THIRD WORLD USA

15,000 Native American families live without electricity. How can solar power help?

Neetish Basnet, Arizona Republic
Fri, November 19, 2021

The Taylors live in a ranch on the outskirts of the Hopi Reservation. A solar photovoltaic system brought reliable electricity to their home for the first time this summer.

Their 17-by-65-feet house with a single room is two and a half miles off the roadway. The closest neighbors live 5 miles away. The nearest town, 25 miles.

But the Taylors have plenty to keep them busy.

The husband and wife duo, members of the Hopi tribe, spend their days watching over their 25 cattle that graze the land. A couple of horses also run around the homestead.


They grow crops with dry farming techniques out in the fields and some produce in a small garden. A rain catchment system collects water for drinking. Raised cattle also function as subsistence and business.

"We have really learned how to try to work with what we have," Catherin Taylor said.

But for long, the couple couldn't work their way around lighting their home when it got dark or enjoying simple comforts of modern technology like brewing coffee. Their home did not have electricity.

Indigenous people have lived self-sufficient lifestyles for thousands of years. But the United States' wider public-policy structures often overlooked the people living on Native American reservations and ancestral lands.

"That's the way it has to be, because they have no other alternatives," said Walter Haase, general manager of Navajo Tribal Utility Authority, said about the situation of Native tribes. "We're one of the richest countries in the world. We really need to take care of our own people, especially our first people – the people that were here to begin with."

Even after years of legislative push, large swaths of Native American localities still lack access to electricity. More than 15,000 Hopi and Navajo households live without electricity, according to officials.

Now, crowdsourced and community-level efforts are leading the way in providing reliable energy sources to native homes.

Light for reading, arts and crafts

Max Taylor grew up without running electricity all through his life. His wife, Catherin, used to drive to Flagstaff, an almost 50-mile journey south, just to iron their clothes.

"People live out in rural communities, real rural, off-the-grid kind of communities," she said. "People who don't live in those areas take for granted what they have."

For the first time this summer, the Taylor household flicked a switch to lighten their house. There's a TV they can watch now as they wake up to coffee pouring in an electric machine.

Native Renewables, a Flagstaff-based nonprofit, installed and wired their home to a solar energy system. A grant enabled the installation to be free of cost.

"I love to read, and my husband does his own art and crafts," Catherin Taylor said. "So that has been really great to be able to have bright light to see and do things."

Native Renewables, with five full-time and six part-time staff, aims to connect 15,000 Navajo and Hopi families with solar power. The Taylors are one of the first Hopi families to receive a solar power system from the nonprofit.

Suzanne Singer, Native Renewables founder and executive director, said the task to power thousands of Native homes is monumental, but not implausible with community support.

"Energy independence to lots of tribal nations and communities, it's really critical for their sovereignty," Singer said. "They want to be able to manage their own systems, want to not be reliant on external entities for the individual families."

Still in its startup phase, Native Renewables have powered 30 families. It replaced batteries in 12 different units. So far the nonprofit has donated 3,000 smaller-capability solar kits, including 1,500 last year alone.

A standalone 7.2-kilowatt capacity solar power system can power up to a refrigerator at the Taylor home.

Public donations are the largest funding source, Singer said. The nonprofit started applying for various federal grants, as well.

Native Renewables was one of the 10 recipients of a recent $1.2 million grant from IGS Energy, an Ohio-based natural gas and electric supplier.

"I'm always advocating for investment in Native communities, and also in Native companies and organizations on the ground," Singer said. "It's always amazing when we get funded directly instead of getting funded as a pass through from who knows how many entities it goes through when it comes down to us."

By the end of the year, Native Renewables expects to install 22 new 2.4 KW systems.

Another new company, Navajo Power, is working on a proposed 750-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm in northern Arizona to supply electricity to Native American families. The solar farm is anticipated to be up and running by 2024.

Connecting more families to power grid

Deep in Navajo Nation, the NTUA is gearing up for the largest grid extension year with the help of volunteers.

The next phase of what started as a pilot project in 2019, Light Up Navajo will connect 300 homes in a 12-week plan starting in April.

About 200 volunteers from across the country are dividing their time and equipment into 48 work weeks. Working an average 12-hours shifts per day, each crew will connect at least two families to the power grid.

"They volunteer their time, and they bring in their own equipment," NTUA's Haase said. "So now what happens is, it allows me to just buy material and only spend a smaller amount on equipment, so my dollars can go farther."

NTUA estimates connecting a single Navajo home to the existing grid can cost more than $40,000. Supplementary infrastructure like power lines and transformers substations to bring electricity to all the powerless Navajo homes has a $350 million price tag, according to NTUA.

