AOC mocks Brett Kavanaugh for skipping dessert at DC steakhouse amid protests outside: 'The least they could do is let him eat cake'

Bryan Metzger
Fri, July 8, 2022

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York

 and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Kevin Dietsch and Zach Gibson/Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh left through the back door of a DC steakhouse amid protests outside.

"Poor guy. He left before his soufflé," said AOC, mocking media coverage of the protest.

She pointed out that the overturning of Roe v. Wade will negatively impact people with ectopic pregnancies.

Following reports that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh left a DC steakhouse early on Wednesday night amid protests outside, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York took issue with media coverage of the incident.

"Poor guy. He left before his soufflé because he decided half the country should risk death if they have an ectopic pregnancy within the wrong state lines," the prominent progressive a "Squad" member wrote on Twitter. "It's all very unfair to him. The least they could do is let him eat cake."

Kavanaugh was one of six justices that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, revoking the constitutional right to an abortion.

In the wake of that ruling, women with ectopic pregnancies — which occur when an embryo implants outside the uterus, can be life-threatening, and never result in a live birth — may no longer be able to access care in states that enact sweeping abortion bans.

Politico reported on Friday that Kavanaugh left Morton's as protesters with ShutDownDC gathered outside, though they also reported that the conservative Supreme Court Justice "did not hear or see the protesters and ate a full meal but left before dessert."

Morton's issued a statement to Politico denouncing the protest, saying Kavanaugh and other patrons were "unduly harassed by unruly protestors."

"Politics, regardless of your side or views, should not trample the freedom at play of the right to congregate and eat dinner," a representative for the restaurant chain told Politico. "There is a time and place for everything. Disturbing the dinner of all of our customers was an act of selfishness and void of decency."

"I will never understand the pearl clutching over these protests," Ocasio-Cortez continued. "Republicans send people to protest me all the time, sometimes drunk and belligerent."

She also alluded to prior media coverage of conservative figures being driven from restaurants, including when former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant in 2018.

"Nobody cares about it unless it's a Republican in a restaurant," said Ocasio-Cortez. "Can someone please explain the obsession because I don't get it."

Türkiye uncovers world's second-largest rare earth element reserve

- Of the 17 known rare elements, the country will produce 10 from the new field, Energy Minister says

 home > Türkiye 02.07.2022      

Türkiye uncovered the world's second-largest rare earth element reserve in the Beylikova district of Eskisehir in central Anatolia, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Fatih Donmez revealed on Friday.

The reserve is estimated to hold reserves of 694 million tons, second only to China, which currently has the largest rare element field with reserves of 800 million tons.

Rare earth elements are used in fields such as aviation, defense, the space industry and biomedicine.

Donmez confirmed that as the field is extremely close to the surface, it will be less costly to extract elements.

'Of the 17 known rare elements, we will be able to produce 10 here,' he said.

Additionally, the new reserve will allow the processing of about 570,000 tons of ore annually.

He also declared that 250 tons of thorium will be produced, an element used as fuel in the nuclear industry.

The discovery will allow local production of rare elements that will primarily be used in the country's industrial sectors but also for export.

'We will have the opportunity to export more than we need abroad,' he stated.

Reporting by İsmail Ozdemir and Deniz Acik

Writing by Zeynep Beyza Kilic

Anadolu Agency

US Feds must step in or renewable energy will have nowhere to go, says MIT report



Devin Coldewey
Thu, July 7, 2022 

Building wind and solar farms is an important part of building a new green grid, but a calm night stops their energy generation cold. It's just as important to research and build green energy storage — and to that at scale requires federal intervention as soon as possible, suggests a new report from MIT.

"The Future of Energy Storage" is part of a series looking at the transition of power sources in America, and this one is particularly relevant given the momentum currently enjoyed by the solar and wind industries. Too much renewable energy sounds like a good problem to have, but if it can't be relied on as a city or region's main or only source of electricity, they're going to feel the need to hedge their bets with a coal plant or something like it.

The solution is basically batteries: store excess power when the sun is out and the wind is high, and run off them at other times. It's hardly a revelation, but the increasing reliance on what the study calls "variable renewable energy" means that what battery capacity we have isn't nearly enough. We'll need to increase it by orders of magnitude and across the country (and eventually the world, of course — but not every country is equally prepared to make this shift).

