Saturday, August 08, 2020


Rogue cops surveilled her. Now this  FORMER NDP ENVIRONMENT MINISTER (Alberta) politician wants them fired


By Alex Boyd Calgary Bureau
Fri., Aug. 7, 202
New Democrat MLA Shannon Phillips is appealing a police disciplinary decision regarding two officers who surveilled her without authorization.

A former Alberta environment minister who was photographed and surveilled by Lethbridge police officers who didn’t like her politics is appealing the disciplinary decision that saw them demoted but not fired.Sgt. Jason Carrier and Const. Keon Woronuk were demoted last month after a hearing found each of them guilty of multiple counts of misconduct following a 2017 incident that New Democrat MLA Shannon Phillips later called the “stuff of police states.”

It was revealed that when Carrier and Woronuk spotted Phillips, then the environment minister, at the Chef Stella Diner in the southern Alberta city, the on-duty officers took photos of her —some of which they later posted to Facebook.


Carrier then watched Phillips leave the cafe, while Woronuk set up to surveil the group she was with, and even followed one of the diners and ran the car’s plates before losing it at a red light.

The notice of appeal, sent by Phillips’ lawyer, Michael Bates, to the Law Enforcement Review Board this week, argues the decision, which saw Carrier demoted for one year, and Woronuk for two, “fail(ed) to recognize the severity” of the two officers’ actions.


It also argues that targeting a cabinet minister for “personal political reasons,” should be enough to prove that neither is fit to continue as a police officer.

“I think public confidence in law enforcement was severely shaken in Lethbridge, and in fact across the province with the revelations of what happened,” Phillips told the Star on Friday.


“I also think the public had a lot of questions about whether justice was seen to be done in this instance.”

The disciplinary decision paints both officers as outdoors enthusiasts who disagreed with Phillips’ plans for the nearby Castle wilderness area, and feared new protections would restrict their use of the land, including use of ATVs, or all-terrain vehicles.

The decision also says Carrier claims he overheard the group discussing the plan, though Phillips has maintained that they were at the cafe talking about bison reintroduction in a different part of the province.

While the Lethbridge police department declined to comment on the appeal, when the officers’ actions were made public in mid-July Lethbridge Police Chief Scott Woods released a statement in which he said the two officers had been held accountable.

“The actions for which these officers — Sgt. Jason Carrier and Cst. Keon Woronuk — were disciplined cannot be excused. The fact that they admitted to the charges of misconduct indicates that they acknowledge this reality,” he wrote.

An investigation first began when Phillips was made aware of the photos on Facebook and made a complaint under the Police Act, prompting a probe by the Calgary Police Service.

RELATED STORIES

Alberta minister photographed, surveilled by rogue cops calls it ‘stuff of police states’
Jul. 13, 2020


The case of Alberta’s rogue cops might never have seen the light of day. Some say that’s a problem
Jul. 14, 2020


While Woronouk initially “omitted” to mention that he’d run a licence plate without reason, when that was discovered it sparked a second, separate investigation by police in Medicine Hat.

The appeal notes that appeals usually have to be submitted 30 days after a decision, but Phillips and her lawyer argue that because Phillips wasn’t even aware the second investigation was happening, she should still be able to appeal.

Phillips added she’s heard from many people, both in Lethbridge and across the country, who have questioned whether the punishment matched the offence, and said it only makes sense for the Law Enforcement Review Board to have another look.

“I’ve been living with this for three years,” she said. “This is the type of thing that had has been tolerated in this city for a long time. And as sad as it is, I’m used to it.”


Alex Boyd is a Calgary-based reporter for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @alex.n.boyd
UPDATES
Canada's last fully intact ice shelf has suddenly collapsed, forming a Manhattan-sized iceberg

The Milne ice shelf. Jérémie Bonneau/Carleton University

Almost half of Canada's last remaining intact ice shelf has suddenly collapsed into the ocean.

Satellite images show that it formed two icebergs, one of which is almost the size of Manhattan.

The collapse comes amid a summer that's seen hotter-than-average temperatures, which scientists say is a result of climate change.

A research camp was lost in the collapse.