"What's at stake is many of these folks have waited their whole lives to get electricity," Haase said.

The average monthly electricity bill of a U.S. residence was $115 in 2019, according to data from U.S. Energy Information Administration. That calculates to $1,380 per year.

If NTUA had to self-fund the grid connection project without help from volunteers, it would have had to charge the families an average of $6,000 a year, Haase said.

Native Americans' median household income of $40,315 is 35% less than the national average, according to 2017 American Community Survey estimates.

"There is no way that these folks can afford to do this on their own. And they shouldn't really have to. They've suffered a lot of other problems, you know, from us being here and other things," Haase said. "It's the least we can do – provide them with the basic essential services that the rest of America has and has had for the last 40 or 50 years."
Federal money on the way

As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, U.S. Congress in 1936 passed the Rural Electrification Act, which provided federal loans to deploy electrical systems in rural areas across the country. However, the measure bypassed many tribal nations.

A Department of Energy analysis estimated 14.2% of Native American families on reservations have no access to electricity, compared to 1.4% of all U.S. households.

The Tohono O’odham Nation was one of the first Native communities to receive funding from the Rural Electrification Administration. A $2.5 million loan to the Tohono O’odham Utility Authority, established in 1970, funded the development and expansion of the electric system on the reservation.

The Tribal Power Act, introduced by Rep. Tom O'Halleran, D-Sedona, and passed last year, gives the Department of Energy’s Indian Energy Education Planning and Management Assistance Program $30 million annually until 2025. The legislation also makes it easier for Native tribes to seek grants and financial support to improve access to reliable electricity.

The bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed in early November also has funding to address needs in tribal lands. About $3 billion will go toward broadband connectivity programs and infrastructure development.

NTUA connected 510 homes to the grid last year after receiving $14.5 million as part of the federal CARES Act.

The plan for next year is to power at least 1,000 homes.

"If you can give us the resources, we can find the material and the labor to get it installed," Haass said. "Let's just keep working on getting this problem under control and getting the numbers lower and lower."

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Solar power: How it can connect thousands of Hopi, Navajo families

Elon Musk in Texas, Zuck in California: Here is the richest person in each U.S. state

Adriana Belmonte

·Senior Editor

Fri, November 19, 2021, 

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos is no longer the richest person in the U.S. That honor now goes to Elon Musk.

Musk, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA), holds a net worth of a whopping $299 billion. Formerly a resident of California, Musk relocated to Texas this year, also making him the richest resident of the state. He stated that his reason for moving was due to Texas having no income tax while California’s is the highest in the country.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk talks during a tour of the plant of the future foundry of the Tesla Gigafactory on August 13, 2021 in Grünheide, Germany. (Photo by Patrick Pleul/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, with a net worth of $204 billion, Bezos is still the richest person in the state of Washington. The Amazon founder has garnered criticism over the years, especially after it was revealed that between 2014 and 2018, he paid a true tax rate of only 0.98%.

Taking the top spot formerly held by Musk in California is now Meta (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has a net worth of $127 billion.

There are some newer names to the list of the richest people in each U.S. state. Following the death of her husband Sheldon, Miriam Adelson became the richest person in the state of Nevada as the majority shareholder in Las Vegas Sands (LVS), a company that Sheldon formerly led. Adelson’s net worth is currently $27.2 billion.

Other new names include Philip Anschutz of Colorado ($14.5 billion); Mitchell Rales of Maryland ($9.14 billion); Rocco Commisso of New Jersey ($9.52 billion); Ron Corio of New Mexico ($1.1 billion); George Kaiser of Oklahoma ($10.6 billion); and Jeff Yass of Pennsylvania ($12 billion).

Some of the richest people in their respective states aren’t even billionaires. Such is the case of current West Virginia governor, Jim Justice II. The Republican politician lost his billionaire status after it was revealed he holds more than $850 million in debt to a now insolvent financial services company. His current net worth is estimated to be around $513.3 million.

Several sports team owners made the list. Gayle Benson, the owner of both the New Orleans Saints and the New Orleans Pelicans, is the richest person in Louisiana with a net worth of $3.8 billion. Glen Taylor, the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx, is the richest person in Minnesota with $2.7 billion to his name. And Daniel Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, is the richest person in Michigan with a net worth of $28.8 billion.