But the problem is this: Wind farms and solar make money, while storage facilities … don't. Sure, they might break even on the long term, but they aren't the easy money that solar farms have become. The most efficient and green energy storage options, like pumped hydro, are incredibly expensive and limited in the locations they can be built. While the most easily accessed technologies, like lithium-ion batteries, are widespread but neither capacious nor organized enough to serve as a grid supplement.

This is where the Department of Energy needs to step in, MIT says. The federal government has the means both to subsidize the utilization of existing storage options and to fund intensive research into new and promising ones. A hydrogen energy storage system could be a game changer, the report notes, but it isn't going to fund itself. Like other critical infrastructure, it must be paid for up front by the feds and paid off over time.

Severe weather, blackouts show the grid’s biggest problem is infrastructure, not renewables

But it isn't just about writing checks. The DOE will need to evaluate the feasibility of doing things like repurposing old infrastructure like decommissioned power plants, reusing their connections to the grid and the communities that were built around them. If coal plants weren't simply shut down but rather converted into hydrogen electrolysis centers, the jobs could stay but the emissions would go.

And then there's the matter of the cost of the energy itself. The report warns that even with adequate storage, the cost of power would fluctuate far beyond the norms we've established today with our consistent (but dirty) fuel-based sources of energy. Maybe peak power today costs twice as much as off-peak power — but in 10 years, that gap could be much wider. On one hand, the low-end cost would be nearly zero — but peak power might be far more expensive.

The electricity market will change a lot, and consumers shouldn't have to wonder whether running the dishwasher will cost them a penny or a buck. Instead, smart modeling of these cost and supply issues should be used to abstract away the variability and provide both consistency for consumers and payback for electricity generators.

The U.S. is at a good point for the feds to step in, and if they do so it will be watched eagerly by other countries working on making a similar leap. The report notes that India, for a number of reasons, is also facing a growing power and emissions crisis, and the U.S. may serve as a useful test bed for proving out technologies that could serve their larger population similarly well.

You can read the full report or the executive summary, both very accessible, at the report page here.

Canada's Ukrainian community urges Trudeau not to return Russian gas turbine

Ukrainians fleeing Russia's invasion arrive in Winnipeg
Steve Scherer and Rod Nickel

Thu, July 7, 2022 

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canada's Ukrainian community is urging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to refuse to compromise the country's sanctions against Russia in order to return a turbine that Moscow says is critical for supplying natural gas to Germany.

Russia's state-controlled Gazprom cut the capacity along the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just 40% of usual levels last month, citing the delayed return of equipment being serviced by Germany's Siemens Energy in Canada.

Canada has one of the world's biggest Ukrainian diasporas outside of countries that border Ukraine and it has successfully pressured Ottawa to impose increasingly strict sanctions against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February.

Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) national president Alexandra Chyczij urged Trudeau, in a letter on Wednesday, to see through Russia's "obvious ploy" to divide Ukraine's allies.

Ottawa should instead broker a solution that does not involve waiving sanctions, she wrote in the letter, posted on UCC's website.

"Any waiver of Canadian sanctions would be viewed as a capitulation to Russian blackmail and energy terrorism, and would only serve to embolden the Russian terrorist state," Chyczij said.

In an interview, UCC CEO Ihor Michalchyshyn said the group is acting independently and not receiving direction from Kyiv regarding lobbying Ottawa about the turbine.

The Canadian government has not responded to the UCC's letter, he said.

"We have not gotten reassurance of anything, either way," Michalchyshyn said. "That's why we're quite concerned."

A Canadian government source said the Ukrainian government itself opposes the turbine's return.

Trudeau's office had no immediate comment on the letter.

"We will not stop imposing severe costs on the Putin regime while their unjustifiable invasion is ongoing and we will continue to support our European friends and allies," said Ian Cameron, spokesman for Canada's natural resources minister, in a statement.

The Russian embassy in Ottawa said Russia has no role to play in returning the turbine.

"It is a problem between Canada and Germany," the embassy said in a statement. "We would welcome the release of the turbine which could help to restore gas flow to Europe."

The technical problem with the turbine is merely a Russian pretext, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said last week.

Canada, alongside its Western allies, has issued sweeping sanctions on Russia after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine in what the Kremlin calls a "special military operation."

(Reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg and Steve Scherer in Ottawa;Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Media: Canada will return the turbine to Gazprom

Today

The Canadian authorities announced their intention to withdraw from sanctions the turbine for the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Agreements on this issue were carried out with Berlin.

European Truth and Reuters write about it . The reason for the lifting of restrictive measures should be the argument that the return of the turbine will give Russia the opportunity to restore the pumping of fuel to Europe. The Ukrainian government is aware of Ottawa's intention and has already stated that it is "unreasonable and dangerous for the sanctions regime."

Canada and Germany do not want the absence of turbines to stop Russia from supplying gas via Nord Stream. But Kyiv insists that the sanctions prohibit the transfer of any gas-related equipment to Moscow.

- If, God forbid, this decision is approved, we will undoubtedly turn to our European colleagues with a request to reconsider their approach. Because if countries do not comply with the decisions they have agreed on sanctions, what kind of solidarity can we talk about? - said in the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy.

Last month Kyiv demanded not to return the turbine to Russia.

Recall that we are talking about a Siemens turbine, which is currently being repaired in Canada.

Note that Berlin also asked Ottawa not to return the turbine to Moscow. Such requirements were put forward by the head of the German Ministry of Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck. Moreover, he insisted on transferring this turbine to Germany. He said the move would deprive Russian leader Vladimir Putin of "excuses" for cutting gas supplies.

Germany Expects Canada to Release Key Nord Stream Part

Arne Delfs, Bloomberg News

A pressure gauge on pipework at the Gazprom PJSC Slavyanskaya compressor station, the starting point of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, in Ust-Luga, Russia, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. Nord Stream 2 is a 1,230-kilometer (764-mile) gas pipeline that will double the capacity of the existing undersea route from Russian fields to Europe -- the original Nord Stream -- which opened in 2011. Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Germany expects Canada to release a key Russian pipeline part caught up in sanctions, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Releasing the part could potentially ease a gas standoff between Russia and Germany. The Kremlin said on Friday that if the turbine is sent back then gas flows to Europe can increase.

A German government spokesman said they had received positive signals, but no confirmation the turbine is on its way. It wasn’t immediately possible to contact the Canadian government.

Germany has urged Canada to release the part as it takes all possible measures to prevent an energy catastrophe this winter. 

Economy Minister Robert Habeck told Bloomberg earlier this week that the turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline needs to be returned before maintenance work begins on Monday. Releasing the component would remove an excuse for Russian President Vladimir Putin to keep the conduit closed, he said.

Shell Decides to Build Europe’s Largest Green Hydrogen Plant

William Mathis, Bloomberg News

The chemical symbol for hydrogen on the exterior of the electrolyzer area during the final stages of construction at Iberdola SA's Puertollano green hydrogen plant in Puertollano, Spain, on Thursday, May 19, 2022. The new plant will be Europe's largest production site for green hydrogen for industrial use. Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Shell Plc has decided to proceed with building Europe’s largest plant producing hydrogen from renewable power as oil majors bet the fuel could be key to cutting carbon emissions.

Holland Hydrogen I will include 200 megawatts of electrolyzers, powered by a wind farm off the coast of the Netherlands, according to a statement from Shell on Wednesday. That’s 10 times the size of the largest existing green hydrogen facility in Europe. Shell didn’t disclose the value of the investment.

Green hydrogen is a key part of Europe’s plans to cut emissions and reliance on imported natural gas from Russia. The clean-burning gas can be used to replace fossil fuels in industrial processes such as chemicals production, heavy transportation and power generation. 

Big Oil Bets That Green Hydrogen Is the Future of Energy

“Renewable hydrogen will play a pivotal role in the energy system of the future and this project is an important step in helping hydrogen fulfill that potential,” said Anna Mascolo, executive vice president of emerging energy solutions at Shell. 

While Europe has big plans for green hydrogen, most production is currently on a small, experimental scale. Iberdrola SA has what it calls Europe’s biggest green hydrogen facility in Spain, with a capacity of 20-megawatts. 

Once the project is complete in 2025, Shell will use the roughly 60,000 kilograms of green hydrogen it produces daily to supply the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Rotterdam. That facility currently uses hydrogen produced using fossil fuels to run its operations. Using the green alternative will lower overall emissions from producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

FORTEAN PHENOMENA

First, the Fish Fell From the Sky. 

