible seniors who think they're buying the actual Medicare Parts A and B. As a result, today companies eager to rip off seniors are flooding the market, particularly with TV advertising.

As I note in considerable detail in The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich, Medicare Advantage is hurting traditional Medicare, because that system is paying the insurance companies, in most cases, far more than it would be paying to simply cover the costs of its regular Medicare recipients.

Medicare Advantage is also one of the most effective ways that insurance companies can kill a real "Medicare for All" system, since so many people who think they're on Medicare are actually on these privatized plans instead.

Nearly from its beginning, Medicare allowed private companies to offer plans that essentially compete with it, but they were an obscure corner of the market and didn't really take off until the Bush administration and Congress rolled out the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

This was the GOP's (and a few corporate-owned Democrats') big chance to finally privatize Medicare, albeit one customer at a time.

That law legalized a brand known as "Medicare Advantage" under the Medicare Part C provision and a year later it phased in what are known as risk-adjusted large-batch payments to insurance companies offering Advantage plans.

Medicare Advantage plans are not government-provided Medicare. They're private health insurance most often offered by the big for-profit insurance companies (although some nonprofits participate, particularly the larger HMOs), and the rules they must live by are considerably looser than those for Medicare.

Even more consequential, they don't get reimbursed directly on a person-by-person, procedure-by-procedure basis. Instead, every year, Advantage providers submit a bill to the federal government based on the aggregate risk score of all their customers and, practically speaking, are paid in a massive lump sum for all of their customers.

The higher their risk score, the larger the payment. Profit-seeking insurance companies, being the predators that they are, have found a number of ways to raise their risk scores without raising their expenses.

For example, many Medicare Advantage plans promote an "annual home visit" by a nurse or physician's assistant as a "benefit" of the plan. What the companies are doing, though, is trying to upcode (raise their payments from Medicare) customers to make them seem sicker than they are.

"Heart failure," for example, can be a severe and expensive condition to treat . . . or a barely perceptible tic on an EKG that represents little or no threat to a person for years or even decades. Depression is similarly variable; if it lasts less than two weeks, there's no reimbursement; if it lasts longer than two weeks, it's called a "major depressive episode" and rapidly jacks up a risk score — and thus the payments to the insurance company, even if it provides no services.

The home health visits are so profitable that an entire industry has sprung up of companies that send nurses out on behalf of the smaller insurance companies.

In summer 2014, the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) published an in-depth investigative report titled Why Medicare Advantage Costs Taxpayers Billions More Than It Should.

They found, among other things, that one of the most common scams companies were running involved that very scoring of their customers as being sicker than they actually were, so that their reimbursements were way above the cost of caring for those people.

Here are a few quotes and summaries (in my words) from the report:

"Risk scores of Medicare Advantage patients rose sharply in plans in at least 1,000 counties nationwide between 2007 and 2011, boosting taxpayer costs by more than $36 billion over estimated costs for caring for patients in standard Medicare."

"In more than 200 of these counties, the cost of some Medicare Advantage plans was at least 25 percent higher than the cost of providing standard Medicare coverage."

The report documents how risk scores rose twice as fast for people who joined a Medicare Advantage health plan as for those who didn't.

Patients, the report lays out, never know how their health is rated because neither the health plan nor Medicare shares risk scores with them — and the process itself is so arcane and secretive that it remains unfathomable to many health professionals.

"By 2009, government officials were estimating that just over 15 percent of total Medicare Advantage payments were inaccurate, about $12 billion that year."

Based on its own sampling of data from health plans, the report shows how CMS has estimated that "faulty" risk scores triggered nearly $70 billion in what officials deemed "improper" payments to Medicare Advantage plans from 2008 through 2013.

CMS decided, according to the report, not to chase after overcharges from 2008 through 2010 even though the agency estimated through sampling that it made more than $32 billion in "improper" payments to insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans over those three years. CMS did not explain its reasoning.

The report documents how Medicare expects to pay the health plans more than $150 billion in 2014, the year the study was published.

Companies are almost never nailed for these overcharges, and when they are, they usually pay back pennies on the dollar.

For example, when the Office of Inspector General, Health and Human Services (which oversees Medicare), audited six out of the hundreds of plans on the market in 2007, they found that just those six companies "had been overpaid by an estimated $650 million" for that one year. As the Center for Public Integrity states, "CMS settled five of the six audits for a total repayment of just over $1.3 million."

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also, in 2012, decided to audit only 30 plans a year going forward. As CPI noted, "At that rate, it would take CMS more than 15 years to review the hundreds of Medicare Advantage contracts now in force." And that's 15 years to audit just one year's activity!

Things haven't improved since that 2014 investigative report from CPI. In September 2019, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and five Democratic colleagues sent a letter to President Donald Trump's CMS Administrator, Seema Verma.

"The recent HHS Payment Accuracy Report exposes that taxpayers have overpaid Medicare Advantage plans more than $30 billion dollars over the last three years," Brown wrote, wanting to know if the government was going to try to recover any of that essentially stolen money.

Meanwhile, during the four years of the Trump administration, CMS went out of their way to illegally promote Medicare Advantage plans.

A February 2020 report in the New York Times stated, "Under President Trump, some critics contend, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers Medicare, has become a cheerleader for Advantage plans at the expense of original Medicare."

The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) compared Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare and found the Advantage programs to be mind-bogglingly profitable: "MA insurer revenues are 30 percent higher than their healthcare spending. Healthcare spending for enrollees in MA is 25 percent lower than for enrollees in [traditional Medicare] in the same county and [with the same] risk score."

In other words, they are paid more and deliver less, keeping the balance as their profit. And it is hundreds of billions of dollars.

At the same time, Medicare Advantage often screws its customers. According to the NBER study, people with Medicare Advantage got 15 percent fewer colon cancer screening tests, 24 percent fewer diagnostic tests, and 38 percent fewer flu shots.

Today the industry is so entrenched and massively profitable it can buy off members of Congress with the loose change it finds in the couch.

Meanwhile, changes CMS made to the Medicare website during the Trump administration now direct people who want to sign up for Medicare, instead, to a page to sign up for private Medicare Advantage plans.

If they can move more than half of Americans off traditional Medicare and onto these corporate plans, it'll provide the political cover to kill off Medicare altogether—and they're nearly there right now.

While much of the media focus on Medicare's price increase has been around a single Alzheimer's drug, the simple reality is that without the Medicare Advantage scam the Medicare system would be in great shape right now.

Congress must stop these for-profit parasites who are steadily draining "real" Medicare of funds and resources while producing billions in profits and often outright stolen funds for the insurance industry.

This article was first published on The Hartmann Report.

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Thom Hartmann is a talk-show host and the author of "The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream" (2020); "The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America" (2019); and more than 25 other books in print.