Nov 7, 2021; New Orleans Saints owner Gayle Benson smiles during the first quarter of their game against the Atlanta Falcons at the Caesars Superdome. (Chuck Cook-USA TODAY Sports)

Founders and CEOs were the most common occupations among members of the list, however. Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B), is one of them. With a net worth of $103 billion, he’s the richest person in the state of Nebraska.

In Kansas, Koch Industries CEO Charles Koch is by far the richest resident with $60.6 billion to his name. Fidelity CEO Abigail Johnson is Massachusetts’ richest resident with a net worth of $27.1 billion.

And in Oregon, Nike (NKE) Co-founder Phil Knight’s $64.2 billion makes him the richest person in the state.

Adriana Belmonte is a reporter and editor covering politics and health care policy for Yahoo Finance. You can follow her on Twitter @adrianambells and reach her at adriana@yahoofinance.com.

Yazidi family abandons EU dream, reluctantly returns to Iraq



Iraq-Migration-Belarus-PolandZena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021. Kalo and her family returned to Iraq from Minsk Friday on a flight organized by the Iraqi government two months after they left for Belarus, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe.
(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)

SAMYA KULLAB
Fri, November 19, 2021,

DOHUK, Iraq (AP) — Khari Hasan Kalo peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq. It's a place he and his family had hoped never to see again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe.

Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the first stop on a journey to the West.

His wife, 30-year-old Zena, had sold her few belongings on the gamble that left the family of six stranded for days in a cold forest on the border of Belarus and Poland. In the end, they returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother.

Yet they say they would do it all again to escape their hopeless life, spent in a camp for displaced persons for the past seven years. The Kalos are Yazidis, a religious minority that was brutalized by Islamic State militants when they overran northern Iraq in 2014.

At the time, IS extremists rampaged through the Yazidi town of Sinjar and surrounding villages and destroyed religious sites. They kidnapped and enslaved thousands of women and children. Years after their lives were torn apart, Yazidis are still unable to return home or locate hundreds of women and children who had been snatched by the extremists. The Kalos' home lies in ruins.

“If it wasn’t for my children and my mother, I would never have returned, I would have stayed in that forest at all costs rather than return to this tent,” Kalo said Friday, speaking to The Associated Press from the Karbato camp in Dohuk province in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. His mother, looking frail, slept throughout the interview.

The Kalos, including three children ages 5, 7, and 9, had returned from Belarus a day earlier.

“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”

The region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, yet Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer. Even in Iraq's more prosperous north, growing unemployment and corruption is fueling migration, and the Yazidi community has endured particular hardship.

On Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union. The repatriation came after thousands of migrants became stuck at the Poland-Belarus border amid rising tensions between the two countries.

Kalo's family was among 430 people who flew from Minsk back to Iraq, where 390 got off at Irbil International Airport before the flight continued to Baghdad.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns to destabilize the EU in retaliation for its sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime following a harsh crackdown on internal dissent. Belarus denies engineering the crisis, which has seen migrants entering the country since summer, lured by easy tourist visas, and then trying to cross into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all EU members.

Kalo didn’t mind if a geopolitical game was being played at his expense if it got his family out of Iraq.

“So what if I was a pawn in someone’s hands if it gets me to Germany?” he said.

Since being displaced, the family had gotten increasingly desperate. Their tent burned down in an accidental fire in June that ravaged the Sharia camp, also in Dohuk. They tried to return to their original home in Sinjar but found their house uninhabitable.

Tensions also were simmering in the area between a patchwork of rival militia groups, Iraqi forces, and members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an insurgent group outlawed by Turkey. Turkish jets still targeted PKK members in northern Iraq.

Then he heard from friends about Kurds finding their way to Germany after Belarus eased visa requirements last spring. He begged his brother in Australia to wire him $9,000 to pay the smugglers' asking price for his wife, three young children and mother.

He also had saved money from his time as a policeman — cash that was hard-won because he endured discrimination as a Yazidi. Colleagues refused to eat or share a room with him, he said. He asked for a reassignment, but his superior said this would only be possible if he gave him half his income.

“What good is a job if its still not enough to feed your family?” he said of his decision to quit.

The Kalos took the land route to Istanbul in September, and boarded flights to Minsk the following month. There, they headed straight to the Polish border. With two other Iraqi families, the Kalos dug under the border fence, reaching the other side in darkness.

They walked for four days in search of a GPS point where they were promised a car would meet them and take them straight to Germany.

But that never happened..

Instead, on the fourth day, Kalo’s family ran out of food as temperatures dropped in the dense and soggy forest.

Polish authorities found them and sent them back across the border. They were greeted by an encampment of hundreds of migrants. Belarusian authorities were handing out wire cutters and pushing the migrants back through the razor wire.