Then They Washed Ashore.

Livia Albeck-Ripka

The New York Times

Fri, July 8, 2022 

One night last month, Britt Gerhard and her husband heard a bang on the roof of their house in San Francisco around 8 p.m. It was so loud, they thought it was an earthquake.

The couple had just put their 4-year-old daughter to bed, and Gerhard, a 38-year-old artist, was alarmed. Suddenly, shiny and silver things, each just a few inches long, began flying past the window.

They were anchovies

“We went outside, and there were just fish everywhere, about 20 to 30 fish,” Gerhard said. “I was like, ‘OK, we’ve had a pandemic and fires and now, fish are falling from the sky.’”

In the past month, a handful of residents in the Bay Area have reported similar occurrences. Then, last week, several thousand dead anchovies washed up about 30 miles north, on the shore of the Bolinas Lagoon.

The happenings might seem bizarre, or even biblical, but scientists say they have a perfectly rational explanation: The anchovy population off the California coast is booming.

Those that washed ashore were likely chased by marine predators into the shallow lagoon waters, where they soon got stuck and ran out of oxygen, said Jarrod Santora, a marine ecologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As for the fish falling from the sky, he added, “That’s just birds carrying them back to their chicks, and they can only carry so many, and some of them fall out.”

Santora said that the gulls that nest atop buildings in the city often fight one another for food, and that they might drop their fish in a process known as kleptoparasitism: “That’s when a bird beats up on another bird for its lunch.”

Anchovies are a boom-and-bust species: Their populations naturally shrink and expand, and scientists don’t know exactly why. But since a marine heat wave that ended around 2016, the population of anchovies off the California coast has exploded “by orders of magnitude,” Santora said. It has created a banquet for the birds, sea lions and whales that feast on them, he added.

“These humpbacks are recovering, and they’re very hungry,” Santora said, adding that he suspected that a group of the whales could have driven the anchovies into shallow water. The whales, he said, cooperatively feed in small groups by splitting the fish into smaller schools, weakening their defenses.

“Five humpback whales can move an anchovy school basically anywhere they want to,” he added, “and just scoop it all up.”

The mass anchovy die-off in Bolinas Lagoon was rare, but not unprecedented. In 2013, anchovies crowded into Santa Cruz harbor, depriving themselves of oxygen. The next year, a mass die-off of the tiny fish fouled an Oregon beach town. Earlier this year, thousands of the fish also washed up dead on a beach in Chile.

Rudi Ferris, a fisherman who has lived in Bolinas for more than five decades, said that he recalled a handful of die-offs in the seaside town, and that only one, in the late 1970s, rivaled the carnage he witnessed last month.

“It stunk horribly for a really long time,” said Ferris, 71. This time, he added, he watched the scene from afar through his binoculars. A mass of pelicans and gulls were “frantically eating,” he said.

Staff members with Marin County Parks, which manages the lagoon, said that most of the fish had either been eaten or washed back out to sea, but that the phenomenon had provided a brief glimpse into the wonders of ocean life.

“We don’t usually get to see how many fish are in the ocean,” said Max Korten, director and general manager for Marin County Parks. “It’s kind of amazing.”

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Losing our freedoms on the road to becoming the Divided Fascist States of America



Chris Preece
Thu, July 7, 2022 

I enjoy my freedom as an American, free speech, freedom to worship how I like, and the comfort of knowing my kid will have opportunities to reach his full potential. This America, the one we have loved but had some tough times with, may be ending. Likely ending sooner than we think.

My wife, many loved ones, and half our population had their right to bodily autonomy (to do with their own body as they see fit) recently ripped from them by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and Kentucky State Legislature. Kentucky’s law on abortion has NO exceptions for rape or incest and only a narrow exemption for the life of the mother. Our wives, daughters, mothers, and friends now have their bodies controlled by our government. This is the first time in American history that SCOTUS has taken rights away from people regarding bodily autonomy.

Access to an abortion had been upheld by SCOTUS for 49 years under the view that we have a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. Since the right to privacy and bodily freedom are being whittled away, Justice Thomas has expressed interest in reexamining our right to contraception (condoms and birth control), as well as our right to marry whomever we love. All these cases center around sex. Do you want the government in your sex life? I do not.

