The dumbing-down of America hits a nerve

Lincoln Courier
Sat, November 20, 2021

“What's going on here?”

That's what I was wondering last week when a bunch of emails showed up in my Inbox, all related to the column I had written and submitted for last Saturday's edition of The Courier. You see, those messages began to arrive on Thursday, a few days before my column was scheduled for publication.

Hmmm, I wonder if there are some folks out there who can see into the future and know exactly what I wrote – long before it appears in a public forum. That sounded far-fetched – and it was. I turned to Leisa Richardson, executive editor for the State Journal-Register and this newspaper, for an answer.

She explained that the newspapers are digital-first, meaning that columns and stories scheduled for print editions are first published on newspaper websites and that, per an agreement with Yahoo News and Apple News, those Internet outlets have publishing rights for newspaper content. I then replied to a couple of those email writers, asking them where they had read my column. Turns out, it was published on the Yahoo News website prior to the Saturday publication date.

I received more than a dozen responses to my column from total strangers, some even asking if I were a real person or someone using a fake name to write this type of column.

In case you didn't read it, the column was all about the dumbing-down of our great country, as evidenced by Harvard-educated U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas picking a fight with Sesame Street's Big Bird over a COVID-19 vaccination promotion aimed at kids by the yellow-feathered critter, and also highlighted by the gathering of a QAnon throng in Dallas awaiting the return of John F. Kennedy Jr. Never mind that JFK Jr. died in a 1999 plane crash. He obviously was a no-show.

Word had circulated among the QAnon disciples that the young Kennedy was returning to his worldly self to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election and that he – JFK Jr. – would serve as his vice president.

Pretty silly stuff, huh? But let's not kid ourselves. Hundreds of thousands of Americans still believe Trump won the election and never mind that JFK Jr. was brought up in a famous American family with strong liberal viewpoints far removed from far-right philosophy. I can't help but wonder if many in that Dallas throng wouldn't delight in having a well-roasted Big Bird on their Thanksgiving table next week.

I'd like to share bits and pieces of some of the emails I received from throughout the country. Most writers were supportive of my viewpoints, but then, there was Muneerah Aoudad, whose email address describes her as “one nice lady1.” I don't believe Ms. Aouad was especially nice to me. Here's what she wrote:

“Mr. Tackett, I read your dumb article. Yes sir, it's just plain dumb. It's obvious in your old age that you still do not have a clue what is going on in this country. I made the sad, sorry mistake of being a democrat for years. I watched as they destroyed the lives of Americans.

“Perhaps you should take a trip to Los Angeles and then you can see what the DemoRats have done. Los Angeles, up until about 1990, was a thriving city and the largest post-production center in the world for the movie industry. Now, they do not film in Los Angeles.

Dan Tackett

“Meanwhile, the stupid DemoRATS continued to keep the southern border open and they made sure that Los Angeles was infected with millions and millions of illegal aliens who all got welfare, HUD housing, food stamps and our American jobs to the point that now in 2021, white or Black Americans cannot get a job in Los Angeles, which is ran by Latinos, including a Latino idiot mayor. Los Angeles has the worst homeless crisis of Americans sleeping on the streets of any place in the world!

“Do you think you can fly over and get a hotel in Los Angeles? Give it a try. Your hotel neighbors will be homeless drug addicts. I went to the east coast when I saw LA slipping into the muck in 2000 only to return in 2013 and to discover that I would never get a job there. I left and moved to the San Francisco Bay area, which is now being attacked by the Latinos.

“Very soon I will need to pack up and move. This time out of the U.S. And the DemoRats said we seniors would get dental care, eyeglasses and hearing aids. Now all that was a lie. What is true is that our Medicare is going up Jan .1 from $144 to $170, and I will never get my dentures, because no one regulates the cost of dental work and it now costs more than going to a doctor!

“Thank you DemoRAT!”

Folks who sided with my column threw out plenty of reasons why they believe American sanity is on a slippery slope. Here's a sampling:

From David Hildy: “This nonsense all began with Karl Rove. I'd forgotten that he castigated Max Cleland on the discussion of patriotism, but there's your lead in to QAnon, which led up to John McCain being accused of not being a hero because he got caught.