Polish authorities used water cannons to repel them. But this did not deter Belarusian authorities, who beat and threatened them, Kalo said. He said they shouted: “Go (to) Poland!”

Still, husband and wife fought to stay, agreeing that anything was better than their life in a tent.

But with his mother struggling to survive as conditions grew increasingly squalid, Kalo sought the pity of the Belarusian authorities. They allowed them to return to Minsk to seek medical help.

Kalo heard the Iraqi government had agreed to repatriate citizens free of charge. He turned to his wife and they considered their choices: Return to their desperate lives in Iraq, or bear the responsibility if his mother died.

Reluctantly, they put their names on the list.

But their hope is not lost, Kalo said, as his 5-year old daughter, Katarin, dug her face into his chest at the Karbato camp.

“I have two priorities now," he said. "The first (is) to get a tent of our own. The second, to get back on my feet and leave this country. I will make it this time.”

He added: “If it was my last day on this Earth, I will spend it trying to leave."

—-

Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration

Lee’s mother, ‘Miz Oswald,’ forgotten despite legacy of JFK conspiracy theories

Bud Kennedy
Fri, November 19, 2021, 4:44 PM·4 min read

Decades after her death, one of the most tragic mothers in Texas history lies forgotten in Fort Worth.

No headstone marks the grave of Marguerite Oswald, born 1907, died 1981. She rests forever on a Handley hillside, beside a tomb marked with only a last name.

The pink granite stone reads simply OSWALD.

Her slain son, Lee Harvey Oswald, was buried on this hillside Nov. 25, 1963, a day after he was killed in Dallas. He will eternally remain the No. 1 suspect in the Nov. 22 assassination of President Kennedy on Dallas’ Elm Street.

Within two hours of the assassination, she predicted to two Star-Telegram reporters: “They all turned their backs on me before, and they will turn their backs on me again.”

The world has turned its back forever on Marguerite Oswald, but not on her conspiracy theories.

Before Dallas had a Conspiracy Museum, before distrust and cynicism became fodder for daily headlines, “Miz Oswald” said her son was the victim in a plot by “high officials.”

First, she said he never shot anybody but fled because “he knew he would be blamed.”

Later, she said he was duped into the shooting.

For the next 17 years from the assassination until her death on Jan. 17, 1981, her neighbors would see carloads of investigators, reporters and assassination buffs come and go from her west side home, first from her duplex on Thomas Place and later from her home on Byers Avenue.

“I am a mother in history,” she told magazine writer Jean Stafford, saying the words that would become the title of a short 1966 biography. “I must defend myself and defend my son Lee.”

Stafford quoted her rambling soliloquies: “Now, maybe Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin. But does that make him a louse? ... As we all know, President Kennedy was a dying man. So, it is possible that my son was chosen to shoot him in a mercy killing for the security of the country. And if this is true, it was a fine thing to do, and my son is a hero.”

That’s basically what Marguerite Oswald said for years, both on the streets of Fort Worth and to reporters.

She had worked as a caregiver for a Star-Telegram executive years before the assassination. When her son was arrested 90 minutes after Kennedy was shot, she heard his name on WFAA/Channel 8 and phoned our newsroom asking for a ride to Dallas.

Reporters Bob Schieffer — later of CBS News — and Bill Foster gave her the ride.

Their report describes a sobbing woman in a nurse’s uniform asking only, “Do they think he did it?”

After that, she became a regular caller to reporters Jerry Flemmons and Jon McConal, and even struck up an acquaintance with the late C.A. Monismith.

I hadn’t come back to Fort Worth then. When she died, I was still a sportswriter at the Dallas Morning News.

But I also once had a call from Marguerite Oswald.

I grew up about a mile from her home in Arlington Heights. In spring 1967, I was 11 years old and in seventh grade at what is now Stripling Middle School in the same neighborhood.

My wallet was stolen one day during gym class. A few days later, a woman called one day after school and said she had found the discarded wallet in her yard. Back then, the phone number was on my city library card.

She told me her Byers Avenue address, and I pedaled my Wards bicycle down Alamo Avenue and up the Clover Lane hill under the freeway.

When I knocked, she cracked the door about 6 inches and slipped the wallet out.

She asked, “You’re Buddy Kennedy?”

I said yes, and reached to shake her hand and thank her.

She pulled away and said in a low voice, “I’m Mrs. Oswald.”

I ran to my bike and pedaled downhill and back home.

One Mother’s Day, I drove to the cemetery to visit her. At the front gate, cemetery workers gave out free carnations.