A massive chunk of Canada's last fully intact ice shelf, some 4,000 years old, has broken off, reducing the shelf by more than half, scientists reported last Sunday. After separating from the shelf, the piece split in two, forming an iceberg almost the size of Manhattan.

Climate change likely fueled the collapse of the shelf, researchers said. This summer, the region's temperature was 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1980 to 2010 average, Luke Copland, a glaciology professor at the University of Ottawa, told the Associated Press.

"Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds, and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up," the Canadian Ice Service said on Twitter.

A research camp was lost when the shelf broke apart, as was the northern hemisphere's last known epishelf, a kind of freshwater lake, flanked by ice, that sits on top of ocean water.

Ice researcher Adrienne White takes a photo of fractures in the shelf. Luke Copland

'Entire cities are that size'

Located on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island, in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, the Milne ice shelf likely collapsed on July 30 or 31, according to ice analyst Adrienne White of the Canadian Ice Service. Satellite imagery shows that about 43% of the shelf broke off, forming pieces that were up to 260 feet thick.

"Entire cities are that size," Copland told Reuters. "This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it's disintegrated, basically."

Unlike glaciers, which sit atop land, ice shelves float in the ocean. They're typically hundreds to thousands of years old and thicker than sea ice. Before the Milne ice shelf broke apart, it was larger than DC.


Temperatures rise faster in the Arctic


The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as polar amplification, and those hot temperatures are causing ice to melt. Today, for example, polar ice caps are melting six times faster than in the 1990s.

In Canada, there used to be a continuous ice shelf spanning the northern coast of Ellesmere, but human-made warming has caused it to break apart, White said. By 2005, Milne was "really the last complete ice shelf," she told the Associated Press.

While scientists considered Milne to be less vulnerable to collapse, as it's protected in the Milne Fiord, the shelf has sustained cracks over the years.


As Record Arctic Heat Continues, Canada’s Last Intact Ice Shelf Collapses


The Milne Ice Shelf in Canada lost nearly 40 percent of its ice over a two-day period in late July. ECCC CANADIAN ICE SERVICE


Canada’s last fully intact ice shelf in the Arctic has collapsed, shrinking by about 80 square kilometers, or 40 percent of its area, over just two days at the end of July, according to scientists at the Canadian Ice Service. The breakup of the ice was driven by record-setting temperatures in the region, which have measured 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 30-year average this summer.

“Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice,” Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa who was part of the research team studying the Milne Ice Shelf, located on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, told Reuters. “This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it’s disintegrated, basically.”

A research camp was lost in the collapse of the ice shelf. So was the northern hemisphere’s last known epishelf lake, a freshwater lake damned by ice that floats atop salty ocean water. In addition, two of Canada’s ice caps, located on the Hazen Plateau in St. Patrick Bay, disappeared completely this summer, two years earlier than scientists predicted, according to the National Snow & Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

“When I first visited those ice caps, they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape,” Mark Serreze, director of NSIDC and a geographer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said in a statement. “To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away.”

The Arctic has warmed at a rate twice the global average in recent decades, but scientists say this summer has been even more extreme. In July, Arctic sea ice hit its lowest recorded extent. And the Russian Arctic has experienced record heat and wildfires, with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees F in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk in late June.

Satellite animation, from July 30 to August 4, shows the collapse of the last fully intact #iceshelf in #Canada

The Milne Ice Shelf, located on #EllesmereIsland in #Nunavut, has now reduced in area by ~43%. #MilneIceIsland #seaice #Arctic #earthrightnow #glacier pic.twitter.com/jjs1gawoxA— ECCC Canadian Ice Service (@ECCC_CIS) August 4, 2020


Canadian ice shelf area bigger than Manhattan collapses due to rising temperatures

Last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic lost more than 40% of its areas in two days at the end of July


Glaciers on Canada’s Ellesmere Island on 1 April 2014. Photograph: Handout/Nasa
Reuters

Fri 7 Aug 2020

The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July.

The Milne Ice Shelf is at the fringe of Ellesmere Island, in the sparsely populated northern Canadian territory of Nunavut.

“Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up,” the Canadian Ice Service said in a tweet earlier this week.


Canada's high Arctic glaciers at risk of disappearing completely, study finds
Read more


“Entire cities are that size. These are big pieces of ice,” said Luke Copland, a glaciologist at the University of Ottawa who was part of the research team studying the Milne Ice Shelf.