“Thank you for your article and it would seem to me that the Democrats need a ‘Joe the Plumber’ mouthpiece to counter the dumbness. Intellectuals will not be heard – needs to be a no-namer who's used by Democrats to spout common sense.”

From Michael Murray: “Unfortunately, you are 100% correct. These days I am continually asking myself, ‘How did we get here?’ There seems to be no end in sight. I wonder if it is all just one really bad dream.

“Thank you for your insight. I am not going crazy.”

From Manju Rupani: “Thank you for your article. Could not agree more.

“I would blame technology for dumbing our country as well. When the large tech companies are promoting themselves as leaders of science and goodness, we have a major problem.”

From Carroll Shirkey: Loved what you had to say. You’re right about the events and clowns involved. I’ve been saying America needs a re-boot – quickly.

From Tina Roeser: “I came across an article you wrote talking about America being dumb. Interesting. I feel we've been dumb for awhile.

“A few months ago, my husband and I were watching a program on PBS about Woodstock. In it, we noticed that nobody there was fat. The narrator said they ran out of food at the event rather quickly. People in surrounding towns were asked if they could help out with food. They sent eggs and oatmeal. I thought, ‘What, no chips?’ None of the junk we exist on today. Junk filled with additives and preservatives that the Food and Drug Administration has OK'd for consumption. Interesting

“Didn't the Food and Drug Administration say opioids were safe without being addictive, too? That went well, didn't it? Worked really well for those raking in the dough.

“But wait, here comes COVID. That really took the focus off opioids, didn't it? The problem is still with us, but you don't hear about the deaths from drug overdoses in the news anymore. All of my life, I'd hear ‘my doc say, ‘It's just a virus. It has to run its course,' if I asked about antibiotics for a cold or flu.

“There is no denying this virus is real and it is deadly. I think the vaccines were pushed through for profit. Hearing about side effects that can happen with them is frightening. Who wants a blood clot or inflammation of the heart? That's just two of them.

“America is getting dumb? I think we've been dumb for blindly following the FDA.”

From Anne Augustyn: “Gee, Dan, you missed a couple of obvious ones, like all of the media talking ‘heads who called the left-wing riots of 2020 ‘peaceful protests’ or of Joe Biden's plan to pay certain illegal immigrants $450,000 per person, both of which seem dumb to me. But I guess those examples don't seem dumb to you or at least don't support your agenda.”

From Steve Verbancsics: “Having read your column, you might find the following interesting (depressing? Not unexpected?)

“After the Dallas follies I couldn't help but reply to someone who took it all seriously: ‘You know of course that this is all being run by Ben Franklin and The Hellfire Club from their headquarters underneath The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.’

“I doubt that you will be surprised that the person I replied to started a serious discussion of what I had said.

“The other thing is that having at one point been a night watchman for the Sesame Street set when I was going to Columbia in the late 60's, I can attest that even asleep Big Bird is more intelligent and a better conversationalist than teedie mexi-cruz.”

***

I'd be remiss if I didn't take the time and a few drops of printer's ink to sincerely wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.

Dan Tackett is a retired managing editor of The Courier. He can be reached at dtackett@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Lincoln Courier: Is American sanity on a slippery slope? Readers voice their opinion

The Leftist Millennial Who Could Lead One of Latin America's Wealthiest and Most Unequal Countries


Ciara Nugent
Fri, November 19, 2021,


Gabriel Boric
Supporters hold a cutout of Gabriel Boric, presidential candidate for the Social Convergence party, during a campaign rally ahead of the general election in Casablanca, Chile, on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021. Credit - Cristobal Olivares—Bloomberg/Getty Images

Ten years ago, Gabriel Boric was a 25 year-old student protester, with shaggy hair and a beard, leading tens of thousands of young people through the streets of Santiago. As head of a major student union, he shook Chile’s establishment by leading rallies that brought reforms to Chile’s privatized education system. Today, aged 35—and with slightly tidier hair—Boric is within striking distance of Chile’s presidency.

Chile’s Nov. 21 election, where Boric is one of two frontrunners, is the most high-stakes moment yet in a tumultuous two year national debate over the market-centered economic model established by military dictator Augusto Pinochet in the 1980s. With deregulated business and privatized public services and natural resources, the system helped make Chile a haven for foreign investors and one of the richest countries in South America.