All around, the burial plots were covered with bright bouquets of pink and yellow blossoms.

There were no flowers on her grave.

13 STATES ALLOW CHILD MARRIAGE

Indiana woman allegedly sold her daughter, 13, to man, 27

Fri, November 19, 2021

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (AP) — An Indiana woman allegedly sold her 13-year-old daughter to a 27-year-old man before she and her husband forced her to marry him and then celebrated the wedding with a party, authorities said.

The girl's mother was charged Thursday in Allen County with child selling where the defendant transfers or receives property for terminating the care of a dependent and neglect of a dependent, The Journal Gazette reported.

The 27-year-old man, Zee Kdee Ya, was also charged Thursday. He faces charges of child solicitation and neglect of a dependent.

Warrants were issued for the arrest of Ya and the girl's mother. Online court records did not list attorneys Friday who could speak on behalf of either of them.

Police got involved when a friend of the girl called Fort Wayne police on Dec. 20, 2020, to say that her friend was being forced to marry an adult that night, according to court documents.

Officers arrived at a party and saw a sign on the wall celebrating the marriage, court documents said. Adults there denied it was a marriage celebration, saying it was “only an engagement between the girl and Zee Kdee Ya,” according to court records.

But when police spoke privately to the girl, she said that seven days prior to the wedding celebration, her parents had signed paperwork in Burmese, arranging the marriage.

Court records allege that Ya gave the girl a gold bracelet, necklace and about $2,000 in cash, which she turned over to her parents. At that point, she was considered married and was moved in with Ya and had to share a bed with him, according to court documents.

When Ya allegedly tried to touch the girl on top of her clothes, she yelled at him to leave her alone, court records state.

He then quoted the Bible to her and told the girl: “I own you now. I can make you do what I want,” according to court documents, which also state that the girl said her parents told her she “needed to have sex with Ya because he was now her husband."

Ya allegedly told a police investigator the party was to celebrate the engagement and wedding. He admitted that the girl had moved in with him after they signed the paperwork but denied they stayed in the same bed, and said that the wedding was stopped by police and the Department of Child Services, according to court documents.

Ya told police he’d given money and gold to the girl and the girl told him she gave the cash to her father, court documents state.

The girl's mother told police her daughter “was only getting engaged and wouldn’t get married until she was 18 years old,” according to the records. She said she and her husband used the $2,000 from Ya to buy food for the party and makeup for their daughter, court documents said.

She allegedly said the girl's father was aware they used the money for the party. But the father, who has not been charged, told police he never received any money and “didn’t know anything about the money given to the victim,” court documents state.

Sean O’Brien Elected Teamsters President, Succeeding James P. Hoffa; Local 399’s Lindsay Dougherty Elected As A Western Region VP

David Robb
Fri, November 19, 2021, 


Sean O’Brien has been elected president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and his slate of reform-minded Teamsters United running mates will lead the 1.3 million-member union for the next five years. O’Brien succeeds James P. Hoffa, the son of infamous Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, who chose not to seek reelection after running the union since 1998.

O’Brien, a sharp critic of Hoffa, has vowed to get tougher at the bargaining table, saying during the campaign that “If we’re negotiating discounted contracts and we’re negotiating lousy deals, why would any member, anyone, want to join the Teamsters union?”

Crystal Hopkins Resigns As President Of IATSE Script Supervisors Local 871, Citing Personal Reasons & Dissatisfaction With Union’s New Contract

And for the first time ever, a member of Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 will have a seat on the Teamsters’ General Executive Board. Lindsay Dougherty, Local 399’s recording secretary, business agent and organizer, and a member of O’Brien’s slate, has been elected as one of four Western Region vice presidents.

Teamsters Local 399 will soon be negotiating a new film and TV contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture Producers.

Here are all the newly elected IBT General Executive Board members:

General President: Sean O’Brien, President, Local 25, Boston, MA

General Secretary-Treasurer: Fred Zuckerman, President, Local 89, Louisville, KY

International Vice Presidents At-Large:
Juan Campos, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 705, Chicago, IL
Greg Floyd, President, Local Union 237, New York, NY
Tony Jones, President, Local 413, Columbus, OH
John Palmer, Local 657, San Antonio, TX
James Wright, President, Local 822, Norfolk, VA
Joan Corey, Business Agent, Local 25, Boston, MA
Chris Griswold, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 986, Los Angeles, CA

Western Region Vice Presidents:
Lindsay Dougherty, Recording Secretary, Local 399, Hollywood, CA
Mark Davison, President, Local 162, Portland, OR
Peter Finn, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 856, San Francisco, CA
Rick Hicks, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 174, Seattle, WA