The shelf’s area shrank by about 80 sq km. By comparison, the island of Manhattan in New York covers roughly 60 sq km.

“This was the largest remaining intact ice shelf, and it’s disintegrated, basically,” Copland said.

The Arctic has been warming at twice the global rate for the last 30 years, due to a process known as Arctic amplification. But this year, temperatures in the polar region have been intense. The polar sea ice hit its lowest extent for July in 40 years. Record heat and wildfires have scorched Siberian Russia.

Summer in the Canadian Arctic this year in particular has been 5C above the 30-year average, Copland said.

That has threatened smaller ice caps, which can melt quickly because they do not have the bulk that larger glaciers have to stay cold. As a glacier disappears, more bedrock is exposed, which then heats up and accelerates the melting process.

“The very small ones, we’re losing them dramatically,” he said, citing researchers’ reviews of satellite imagery. “You feel like you’re on a sinking island chasing these features, and these are large features. It’s not as if it’s a little tiny patch of ice you find in your garden.“

The ice shelf collapse on Ellesmere Island also meant the loss of the northern hemisphere’s last known epishelf lake, a geographic feature in which a body of freshwater is dammed by the ice shelf and floats atop ocean water.

A research camp, including instruments for measuring water flow through the ice shelf, was lost when the shelf collapsed. “It is lucky we were not on the ice shelf when this happened,” said researcher Derek Mueller of Carleton University in Ottawa, in a 2 August blogpost.

Ellesmere also lost its two St Patrick Bay ice caps this summer.

“We saw them going, like someone with terminal cancer. It was only a matter of time,” said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado.

The vanishing was confirmed last month, when Nasa satellite shots of the region revealed a complete lack of snow and ice, said Serreze, who studied the caps as a graduate student on his first trip to the Arctic years ago. At the time, he said, the caps had seemed like immovable parts of the geography.

“When I was there in the 1980s I knew every square inch of those ice caps,” he said. “You have the memories. It’s like your first girlfriend.“

Meanwhile, another two ice caps on Ellesmere – called Murray and Simmons – are also diminishing and are likely to disappear within 10 years, Serreze said.

Collapse of Nunavut ice shelf ‘like losing a good friend,’ glaciologist says

LK By Lauren Krugel The Canadian Press Fri., Aug. 7, 2020

A team of scientists placed research instruments into the Milne Ice Shelf in Nunavut last July, with plans to return to collect them this summer and study how the stability of the structure had changed.

The COVID-19 pandemic put that trip on hold. Then a week ago, the last remaining intact ice shelf in the Canadian arctic broke apart.

“And so we’ve lost not only the equipment, which is now drifting away in the Arctic Ocean, but also the information that it recorded over the time that it was out,” Carleton University glaciologist Derek Mueller said Friday.

The Canadian Ice Service said the ice shelf on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island has shrunk 43 per cent to 106 square kilometres from 187 square kilometres.

The calving event, captured by satellite, was not a surprise, Mueller said.

The ice shelf sits in a fjord sheltered by tall cliffs, so it had not melted as quickly as others.

While it managed to stay together until last week, Mueller said he had observed worsening cracks and rifts since he first started studying the area in 2004.

“It certainly has been changing — there’s no doubt. And, to me, it wasn’t really a question of if this breakup would happen. It was a question of when it would happen,” Mueller said.

“But still it hits home. It’s sort of like losing a good friend in a way.”

The ice shelf collapse also set adrift research into marine organisms, such as sponges and sea anemones, discovered in water pockets within the ice.

“We’re not sure what these consequences are for these animals. And certainly they won’t be where we were studying them, because that piece has drifted away from the shore,” Mueller said.

“If we find these kinds of animals again, I think it will be a stroke of luck.”

At the turn of the 20th century, 8,600 square kilometres of ice stretched along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. By 2000, it was reduced to 1,000 and now it’s half that, Mueller said.

University of Ottawa glaciologist Luke Copland said in a news release that the temperature has been up to 5 C warmer this summer than the average between 1981 and 2010.

The region has been warming at two to three times the global rate, he added.