But it has also generated the highest rate of inequality in the OECD group of developed nations and untenable living costs for poorer Chileans, with six in ten households earning too little to cover monthly expenses, according to the National Statistics Institute. Starting in October 2019, hundreds of thousands of people participated in months of anti-government protests—a so-called “social explosion”—which culminated in a national vote in 2020 to rewrite the Pinochet-era constitution.

If elected, Boric, who has spent the past seven years as a congressman arguing for the ideals expressed in the social explosion, promises to kill off the old model for good. A Boric-led leftwing coalition would hike taxes on major industries, ramp up public spending to overhaul services, and scrap the private pension system that has underpinned Chile’s capital markets. “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave,” he told a rally in July after winning the primary for leftist bloc Approve Dignity.

Riot police vehicles spray tear gaz at demonstrators during a protest against Chile's government in Santiago, Chile, November 4, 2019.Jeremias Gonzalez—NurPhoto/Getty Images

For Boric’s supporters it’s a long-awaited chance to transform a country that has never worked for a majority of its citizens. For his critics, it’s a radical overreaction that will destroy the foundation of Chile’s wealth and stability.

To deliver his vision, though, Boric would have to defeat another insurgent, José Antonio Kast, 51. A far-right former congressman with ties to the Pinochet regime, Kast has surged in the polls over the past six months. His hardline conservative stances on police brutality, indigenous rights and immigration have earned him comparisons to Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.

Recent polls put Kast on 26.5% of the vote, only marginally ahead of Boric’s 25%. Though pollsters warn that the recent social upheaval has made it exceedingly difficult to predict voter behavior, the candidates of the center-right ruling party and traditional center-left appear to be languishing in a distant fourth and third place.

The most likely outcome is that Boric and Kast pass to a second round vote in late December, presenting Chile with its starkest choice in decades, says Kenneth Bunker, a political analyst for Chilean media. “These candidates are much more extreme than what we’re used to and that’s opening up topics that we thought were closed in Chile,” he says. “If they pass to the second round, it’s going to be an absolute earthquake for the political system”
Who is Gabriel Boric?

Boric grew up in Magallanes, the southernmost region of Chile. He started in student activism in high school and in 2011, while studying law at the University of Chile, he was elected leader of its student union. That year, college students began a massive organized protest against low public funding and inequity in Chile’s education system, which Boric argued “treats our rights like consumer goods.” Marches and university occupations forced the government into negotiations that eventually yielded sweeping educational reforms.

Student leader Gabriel Boric delivers a speech during a protest to demand Chilean President Sebastian Pinera's government to improve public education quality in Santiago, on August 28, 2012

.Claudio Santana—AFP/Getty Images

In 2013, Boric was elected to congress for Magallanes as an independent. He has since cycled through membership of several “new left” parties—most recently Social Convergence—set up to challenge Chile’s longstanding center-left and far left blocs. Boric argues that the centrists, who have had previous stints in power, were not ambitious enough to tackle the country’s deep rooted inequality. Parts of the far-left, meanwhile, have unnerved voters by expressing support for authoritarian leftist regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Boric has embraced positions, such as making currently privately-held water rights a public or common resource, which previous leftist governments in Chile have shied away from. But he cuts a relatively moderate figure, often stressing the importance of dialogue with opponents and becoming one of the most vocal supporters of a November 2019 pact between political parties to end the violence in the streets. Boric’s campaign has focused on grassroots political participation, holding town halls to discuss policy before producing a manifesto of 13,000 proposals,

Bunker says younger Chileans appreciate Boric’s “brutal honesty”: he has for several years spoken openly about suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder and spending time in a psychiatric hospital, breaking a taboo around mental health in Chile. “He represents a younger, more modern, progressive voter, which makes people feel that he’s in synchronicity with the times,” Bunker says.
Chile at a crossroads

Kast offers a very different social and cultural vision for Chile, one aligned with the deeply conservative forces that have ruled in the past. Kast spent most of his political career in a rightwing party founded in the 1980’s that strongly supported the Pinochet regime, despite its murder and torture of tens of thousands of civilians. When Kast first ran for president in 2017—then achieving only marginal support—he claimed that if the dictator were still alive, “he would vote for me.”