Also, if we do not have a right to privacy, the government could start invading our cars, homes, phones, or worse. Yes, this is extrapolating to make a point. If SCOTUS is not afraid to strip reproductive rights away, how far are they willing to go?

SCOTUS has agreed to hear a case next term (Moore v. Harper) about state legislatures being able to control federal elections, potentially going as far as to allow state electors to cast votes for whomever they like regardless of how we, the people, vote. If SCOTUS allows state legislators to control these elections, the states could make up their own rules and ignore our votes. Then we would no longer have a democracy. Let that sink in. We could potentially no longer have a democracy. Each state would have its own rules on federal elections, and our country would be even more divided Red v. Blue.

Our lives have increasingly gotten harder. Harder to buy gas, food, and a place to live. This is designed to keep us regular folks too busy to pay attention to politics. Now, I ask you to stand up and fight back against SCOTUS and their decisions to strip away our rights and democracy.

You may feel that your actions don’t matter, but they do. We all have a voice and a vote. When we talk to our friends and get more people involved, we amplify our voices. I help organize a group of concerned citizens, Bluegrass Reproductive Justice Coalition, to push back against our government. Check out our Facebook page. If you want to push back against our government in general, you can start your own group or join groups like Kentuckians for the Commonwealth or The Poor People’s Campaign.

Actions you can take now: join a group with a common cause, start your own group, contact all your friends and get them informed and engaged, contact Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to abolish the filibuster, expand SCOTUS, codify Roe, and pass Voting Rights and US Term Limits.

America needs us all to stand up for our freedoms right now. If we don’t fight, fascism will gladly take all our freedoms, leaving us as the Divided Fascist States of America.

Chris Preeece is a high school science teacher in Berea, comic book creator, new dad, and former Democrat candidate for U.S. Congress in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district.

With events 'scarier' than Jan. 6 predicted, are we on verge of another civil war? Opinion


Christopher Blattman
Wed, July 6, 2022

In 2016, democracy rating organizations began downgrading the United States, some scoring American institutions below that of El Salvador, then Nigeria, then Iraq.

Then, following the Jan. 6 insurrection last year, articles and books began predicting something scarier: another civil war.

The most sensational accounts foretold a national breakup, neighbor killing neighbor. The more level-headed ones warned of something still dire: a far-right insurgency waging a long campaign of bombings and attacks. The disturbing evidence emerging from the Jan. 6 congressional hearings merely underscores such concerns.

These worries are understandable but flawed.

After a career studying civil wars small and large, organized violence in the United States strikes me as extraordinarily unlikely. Worse, focusing on civil war dangerously distracts Americans from the real risks.

Now, those prophesizing war have a point. If you take civil conflict from recent history, you find a chillingly familiar list of initial conditions: politics hardening along identity lines; a surge of armed groups; an erosion of institutions. Ethnic polarization and democratic backsliding are especially persistent predictors of state collapse.

More: Our view: Until America is at peace with itself, we need protection from extremists

American democracy healthier than forecasts predict

But apply this to the United States with care. The data driving these results comes from predicting massive acts of violence – genocide or revolutionary wars – almost all from low- and middle-income countries. It’s dubious to use these models to predict a different phenomenon – low-scale insurgency – in America or other rich, advanced democracies.

America’s democracy numbers also don’t add up. In 2015, raters like the Polity Project gave the United States a perfect score of 10 – one it had enjoyed for decades. Then Donald Trump was elected president, and America’s score fell to 8.

In 2019, after the failed impeachment of Trump, Polity’s score fell further to 7. Finally, on Jan. 7, 2021, immediately following the insurrection, Polity announced a drop to a 5, meaning “no longer a democracy.”

Insurrectionists loyal to then-President Donald Trump climb the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Political scientists woke up, as rapid plunges to this level are persistently correlated with outbreaks of civil war.

But this slide is suspicious. It would mean that American democracy today is several points below that of 1859, on the eve of the Civil War, and when a majority of adults were barred from voting. It would put present-day U.S. institutions on par with other 5's, like Haiti and Somalia. Meanwhile, countries like Hungary – the poster nation for democratic backsliding – maintain a perfect 10.