Central Region Vice Presidents:
Danny Avelyn, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 554, Omaha, NE
Tom Erickson, President, Local 120, Minneapolis, MN
Avral Thompson, Vice President, Local Union 89, Louisville, KY

Eastern Region Vice Presidents:
Rocco Calo, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 1150, Stratford, CT
Bill Hamilton, President, Local Union 107, Philadelphia, PA
Matt Taibi, President, Local 251, Providence, RI

Southern Region Vice Presidents:
Thor Johnson, Vice President, Local 79, Tampa, FL
Brent Taylor, Secretary-Treasurer, Local 745, Dallas, TX

Canadian Region Vice Presidents:
François LaPorte, President, Teamsters Canada, Laval, QC
Stan Hennessy, President, Local Union 31, Delta, BC
Craig McInnes, President, Local Union 938, Mississauga, ON

International Trustees:
Willie Ford, President, Local 71, Charlotte, NC
Dan Kane, Jr., President, Local 202, New York, NY
Vinnie Perrone, President, Local 804, New York, NY

America’s biggest pension fund CalPERS votes to reshuffle allocations, add leverage, in bid to combat low returns

by Editor
November 18, 2021


America’s largest public pension plan that serves California state and local workers is going to make riskier investments.

On Monday, the board of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, voted to make changes to its portfolio in the face of what are expected to be lower returns in future years, even as it also decided to keep constant its expected rate of return.

Earlier coverage: With lower returns on the horizon, public pensions will turn to riskier assets, Moody’s says

Public pension systems take in contributions from governmental employers and employees, and invest their portfolios in ways that aim to maximize returns, while also protecting the existing assets. That is always a tricky balance to strike, but after a blockbuster few years, most public pension systems are bracing for what many assume can only be an era of lower returns in the future.

“The portfolio we’ve selected incorporates a diverse mix of assets to help us achieve our investment return target,” CalPERS said in a statement. “By adding 5% leverage over time, we’ll better diversify the fund to protect against the impact of a serious drawdown during economic downturns.”

The fund has long had extensive allocations to alternative assets — on its website, it calls itself “one of the largest private-equity investors in the world” — but has never added leverage to its portfolio. An allocation to private debt is also new.


Source: California Public Employees’ Retirement System

The investment staff already has the ability to take active leverage up to 20%, the CIO said at the board meeting, as reported by Pensions & Investments Magazine.

CalPERS serves approximately 2 million members and has $495 billion in its portfolio. It assumes it will achieve a 6.8% return on its investments. In the fiscal year ending June, 2021, it actually retuned 21.3% – but in the year ending 2020, only 4.7%.

As previously reported, the “assumed rate of return” for a public pension can be controversial. Lowering the target investment return means raising the amount governments — and by extension, taxpayers — and workers need to pay in.

And paying more to the pension obligations can mean crowding out what can feel like more immediate budget needs such as education, road repair, and other municipal services.

Pension accounting assumes that all the inputs — contributions from employers and employees, and investment returns — leave the portfolio well-funded enough to pay all obligations for the next 30 years. But some observers have recently argued that the strain of coming up with that much money, which will likely never be needed all at one time, is too burdensome for state and local governments.

See: Public pensions don’t have to be fully funded to be sustainable, paper finds

Guest View: Legalize drugs for everyone's sake


Charles H. Jones
Sat, November 20, 2021

It would be easy to read the article on Measure 110 (Oct 29) and think that drug criminalization was related to drug addiction. Let’s look at history to see if this is the case. In particular, let’s consider the science, or lack thereof, behind the implementation of drug laws.

A common argument for drug laws is that someone knows somebody who is grateful they were arrested and forced into rehabilitation. Well, I know a former addict that is grateful they were not arrested because a record would have significantly reduced the chances of them having the professional career they had. But such tit-for-tat anecdotal stories don’t represent scientific data. Going deeper, the absurdity of (the church-group financed) "Reefer Madness" – which, among other things, implied marijuana would make you a murderer – illustrates the lack of science in the 1930s when drug laws were being put in place. Further, the government continues to ignore its own study by the Shafer Commission which recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972.