Supporters of Chilean presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast of the Republican Party hold a flag during the presidential campaign closing rally on November 18, 2021 in Santiago, Chile. Chileans will go to the polls on November 21.Marcelo Hernandez—Getty Images

Kast has promised to restore order to the streets after the protests, which he dubbed an “anti-social explosion” and recent conflicts with indigenous activists. His manifesto offers “unconditional support” for the carabineros, the police force that watchdogs have accused of human rights abuses (Boric wants to reform and “relaunch” the carabineros).

A staunch Catholic, Kast also wants to push to repeal a 2017 law that made abortion legal under a limited set of circumstances, and on the campaign trail, he has suggested the country dig a three meter-deep ditch along its northern border to keep out migrants and refugees from Venezuela.

But some of the campaign’s most intense debates have centered around the economic model. Kast’s brother, Michael, was a minister in the Pinochet regime and one of the so-called Chicago Boys—a group of economists who helped design Chile’s free market formula after studying at the University of Chicago under economist Milton Friedman. Kast has pledged to defend, “resolutely and rigidly” the model, cutting taxes, regulations and public spending, in order to restore economic growth after three years of recession caused by the unrest and COVID-19. Higher public spending during the pandemic has pushed the deficit to 11.5% of GDP this year, slightly lower than the current U.S. deficit of 12.4%.

Boric, meanwhile, wants a transformation. He advocates the cancellation of student debts, an increase in the minimum wage, expansion of public health care and the introduction of new taxes on the wealthy and on the mining companies that have made fortunes out of Chile’s vast copper resources.

Boric’s most controversial proposal, though, is a plan to replace Chile’s private pension system with a state one. Introduced by Pinochet in 1981, the private scheme obliges Chileans to pay 10% of their income into a pension fund managed by a company, freeing up individual savings for investment in local capital markets.

Multilateral organizations like the World Bank have held up the system as an example for emerging economies struggling to afford public pensions. But many Chileans say it has provided only paltry payouts for retirees and six in 10 want it replaced with a public system.

Stability in question

The pension debate in Chile, which helped fuel the 2019 protests, is now the focal point of concern for business leaders and foreign investors about the future direction of the country as a whole. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, congress has voted three times to allow Chileans to take out 10% of their pension to help cope with job losses, which economists say could have a severe long term impact on future retirees.

Boric’s vote in favour of those withdrawals have led some foreign investors to fear a potential populist slant in his economic policy. “The question is whether [increased public spending] will be done in a responsible way,” Alberto Ramos, a Goldman Sachs analyst told the Financial Times. “They are slowly deviating from the macro model that made Chile the poster child of fiscal responsibility.”

Boric’s critics also say the presence of the Communist Party in his electoral bloc, members of which will likely hold a significant minority of seats in a Boric-led coalition, would allow more radical voices into government, with a potential destabilizing effect for one of the most stable countries in Latin America.

But a Kast victory may be even more destabilizing for Chile, argues Claudia Heiss, head of political science at the University of Chile’s Institute of Public Affairs. Kast is hostile to the project that Chile undertook after the 2019 protests to rewrite its constitution. He says that if he doesn’t like the new draft, due to be delivered by an elected assembly next year ahead of a referendum, he would campaign for it to be rejected.

“The political system has already started taking a change in direction with the constitutional process and Kast is in conflict with that process,” Heiss says. “I think a Boric government can help do the reforms people have asked for, and make the institutional, political route viable. Without that route, we might go back to the large shocks that we saw in the social explosion.”

'Burning the metro': Chile election divides voters between protest and order





Polling station ahead of the upcoming presidential election in Santiago

Sat, November 20, 2021
By Gram Slattery

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - For many Chileans, Plaza Baquedano, a broad rotary in central Santiago that for decades served as a center of social protest, has become a powerful symbol of hope.

For two years, city residents have regularly gathered here https://graphics.reuters.com/CHILE-PROTESTS/0100B32527X/index.html to protest pensions that are too low, public transit fees that are too high and, more generally, an old-guard political class that just does not get it.

The statue of a nineteenth-century general that sat at the plaza's center has been removed https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-protests-idUSKBN2B3255, and its plinth is now covered in left-wing political literature.