RELATED STORIES

‘We used to trust the ice’: How climate change and industry are eroding the ice — and the culture — of Fort Chipewyan
Feb. 01, 2020

Trudeau highlights climate-change plan in Arctic, which is vulnerable to warming
Oct. 08, 2019


“This drastic decline in ice shelves is clearly related to climate change,” Copland said.

“The Milne and other ice shelves in Canada are simply not viable any longer and will disappear in the coming decades.”


Mueller said the ice shelf collapse should be a wake-up call.

“These ice shelves are well out of balance with the climate and I think their demise is inevitable,” he said.

“But, having said that, it’s not too late to make changes to the way we live and our carbon footprint.”

Collapsed Arctic ice shelf adds 'exclamation point' to dire climate trends, say scientists

There are signs that Arctic ice may become unstable earlier than predicted

Hannah Paulson · CBC News · Posted: Aug 07, 2020
The last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed. The Milne ice shelf, which is situated in the Tuvaijuittuq marine protected area, is now adrift. (Adrienne White)

In 2017, scientist Mark Serreze predicted the St. Patrick's Bay ice caps, located on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, would vanish within five years.

But their "official death" came two years earlier than expected and was set in stone this August, said Serreze.

The culprit is climate change.

The loss of the two Canadian ice caps is a warning that "everything is changing up there," said Serreze.

The Arctic is experiencing the effects of a warming climate faster than any other part of Canada and these findings add an "exclamation point" to current trends, he said.

The High Arctic island is partially surrounded by the Tuvaijuittuq marine protected area, which translates to "the place where the ice never melts" in Inuktitut.

The area is projected to be the last portion of the Arctic Ocean to maintain year-round ice — until 2050, that is, by which time the oldest and strongest ice in the Arctic is expected to melt.

But there are signs that the ice may become unstable earlier than predicted.

Recent reports have shown that the last intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has also collapsed.

The Milne ice shelf, which is situated in Tuvaijuittuq is now adrift.

These findings suggest that "the Milne and other ice shelves in Canada are simply not viable any longer and will disappear in the coming decades," said Luke Copland, glaciology research chair at the University of Ottawa, in a press release.

This may also mark a "devastating" loss of unique, biodiverse ecosystems.

A map showing the location of the Milne ice shelf on Ellesmere Island in Canada's High Arctic. (CBC)
'I knew them as friends'

Serreze co-authored the report that predicted the final days of the two ice caps on Hazen Plateau a few years ago.

"I knew every square inch of these ice caps," he said. "I knew them as friends too, you know, and now they're gone.... It's like losing an old friend."

Ice caps will often shrink during the summer then recover as winter approaches.

However, Serreze said that recovery is not possible in this case, "because we're not cooling down again."

"We're in control of the climate now. Basically, we've taken on the reins.... So unless we as a people and as a society get a handle on this ... there's no way these things are ever going to come back," Serreze said.

The Arctic is "locked in" for a temperature rise twice to three times the global average, according to a 2019 United Nations report.

As temperatures continue to rise, more ice will be lost.

"In many ways, [residents of the Arctic] have the least to do with what brought us to right now," yet they are bearing the greatest burden of these changes, said Serreze.

A Milne ice shelf research camp as seen in 2018. (Jeremie Bonneau)
A 'devastating' loss of ecosystems

Recently, scientists uncovered a channel on the Milne ice sheet that was home to "a truly unique ecosystem of bottom-dwelling animals — scallops, sea anemones and so forth," said Derek Mueller, a professor at Carleton University.

The discovery was "phenomenal," but is now threatened.

"Our team was on the cusp of further documenting this unique environment, which may well have disappeared as a result of this collapse," Mueller said.

The habitat adapted in a "remarkable" environment that relies on a careful balance of ice and water.

But unfortunately, it's a "one way trip" with climate change, says Andrew Hamilton, a research fellow at the University of Alberta.

"These ice shelves are not going to regenerate anytime soon. So, these are ecosystems that are lost basically for good now," Hamilton said.

Two researchers walking along the Milne Ice Shelf. (Jeremie Bonneau)
Adapting to the new Arctic

Hamilton described a journey he took in 2018 to the Milne ice sheet as challenging, but surreal.

"It's very smooth undulating hills on this ice shelf ... and you're riding a snowmobile, so it's kind of like a very smooth slow going roller coaster over the hills and valleys on the ice shelf," he said.