So, what was the motivation? In the 1930s Randolph Hearst and other publishers associated marijuana with supposedly crazy and dangerous Mexicans, while "Reefer Madness’" use of parties featuring jazz helped associate marijuana with Black Americans. And there is the interview with John Ehrlichman (Nixon’s domestic policy chief) published in Harper’s magazine, where he says, "[The war on drugs] was authored by President Nixon not for reasons of health or science, but rather simple prejudice … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities … Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

The consequences of this racist motivation have been huge. Studies consistently show that minorities have been disproportionately targeted and incarcerated for drug possession. A specific example was the longer sentences for crack (vs. powdered) cocaine possession in the 1980s. Incarceration contributes to multigenerational poverty. Not only does a person lose personal income by being incarcerated and paying related judicial costs, but also the entire family loses income and parental involvement.

We need better ways of helping people with addiction, but within the context of drug laws, addiction is a red herring misdirecting attention from much greater harm. Addiction also is used as a red herring for the unhoused (addiction is a symptom, not a cause). It’s harder to afford housing when you can’t get a job because of a drug arrest. Another red herring is violence. From Prohibition to drug cartels, the vast majority of drug-related violence is due to the illegality of drugs, not their use.

Mental health is another victim of drug demonization. In addition to the trauma of homelessness and incarceration (individually and to families) the understanding of the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin and similar drugs was delayed by decades because of the Reefer Madness hysteria around LSD in the 1960s.

Here are some questions relevant to Measure 110 and decriminalizing drugs. How many people will get jobs that they would not otherwise have gotten because of a drug arrest? How many more people will be able to afford higher education because their parents got those jobs? How many more people will be able to afford housing because of a decrease in stigma associated with drug use and arrest? Since many people can’t afford time off of work, what role does this cost in time and money play in people not showing up to court? Even though overprescription of opioids has increased addiction, not every user of opioids (or other drugs) is an addict. What role does this play in people not calling drug hotlines when cited for possession?

The harm from drug criminalization has accumulated over nearly a century. Undoing this harm by decriminalizing – or legalizing – drugs will take generations, not months. But the mere fact that fewer people are developing rap sheets or being harassed on the streets for harmless drug possession is already a positive step towards changing social and economic inequity.

It is unfortunate that even many proponents of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs are unaware of, or unwilling to acknowledge, the racist origins of the war on drugs or the far-ranging harm these laws have caused.

The evidence supports legalizing drugs for everyone’s sake.

Charles H. Jones, PhD is a retired mathematician. He organizes the Eugene Atheist Pub Social on Meetup.com and writes the Starting From Doubt blog.

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Guest View: Legalize drugs for everyone's sake

Japanese, Korean and Turkish languages originated from farmers in northeast China, study reveals



Carl Samson
Fri, November 19, 2021

Five languages — Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Tungusic and Turkish — belonging to the Transeurasian family are claimed to have emerged from a common ancestor who farmed northeast China some 9,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Key findings: Using linguistic, archeological and genetic evidence, an international team of researchers from Asia, Europe, New Zealand, Russia and the U.S. found that the languages can be traced back to the beginning of millet cultivation in China’s West Liao River. Over time, these millet farmers — who belong to the Amur gene pool — migrated to neighboring regions and left their descendants admixing with other populations.

Whether the five languages descended from one common ancestor has long been a subject of debate. However, recent studies have shown “a reliable core of evidence” supporting the theory, the researchers said.

The spread of the languages reportedly involved two major phases. The first phase, which occurred in the early to middle Neolithic Ages, saw the spread of Amur-related millet farmers in the West Liao River to contiguous regions. The second phase, which occurred in the late Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, saw the mixture of their descendants with Yellow River, western Eurasian and Jomon people. During this period, they also started farming rice and western Eurasian crops in addition to raising livestock.

A qualitative analysis using data from 250 vocabulary concepts in 98 Transeurasian languages allowed the researchers to identify which words emerged in particular regions at a particular time. For instance, ancestral languages that separated during the Neolithic Age -- the final division of the Stone Age -- used words related to millets but not other crops.

Aside from linguistic analysis, the researchers studied data from 255 archaeological sites in northern China, Japan, Korea and the Primorye in Far East Russia. They also conducted genome analyses of 19 ancient individuals from Korea, Kyushu, the Amur and the Ryukyus and combined them with existing data on those who lived in north and east Asia between 9,500 and 300 years ago.

Why this matters: The study, published in the science journal Nature, reflects how agriculture after the Ice Age fueled the dispersal of Transeurasian languages, one of the world’s major language families. It also highlights the complexity of a shared origin of cultures regarded as unique from each other today.

“Accepting that the roots of one's language — and to an extent one's culture — lie beyond present national boundaries can require a kind of reorientation of identity, and this is not always an easy step for people to take,” lead researcher Martine Robbeets said in a statement. “But the science of human history shows us that the history of all languages, cultures, and peoples is one of extended interaction and mixture.”