Most credit the protests - known collectively as the "estallido social" or "social outbreak" - for bringing about an ongoing rewrite of the nation's Pinochet-era constitution

 https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-begins-down-uncertain-road-writing-new-constitution-2021-05-17. The "estallido" has also helped propel the candidacy of 35-year-old leftist Gabriel Boric, a relative newcomer who has become a serious contender in this Sunday's presidential election https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/former-protest-leader-boric-seeks-bury-chiles-neoliberal-past-2021-11-17

But not everyone is so enthralled.

Among the detractors is Ramon Zambrano, a doorman at a nearby apartment building.

"You can protest, but peacefully. They're making a mess, burning cars, burning the metro. What are they doing?" he asks, while pointing out the damage done to the now graffiti-covered building where he works.

In a sense, the situation around Plaza Baquedano represents the central paradox of the election here. While Chile's Left gained significant traction via dozens of massive marches that began in 2019, two years of sometimes-violent protests have made many voters wary.

That - combined with a widespread perception among Chileans that crime is on the rise - has created an opportunity for the Right to gain ground by hammering home a law-and-order message.

While Boric, who rose to fame heading student protests in 2011, had been leading for most of 2021, José Antonio Kast, an ultra-right-wing former congressman who draws comparisons to Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chiles-bolsonaro-hard-right-kast-rises-with-frank-talk-crime-focus-2021-11-16, has risen in the polls dramatically in recent weeks.

Most recent polls show Kast drawing the largest vote share on Sunday. A Nov. 6 survey by consultancy Activa Research has Kast narrowly winning a likely runoff https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/chile-conservative-kast-maintains-lead-final-pre-election-opinion-polls-2021-11-06 in December.

BURNED OUT

For Kenneth Bunker, director of political consultancy Tresquintos, a particularly violent round of protests in late October helped boost the Right.

A series https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chile-mapuche-conflict-idUSKCN25230C of recent confrontations https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/freight-train-derailed-burned-southern-chile-amid-indigenous-conflict-2021-11-02 in the southern Araucania and Bio Bio provinces - where police and separatist indigenous groups have long feuded - has also played into Kast's hands.

"I think there is a very important part of the country that's tired, they don't want any more of this," said Gonzalo Cordero, a political consultant and columnist for the national La Tercera newspaper.

Boric's supporters point out that almost 80% of Chileans, many fed up with the nation's ultra-free-market economic model, voted last year to rewrite the nation's constitution https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/freight-train-derailed-burned-southern-chile-amid-indigenous-conflict-2021-11-02

 A conservative like Kast would do little to quell discontent, they argue.

"I think that if Kast is elected, there will be an 'estallido 2.0'," said Pedro Muñoz, an elected member of the body re-writing Chile's constitution.

Still, the Kast campaign is leaning in to the law-and-order message, as are his supporters.

At his campaign's closing event on Thursday night, he pledged repeatedly to crack down on crime. The strongest applause came when he spoke in favor of police officers, many of whom have been accused by the public and prosecutors of using violence against protestors.

Several supporters insisted without evidence in interviews that the "estallido" was the product of foreign provocateurs, such as the Venezuelan or Cuban governments.

Banners in favor of Trump were common, as were anti-crime banners such as "Orden con Kast," or "Order with Kast."

Boric, for his part, is leaning in, too. While for Kast's supporters the protests are a symptom of decline and disorder, for Boric, they are a sign the previous order was not worth saving.

"We're going to do our politics from the streets," Boric said at his own campaign event on Thursday night.

(Reporting by Gram Slattery; Additional reporting by Fabian Cambero and Natalia A. Ramos Miranda; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

USA FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE
A woman revealed a hospital billed her $50,000 for her baby's birth in a viral TikTok video


Lauren Frias
Fri, November 19, 2021

Shannon Mayor and her baby.Shannon Mayor

A California mother was billed more than $50,000 by the hospital where she delivered her baby.

Shannon Mayor shared the bill in a viral TikTok, adding that she was responsible for paying $250.

"When you think about the average person, who has $50,000 sitting around to have a baby?" she said.

A California woman went viral on TikTok after she revealed she was billed more than $50,000 by the hospital where she gave birth to her baby.