The experience motivated him to conduct research in the area and spurred a passion to reduce the impact of climate change so the ice features he admired would remain.

The rapid pace of climate change in the Arctic causes concern about how communities are able to adapt. Inuit in particular have an interconnected relationship with the environment and rely on ice cover.

In the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) climate change strategy, president Natan Obed said "for us, ice is a fundamental source of learning, memories, knowledge and wisdom."

Fresh water is pouring into the Arctic Ocean. Climate change is to blame, new study says

How these weird round rocks came to be on Canada's Arctic shoreline

Being able to better understand and foresee some of the changes occurring is key to adapting, said Hamilton.

However, the pandemic demonstrated "the dire need for more community-led research in the North," Hamilton says.

Hamilton's work is also trying to support training and skill development so community members can take the lead on research questions that are most important to them and their communities.

"There's no one more motivated to understand what's happening in the Arctic than communities that are right at the forefront of these changes," Hamilton said.

UH OH

Canada's last intact ice shelf collapses due to warming

Seth Borenstein, Ap Science Writer  Friday, August 7, 2020

Much of Canada's remaining intact ice shelf has broken apart into hulking iceberg islands thanks to a hot summer and global warming, scientists said.

Canada's 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf on the northwestern edge of Ellesmere Island had been the country's last intact ice shelf until the end of July when ice analyst Adrienne White of the Canadian Ice Service noticed that satellite photos showed that about 43% of it had broken off. She said it happened around July 30 or 31.

Two giant icebergs formed along with lots of smaller ones, and they have already started drifting away, White said. The biggest is nearly the size of Manhattan — 21 square miles (55 square kilometers) and 7 miles long (11.5 kilometers). They are 230 to 260 feet (70 to 80 meters) thick.
“This is a huge, huge block of ice,” White said. “If one of these is moving toward an oil rig, there's nothing you can really do aside from move your oil rig.”

The 72-square mile (187 square kilometer) undulating white ice shelf of ridges and troughs dotted with blue meltwater had been larger than the District of Columbia but now is down to 41 square miles (106 square kilometers).

Temperatures from May to early August in the region have been 9 degrees (5 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1980 to 2010 average, University of Ottawa glaciology professor Luke Copland said. This is on top of an Arctic that already had been warming much faster than the rest of globe, with this region warming even faster.

“Without a doubt, it's climate change,” Copland said, noting the ice shelf is melting from both hotter air above and warmer water below.


“The Milne was very special,” he added. “It's an amazingly pretty location.”

Ice shelves are hundreds to thousands of years old, thicker than long-term sea ice, but not as big and old as glaciers, Copland said.


Canada used to have a large continuous ice shelf across the northern coast of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, but it has been breaking apart over the last decades because of man-made global warming, White said. By 2005 it was down to six remaining ice shelves but “the Milne was really the last complete ice shelf,” she said.

“There aren't very many ice shelves around the Arctic anymore,” Copland said. “It seems we've lost pretty much all of them from northern Greenland and the Russian Arctic. There may be a few in a few protected fjords.”
__

Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/Climate

___

Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears .

___


TikTok Is “Shocked” By Trump’s Order Threatening To Ban It And Will Fight Back

“We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded.”





Pranav Dixit BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on August 7, 2020


TikTok has slammed President Donald Trump’s executive order — which bans the app in the US unless it is bought by an American company — as “undermining the rule of law.”

“We are shocked by the recent Executive Order, which was issued without any due process,” the company wrote in a statement early Friday morning. “For nearly a year, we have sought to engage with the US government in good faith to provide a constructive solution to the concerns that have been expressed. What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses.”


Trump’s order, issued on Thursday night, bars anyone “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” from carrying out transactions with ByteDance, TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company. The order says TikTok “automatically” captures “vast swathes of information from its users,” and could be used by China’s authoritarian government to influence Americans and compromise their privacy.

The order also says TikTok “reportedly censors” content about the Chinese government’s treatment of Uighur Muslims, as well as “sensitive” videos showing protests. “[TikTok] may also be used for disinformation campaigns that benefit the Chinese Communist Party, such as when TikTok videos spread debunked conspiracy theories about the origins of the 2019 Novel Coronavirus,” the order says.