Robbeets, who heads the Archaeolinguistic Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, added that merging linguistics, archeology and genetics allowed the team to gain “a more balanced and richer understanding” of Transeurasian migration. In their paper, the researchers said such a process of triangulation specifically supported their farming hypothesis and concluded that agriculture had driven the early spread of Transeurasian speakers.

Still, the researchers believe further study is needed to deepen the knowledge on human migrations in Neolithic Northeast Asia. They also recognized the need to understand the influence of succeeding pastoralist population movements.

“There was far more to the creation of the Transeurasian language family, as an ultimate whole, than just one primary Neolithic pulse of migration,” said Mark Hudson, a co-author from the Archaeolinguistic Research Group. “There is still so much to learn.”

UN-backed floating city built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes is headed to South Korea


Aria Bendix
Fri, November 19, 2021

A rendering of OCEANIX's floating city.Oceanix

South Korea agreed to host a UN-backed floating city prototype on Thursday.


The project's designers envision a flood-proof city that produces its own food and water.


They expect to fully construct the prototype in Busan, a large port city, in 2025.

More than two years ago, a group of builders, engineers, and architects crowded around a table at the United Nations to discuss an ambitious concept: a floating city that could withstand natural disasters, including floods, tsunamis, and Category 5 hurricanes.

The idea wasn't entirely novel: Designers and developers have fantasized for decades about building artificial islands and metropolises on water. Even Homer envisioned a mythical floating city roughly 13 centuries ago.

But those visions were notoriously hard to advance — often because local governments wouldn't sign off on the proposals, citing concerns that there were better uses for the land.

The UN-backed project cleared that hurdle Thursday, when the city of Busan, South Korea, agreed to host a floating city in collaboration with the project's designer, OCEANIX, and the UN Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat). Like many coastal cities, Busan is threatened by rising sea levels.

"It just happened that Bhutan is the best place for us to deploy this prototype," Itai Madamombe, co-founder of OCEANIX, told Insider. "But this is something that we hope will be useful to all coastal cities around the world, and all coastal communities who are facing the challenge of sea level rise."

The flood-proof city could be completed by 2025

OCEANIX's floating city is essentially a collection of hexagonal platforms perched atop the water.

Hexagons are widely considered among the most efficient architectural shapes: They allow builders to conserve both space and material. Picture the orderly inside of a beehive — essentially a web of interlocked hexagons.

The city's platforms would be bolstered by a limestone coating two to three times harder than concrete, but still buoyant. The material is created by exposing underwater minerals to an electric current. In the presence of that current, it becomes stronger with time and can repair itself, allowing it to withstand harsh weather conditions.

OCEANIX's rendering of "ocean farming" underneath the platforms.Oceanix

The goal is to develop a flood-proof city that rises with the sea and produces its own food, energy, and fresh water. Cages underneath the platforms could be used to house scallops, kelp, or other forms of seafood. And aquaponic systems could use waste from fish to fertilize plants.

But the design isn't set in stone — and OCEANIX hasn't determined the size of the city yet.

Madamombe said her team will collaborate with local designers in South Korea to tailor the prototype to the local environment. OCEANIX will unveil the results of those efforts at a second UN roundtable in April, she said. From there, the team will start engineering the platforms and securing approval for construction.

The cost, subject to change depending on final design and materials, is an estimated $200 million.

"All together, it will take a total of three years," Madamombe said. "So we anticipate that by 2025, we'll see this prototype in water."

Busan is vulnerable to flooding from typhoons

A mockup of the platforms floating on water.Oceanix

Busan, a city of 3.4 million people, is home to one the world's busiest ports, so local builders and engineers have experience building along the water, Madamombe said.

The development would ultimately serve as a model for future floating cities around the world.

Both hurricanes and floods are becoming more frequent and intense as global temperatures continue to climb. A recent study from Climate Central, a nonprofit research group, found that in the worst-case scenario — 4 degrees of warming — at least 50 major cities would lose most of their populated areas over the next 200 to 2,000 years because of rising sea levels.

Coastal cities like Busan are particularly vulnerable.

Though the water surrounding Busan is mostly calm, the city has also been hard hit by typhoons in the last decade, including Typhoon Chaba, which flooded the city in 2016, and Typhoon Kong-rey, which resulted in 55,000 power outages in Busan in 2018.

Madamombe said UN-Habitat will collect data on how the Busan development fares. Her team hopes to apply those lessons to its next project: OCEANIX is in talks with at least 10 other governments about building more floating cities, Madamombe said.