In the fall of 2020, Shannon Mayor quit her job in the tech industry to start a small business when she found out she was pregnant, prompting her to search for "the best insurance I can get," she said in a phone interview.

"To be honest, it was very stressful having to switch insurances and then also having to switch insurances a week before my baby was born to my husband's insurance," Mayor told Insider. "Insurance is complicated. It's not easy in this country to figure out, and you can be screwed if you don't, you know, really think ahead."

Mayor said she stayed in a private room at the hospital for a week and told Insider she felt "a lot of gratitude towards my hospital stay, my doctor, and the care I received."

"They took amazing care of my baby," she said.

Shannon Mayor with her husband and baby.Shannon Mayor

Earlier this week, Mayor, who lives with her husband and now five-month-old son in northern California, got the hospital bill, which showed her insurance plan paid $50,816.02 for the costs of the birth. Mayor was responsible for paying $250, according to the bill.

Her surprise at the total amount prompted her to pull out her phone and show it to her followers in a video on TikTok, which garnered more than 8 million views as of Friday.

@shannonmayor

I wasn’t expecting the total to be that high 😅 ##hospitalbirth ##fyp ##bills♬ Wii - Mii Channel - Super Guitar Bros

"When you think about the average person, who has $50,000 sitting around to have a baby?" Mayor told Insider in reaction to the bill. "That's like a down payment on a house in some places."

She added: "I was grateful that I have insurance. A lot of people aren't that fortunate in this country to have really good insurance like I had, and without it, it would have cost a lot more likely to have my baby. Not a lot of people have access to that kind of insurance, so I felt a lot of gratitude in that moment."

People in the comments of Mayor's viral video also were also awestruck by the hospital bill and some shared their own birth stories and subsequent hospital bills. Some commenters noted the difference in how the costs of childbirth are dealt with in other countries, particularly in Europe.

One commenter said their daughter was in the NICU for two months, resulting in a final bill of about $1.5 million. TikToker @usa.mom.in.germany, a US expatriate mother living in Germany, shared her own response to Mayor's video, saying she paid a little over $50 USD to give birth to her baby abroad.

"I think it's cool that it's sparked a lot of conversation about universal health care. We have a lot of people coming in from other countries talking about their experiences," Mayor told Insider in response to the video's comments. "Reading the comments, hearing people's stories, it's definitely been really eye-opening and helped me realize just how many different perspectives exist about healthcare and access to it."

In the wake of her newfound viral fame, Mayor told Insider she hopes her video prompts people "to really question our systems and how things are working."

"I think the biggest thing is getting out and voting, being vocal about changes you want to happen," she said. "And then of course, talking to friends and family, encouraging them to vote, and encouraging other people to really start to look and see the inequalities that exist here in our country with healthcare, especially in comparison to so many other countries around the world."

Maine Democrat stands alone, again, in opposing Biden bill


FILE - Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, speaks at Acadia National Park, June 18, 2021, in Winter Harbor, Maine. Golden on Friday, Nov. 19, voted against an expansive social and environment bill that President Joe Biden hailed as “another giant step forward” for the country. After casting the only Democratic vote against the legislation Friday, Golden blasted the bill as drafted and reiterated that he won't support what he described as a $280 billion tax break for millionaires. 

(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)More

DAVID SHARP
Fri, November 19, 2021

Democratic Rep. Jared Golden of Maine is bucking his party again, voting Friday against an expansive social and environment bill that President Joe Biden hailed as “another giant step forward” for the country.

After casting the only Democratic vote against the legislation, Golden blasted the bill and said he won't support what he described as a $280 billion tax break for millionaires.

“I don’t think people should accept things like this as the price of doing business," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

This isn't the first time Golden has stood alone, at least among Democrats, in voting against one of Biden's top priorities. He was the sole Democrat in Congress to oppose the Biden administration's $1.9 billion COVID-19 relief package in March, which he said was “too big, too fast” and contributed to creeping inflation. “I’ll stand by that vote, too,” he said.

It's all part of a delicate political balancing act for Golden, a Marine Corps veteran who serves an increasingly conservative district in rural Maine. His district, which covers almost four-fifths of Maine’s land area, voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 even as it sent Golden to Congress for a second term. Republicans have made it a top target as they try to win back the House in next year’s election.