TikTok disputed these claims in its statement, saying that they rely on “unnamed ‘reports’ with no citations” or “substantiation.” The company also said that it does not share data with the Chinese government.

“This Executive Order risks undermining global businesses' trust in the United States' commitment to the rule of law, which has served as a magnet for investment and spurred decades of American economic growth,” TikTok said. “And it sets a dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets. We will pursue all remedies available to us in order to ensure that the rule of law is not discarded and that our company and our users are treated fairly – if not by the Administration, then by the US courts.”

TikTok has been under global scrutiny for its links to China. Last week, Trump said the United States would ban the app citing national security concerns around ByteDance.

Since then, the president has changed his mind and said TikTok would be allowed to function in the US as long as an American company bought its operations in the country, and as long as the United States received a “substantial portion” of the sale price.

Earlier this week, tech giant Microsoft confirmed in a blog post that it was in talks to buy TikTok and would close negotiations by Sept. 15.


MORE ON THIS
Trump Just Declared TikTok A "National Emergency" And Has Threatened To Ban It
Jason Wells · Aug. 7, 2020
Jason Wells · Aug. 1, 2020
Pranav Dixit · July 7, 2020
Ryan Mac · Aug. 6, 2020
Scott Lucas · June 29, 2020


Pranav Dixit is a tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Delhi.

Enigma ORIGINAL ENIGMA VOICES performing "Return To Innocence" live in Israel. Throughout 2019 and into 2020, three former vocalists for Enigma (Andru Donalds, Angel X, and Fox Lima) embarked on a world tour under the name Original Enigma Voices. This marks the first time Enigma's music has ever been performed live. https://www.originalenigmavoices.com/

Original ENIGMA Voices, Budapest 2019. Ap



'I'm too old to find a new career': More than half of Americans fear job losses


Jessica Menton, USA TODAY•August 8, 2020

Denise Tindall has spent nearly three decades driving children to school. But this fall will be different.

Tindall, 58, was a school bus driver with a private contractor in the Shelby County School District in Memphis, Tennessee, where fall classes are set to begin online. When schools shuttered in April, she filed for unemployment . But she hasn’t received a dime yet, she says.

“I’m barely making it,” says Tindall, whose brother and daughter have been giving her money to cover more than $1,000 in monthly bills including rent, utilities and phone costs. “If it weren't for my family, I’d be homeless.”

Tindall is concerned about her future since she won’t be able to return to work for the foreseeable future.

“I’m too old to find a new career. I’m about to give up,” Tindall says. “I don’t have anything saved for retirement. My bank account is negative for the first time.”

'Insulin or groceries': How reduced unemployment affects struggling Americans from California to Mississippi

COVID: Millennials, Gen Zers say pandemic has derailed their financial independence

The stock market has done an about-face and is back near record highs after a coronavirus-fueled sell-off in March. But millions of Americans are still reeling following a wave of layoffs and financial losses stemming from the pandemic.

Through the end of July, more than 25 million out-of-work Americans could count on receiving a weekly federal $600 emergency income boost. But that expired. Now, about 82% of Americans believe the expiration of the $600 unemployment bonus will have an adverse effect on the U.S. economy, and more than two-thirds think economic growth will be much worse in the months to come, according to a Harris Poll survey conducted July 31 to Aug. 2. The data was given exclusively to USA TODAY.

“It’s clear that the unemployment benefits are a lifeline for Americans and the economy,” says John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll. “If they don't get relief, Americans see this as a tipping point that could spell more trouble for their personal finances.”

The pessimism comes even as the U.S. added 1.8 million jobs in July. Payroll growth slowed amid a split-screen economy that saw employers stepping up hiring in parts of the country that continued to let businesses reopen, even as COVID-19 spikes forced Sunbelt firms to pull back and lay off workers.

The unemployment rate fell to 10.2% from 11.1% in June, the Labor Department said Friday.

In July, permanent job losses were little changed at 2.9 million, a positive sign following four consecutive months of increases. But total U.S. payrolls are still 13 million below the pre-pandemic level.