This defies credibility. One suspects that it’s the democracy raters who have become politicized, not American institutions. The backslide is surely exaggerated. So, then, are predictions of civil war.

The fact is, even societies with hardened identities rarely erupt in conflict. One study looked at every ethnic pairing in Africa and Eastern Europe in the late 20th century and found no more than 1 in 1,000 turned violent in a given year.

So, yes, if you trace back from a civil war you find polarized politics, or a surge of protest and arms. But trace back from periods without war and you will find a lot of the same conditions. These are not automatic forerunners of violence.
Immense pain of civil war is a deterrence

Here's why: As a general rule, enemies prefer to loathe one another in peace. That’s because war – especially civil war – is disastrous. It kills people, destroys economies and weakens the country to outside enemies. This gives all sides huge incentives to avoid violence.

For anyone who doubted these horrific consequences, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, offered a painful reminder. This may be why far-right movements and violent political acts have declined since the insurrection.

Because of these costs, most political factions don’t fight. An extremist militia in the United States would be no exception. Few things are harder than launching an insurgency against a powerful state. Intelligence services will hunt you down. Justice systems will jail you. You will live clandestinely, full of hardships. This is why even the most disaffected groups are often dissuaded from violence. Better to use politics by normal means.

Those who do see violence ahead for America often point to the Troubles in Northern Ireland – a rare example of insurgency in a wealthy democracy. I draw comfort from this comparison. Northern Ireland was far more polarized and factionalized than America today. It also had a decades-long history of a well-organized, clandestine armed movement with broad public sympathy.

Naturally there are parallels to America today, but the differences in scale and seriousness are vast.

Another key difference is the state response. British forces had limited intelligence and were indiscriminately violent. When a Catholic boy in Derry threw a flaming bottle of fuel, the British military would sweep in and arrest half the neighborhood, beating (even killing) a few. Insurgent leaders joked that the British state was their best recruiter.

U.S. security services are less partisan, more targeted and restrained. The FBI disrupts most militias before they lay their first bomb. And if a far-right fundamentalist does demolish a building, federal agents don’t round up all the Proud Boys for 20 miles and beat them up. They mount an investigation and see the perpetrator prosecuted.

I would be worried if U.S. military and federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies showed more polarization. But they’ve been strikingly resilient. So, in many ways, has America’s electoral system. In 2020, the vast majority of Republican election administrators upheld Joe Biden’s victory.

But there are still real risks here in the United States. Do you know who else noticed the resilience of the electoral system? Trump’s most ardent supporters. That’s why the worrying activity now is not restive militias – it is a shortsighted but determined slice of the Republican Party who are filling election administration offices with partisans willing to trade democracy for short-term political gain.

Even then, however, don’t anticipate a civil war. There would surely be protests and angry confrontations. This could instigate sporadic violence in the streets. But a Northern Ireland-style insurgency? That’s unlikely. We shouldn’t ignore the risk. But nor should we exaggerate it.

Instead of focusing on a lone riot, I would prefer that the congressional committee broaden its investigation, heading off furtive efforts to co-opt elections and ensuring that federal agencies continue to be led and staffed by professionals who put country ahead of party.

Frightening but rare events should not distract us from the real present danger.

Christopher Blattman, a professor in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, is the author of "Why We Fight: The Roots of War and the Paths to Peace." This piece appeared first on USATODAY.com

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Americans are dangerously divided, but new civil war is unlikely

Boris Johnson Resigns Amid MP's Same-Sex Sexual Abuse Scandal


Trudy Ring

ADVOCATE
Thu, July 7, 2022 

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, who has resigned as leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party and therefore will be replaced as prime minister, leaves a largely negative record on LGBTQ+ rights.

He has supported marriage equality but not embraced transgender rights, and written articles with homophobic and racist slurs that he claimed were satirical. And gay members of his government have accused him of creating an “atmosphere of hostility” toward LGBTQ+ people.

Johnson announced his departure Thursday in the wake of scandals over ethics violations throughout his administration and the resignations of about 60 members of his government. The last straw appeared to be accusations of sexual assault against Christopher Pincher, his deputy chief whip, tasked with assuring members of Parliament toe the party line.