His decision to break ranks on Biden's bill attracted some Twitter scorn Friday. A few critics called him a DINO, or “Democrat in Name Only."

Golden shrugged off the criticism. He said he's worried not for himself, but for Democrats at large if they want to hold onto their congressional majorities in the midterm elections.

His said his opposition to Biden's bill centered on the state and local tax deduction, where a $10,000 cap would be raised to $80,000. He said 88% of millionaires would get an average tax break of $17,000 while little more than 1% of benefits would go to people making less than $100,000. These people would get back $20 or $30 under the provision, he said.

That's not the sort of thing Democrats should support, Golden said.

“Sometimes the truth hurts,” he said.

The good news, he said, is that the bill will be revised in the Senate. He said he expects those negotiations will produce a final version of the bill that he can support.

Golden noted that Biden has vowed for months that the overall proposal would be funded by rich people who don't pay their share in taxes.

"We need to deliver on that," he said.

—-

Sharp reported from Portland, Maine.

Lake Superior is one of the fastest-warming lakes on the planet

Isabella O'Malley

Fri, November 19, 2021

Lake Superior is one of the fastest-warming lakes on the planet

Lake Superior is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and its volume is around 10 per cent of all the freshwater that exists on the planet. Many local and international communities rely on the lake for economic, cultural, and recreational reasons, but warming temperatures are threatening widespread changes to the waterbody.

A study from York University reports that since 1992, lakes in the Northern Hemisphere have been warming six times faster than any other time period in the past century. The situation is particularly concerning in Canada, where the researchers say that Lake Superior is the second fastest-warming lake in the world.

“When we were calculating our trends, we had to double and triple check because they were so fast. And we haven't seen that translate in any of our previous studies as well. So that was the alarming part, how fast things are changing,” Sapna Sharma, Associate Professor at York University and lead author of the study, told The Weather Network.

The frozen Lake Superior coastline in Michigan during the winter. (Posnov/ Moment/ Getty Images)

The study looked at the ice trends of 60 lakes around the world that have ice phenology records that were between 107 to 204 years old. The analysis revealed that on average, all of the lakes were freezing 11 days later and thawing nearly 7 days sooner, which was attributed to warm winters in the past few decades.

Lakes in cooler climates, such as those in northern regions of Russia, China, and North America, are experiencing more extreme changes than lakes closer to the equator. This is because of Arctic amplification, which is the observance that air temperatures at higher latitudes are warming more rapidly than those at southern latitudes due to melting polar ice and atmospheric circulation patterns.

There are several other lakes around the world that are also warming abnormally quickly. Ice on Japan’s Lake Suwa has been forming close to 26 days later per century since 1897 and is only freezing twice every decade. Grand Traverse Bay in Lake Michigan had one of the fastest trends of melting abnormally early, with this occurring approximately 16 days earlier each century.

Lake ice is considered to be an important indicator of the health of these ecosystems as global temperatures warm. The researchers say that less ice coverage will create ecological, cultural, and socioeconomic consequences due to changing evaporation rates, warming lake temperatures, decreased water quality, and more frequent algal blooms. Ice fishing and winter transportation will also be disrupted and potentially lost in some areas.

A woman steps across ice floes drifting apart in the water near the shore of Lake Superior in winter during a light snow in Grand Marais, Minnesota. (wanderluster/ E+/ Getty Images)

According to Sharma, Indigenous communities that rely on winter ice roads are particularly impacted by this warming trend.

“Ice roads are critical for connecting remote, mostly Indigenous communities, to southern locations to have access to resources and social networks. What we found is that over the last 20 years, there's been a delay in the winter road opening season by three weeks. And that's quite significant because the only transportation option is to fly out of those regions, which is very expensive.”

The study stated that ice-free years will become more common as the winter season warms and up to 5,700 northern lakes may permanently lose ice cover by 2100.

“There is an urgent need for research focused on implications of losing lake ice cover, both economically and in terms of lake ecology. Accumulating knowledge of winter ecology can improve our capacity to understand the role of ice cover on lakes, and the people who depend on ice cover, before it is lost,” the study concludes.

Thumbnail credit: Michigannut/ iStock/ Getty Images Plus

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.