Johnson was criticized for failing to take action right away against Pincher, who eventually resigned. Johnson also claimed he didn’t know about previous allegations of sexual misconduct by Pincher against other men, and that was “the final lie that brought down the pyramid of untruths that sustained Boris Johnson’s premiership,” Rosa Prince wrote in a commentary piece for CNN.

Johnson has been prime minister since 2019 and was previously mayor of London, a member of Parliament, and a journalist. When he took office as prime minister, succeeding Theresa May, concerns were raised about columns he’d written that contained homophobic and racist language.

In 1998, while working as a journalist, Johnson referred to gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” in a column for the Telegraph newspaper. The subject was the resignation of Peter Mandelson, who is gay, as foreign secretary in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government. He also said Mandelson’s departure would remove the “lipstick” from Blair’s administration.

Then in 2000, Johnson wrote a column in the Spectator magazine denouncing the Labour Party’s “appalling agenda, encouraging the teaching of homosexuality in schools, and all the rest of it.” Additionally, he had written articles calling Black people “picanninies” with “watermelon smiles.”

He repeatedly refused to apologize for these comments, and in 2019 he told Sky News they were “wholly satirical.” “I think if you look at each of every one of those articles ... the quotations have been wrenched out of context in some cases to mean the opposite of what I intended,” he told the outlet.

However, Johnson did support the marriage equality law passed by the U.K. government in 2013, when fellow Conservative David Cameron was prime minister. Johnson likewise supported the repeal of Section 28, a law that prevented schools and local governments from “promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship,” even though he had criticized Labour’s efforts to repeal it. And as mayor of London, he welcomed Pride events.

When he became prime minister, Johnson backtracked on a promise made by May to ban conversion therapy. After backlash, he quickly reversed his position but said the ban would cover only therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation, not gender identity. It has not been enacted yet. However, his government agreed to fund a private charity’s hotline providing support for survivors of conversion therapy or people at risk for undergoing it. “It will give tailored pastoral support to transgender people as well as those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual,” the BBC reported in May.

This week Mike Freer, a minister in the Equalities Office, resigned that post and lambasted Johnson. “I feel that we are moving away from the One Nation Conservative party I joined, not least in creating an atmosphere of hostility for LGBT+ people and I regret I can no longer defend policies I fundamentally disagree with,” Freer wrote in his resignation letter Wednesday, iNews reports.

Also Wednesday, Peter Gibson, a member of Parliament, denounced Johnson’s party in this statement: “On Saturday last week I marched with LGBT+ Conservatives at London Pride. As a gay MP, that should have been a liberating, enjoyable experience, instead due to the damage our party has inflicted on itself over the failure to include trans people in the ban on conversion therapy, it was a humiliating experience and signalled to me the immense damage that has been so needlessly inflicted after years of hard work by many to rebuild the damage of Section 28.”

Several members of the Conservative Party have been mentioned as likely successors to Johnson. LGBTQ+ activists are skeptical about some of them, such as Liz Truss, Dominic Raab, and Sajid Javid, Pink News reports. “A potential dark horse,” Penny Mordaunt, “has made a name for herself as one of the most progressive Tories when it comes to LGBTQ+ rights,” the site notes.

The timetable for choosing Johnson’s replacement will be announced Monday.

Opinion: The real labor shortage is looming, and everything we’re doing is making it worse

Seven things we can do now to increase the supply of workers and make them more productive

Last Updated: July 8, 2022
By Rex Nutting


A big change is coming to the U.S. economy: a prolonged period of labor shortages. And nearly everything we’re doing now is making the problem worse.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a hint of what labor shortages could mean: delays, higher prices and the frustration of not being able to buy things when we want them.

But we’re not really short of workers quite yet. Hundreds of thousands of people enter the workforce each month, and companies are hiring at a rapid pace.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that nonfarm payroll jobs increased by 372,000 in June. That’s a slowdown from the average of 545,000 over the past year, but it’s more than the average hiring in the 2010s of 190,000.

Jeffry Bartash: U.S. creates 372,000 jobs in June with strong labor market seen as bulwark against recession

But soon enough, sometime in the next few years, the lack of available workers will slow monthly job growth below 100,000, perhaps to less than 50,000.

That’s not a reckless economic prediction; it’s a conservative demographic projection of current trends.

This structural labor shortage could have a profound impact on our economy, politics and society, both good and bad. But if we want the good things that could come from slower growth, we’ll have to plan for it.


The supply of workers is growing much slower than it was in the 1970s or 1990s. MARKETWATCH
Demographic tidal wave

Roughly speaking, the growth rate of an economy is determined by two factors: growth in hours worked (mostly because there are more workers) and growth in productivity, including the increased output unlocked by machines, software, human capital, and more efficient methods of organizing production and commerce.

The United States is among the fortunate countries: growth in the labor supply is expected to slow but not actually decline, unlike in Europe and East Asia, which are on track to shrink dramatically as those countries age. Even China’s massive labor force will shrink.

Starting in the 1960s and ’70s, the U.S. economy has been propelled by a demographic tidal wave, as the 76 million baby boomers grew up and made their way into the world. Women entered the workforce in large numbers at the same time.

In the 1970s, the working-age population (15 to 64) was growing by nearly 2 million a year and, boosted by older women going to work, the labor force grew by about 2.5 million a year. No wonder employment grew by 19 million during the decade and annual GDP growth averaged 3.2%.

A similar demographic bulge hit the economy in the 1990s, when Gen X and the first wave of millennials began to work. The working-age population rose by 1.3 million a year and the labor force grew by 1.6 million a year. Employment increased by 22 million during the 1990s and GDP averaged 3.4%.

But now the tide is going out. Next year, the working-age population is expected to grow by just 400,000. In 2024, it’s expected to grow by 300,000 and by just 200,000 in 2025. The pool of workers will begin to grow a bit faster later in the decade and throughout the 2030s, but current projections through 2060 don’t foresee the labor supply returning to the same growth rate we’ve gotten used to over the past 70 years.

We can’t go back in time and raise the birthrate of 2002 to get more workers today but there are things we can do to increase the supply of workers or find ways to increase their productivity.

Some solutions

Here are some things we could do but aren’t:

Increase immigration. Far from being a danger to our prosperity, immigrants could be its salvation. If we don’t have enough doctors, teachers, airline pilots, baristas or Uber drivers, let’s import them.

This country was built by immigrants (including millions of miserable enslaved souls now known as “involuntarily relocated.”) But legal immigration has been declining since Donald Trump’s first year in office. We need to turn the faucet back on.

Make work more attractive. The pandemic exposed an ugly truth: Lots of jobs are unpleasant if not deadly. We can make them better by improving working conditions, raising wages, and providing more support for a decent work-life balance (such as making child care more available and affordable).

Workers who take care of other people (teachers, health-care providers, and people who care for children and the elderly) are especially prone to burnout, and these are the very jobs that will be needed most in the coming decades.

Make it easier for women to work: Women need pro-family policies if they are going to add to the pool of workers and have productive careers. They need flexible and predictable work schedules, paid time off, and support from their employer, their family and their communities to have a sane work-life balance. And, yes, they also need control over their own reproductive lives.

Make it easier for older people to work as well. We must strengthen and enforce age-discrimination laws and reduce the punitive taxes levied on retirees’ earnings. Training for second careers should be affordable, easy to access and targeted at needed skills. And companies must figure out how to better take advantage of the knowledge and experience that older workers possess.

Invest more in automation and artificial intelligence technologies. Business investment has been very weak over the past decade, but we need more machines to offset the loss of abundant labor. We’ve got to make the service sector more productive, especially industries that are particularly labor-intensive, such as healthcare and education.

If labor is scarce, maybe the Luddite fears that machines will take all the jobs won’t feel so real.

Increase fair trade. The developed world is aging rapidly, but much of Africa, Asia and Latin America is still relatively young, with a growing labor force. The next round of globalization is likely to be more equitable and sustainable than the one that just ended, if only because the young will have learned the lessons of the old. Increased fair trade could be a win-win for both young and old countries.

Change the culture of impatience. In a slow-growth world, maybe we can slow down our lives as well. If labor is scarce, maybe stores like 7-Eleven won’t find it profitable to be open 24-7. Maybe same-day delivery will be seen as a needless luxury and not a necessity. Yeah, I know, maybe pigs will fly.

Rex Nutting is a columnist for MarketWatch who has written about the economy for more than 25 years.

Syd Stone: Could we ever really get a 4-day work week in the U.S.?

Rex Nutting: The U.S. economy needs more immigrants