“Does today’s number imply economic conditions are significantly improved? No," Seema Shah, chief strategist at investment advisory firm Principal Global Investors, said in a note Friday. "It simply suggests the labor market was static in July, showing no signs of renewed weakness that the increase in COVID-19 cases had threatened,”

To be sure, about 1.2 million people in the final week of July filed initial applications for unemployment insurance – a rough measure of layoffs – the Labor Department said Thursday, down substantially from 1.4 million the previous week and the lowest level since March. But the week's total is still historically large.
Trump threatens to take executive action

Angst among unemployed Americans has grown as Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over what would be a fifth round of emergency stimulus funding to help counter the effects of the pandemic. Policymakers are seeking a compromise between Democrats' $3 trillion proposal and a $1 trillion Republican recommendation.

Republicans and Democrats remain far apart on many issues at the heart of the next package, one of the biggest being the $600 boost to unemployment, which Democrats want to extend until at least January. But Republicans argue it's too high and disincentivizes Americans to go back to work.

Republicans offered to cut the benefit to $200. The bonus bolsters state benefits that average about $370 a week nationally.

President Donald Trump has split with some of his GOP allies and softened his opposition to an extension of the $600 boost, threatening to take executive action if a deal isn't reached with Democrats on a new relief package.

“We're negotiating right now … and we'll see how that works out,” Trump said Wednesday during a press conference. “My administration is exploring executive actions to provide protections against eviction. Eviction's a big problem, very unfair to a lot of people … as well as additional relief to those who are unemployed as a result of the virus.”
Job insecurity remains

About 54% of Americans fear they may lose their job due to the coronavirus outbreak, Harris Poll data shows. Overall, nearly half expect their personal finances to be generally worse off in the coming months.

“There are two economies in the pandemic,”Gerzema says. “In general, older, wealthy Americans who are white are typically more confident that they’ll prosper. But the ones really feeling the pain are younger, lower income Americans and minorities.”

There’s been a shift in priorities and personal finances for Americans, who are twice as likely to prefer cleaning and sanitizing their home (50%) than to review personal finances and investments, such as a 401(k) retirement savings account (25%), according to a recent report from Voya Financial, a retirement and insurance plan provider.

The labor-market recovery has reached a critical juncture, economists say, with millions of workers at risk of prolonged unemployment just as the emergency unemployment benefits expire.

“Further labor market progress will require a forceful and immediate policy response across the country to contain the health crisis and avoid looming fiscal cliffs,” Lydia Boussour, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note.

Contributing: Paul Davidson

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Unemployment benefits: More than half of Americans fear job losses
The Man Determined to Deliver Trump’s Alaskan Oil PromiseAdam Federman, Politico•August 8, 2020
LONG READ FEATURE 
An airplane flies over caribou on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska.

Later this year, the Trump administration is expected to fulfill a decades long Republican dream. The Department of the Interior will likely sell the first leases for oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, opening up to development the last remaining stretch of protected land along the North Slope.

For the oil and gas industry in Alaska, which has been especially hard hit by the global pandemic and economic downturn, it will be a bit of welcome good news. For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), whose father spent much of his Senate career fighting to open the refuge, it will be a legacy-defining moment. And for Donald Trump, who campaigned on expanding domestic energy production, it will be a chance to claim a “promise kept” as voters head to the polls. Democrats continue to oppose development in the refuge. A recent amendment to an appropriations spending bill from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) would bar any lease sale from happening, and, if elected, Joe Biden has promised to permanently protect the refuge.

The Interior Department has pushed aggressively to hold a lease sale before the end of Trump’s first term and has expedited the environmental review process in order to accomplish that goal. But the rushed review process—attempting to do in two years what typically takes twice as long—has led to allegations that the administration has interfered with the work of career scientists, sidelined Fish and Wildlife Service employees who oversee the refuge and failed to conduct needed research before holding a lease sale.


Steve Wackowski, the department’s senior adviser for Alaska Affairs and a former campaign manager for Murkowski, has been central to that effort. Though he’s little known outside of Alaska, Wackowski, a 38-year-old with connections to the oil and gas industry and no experience in federal land management, has played an outsize role in executing the administration’s priorities. And he has done so with a heavy hand, frequently clashing with agency scientists and using the power of his position—the only Department of Interior political appointee outside of Washington—to intimidate those who are seen as standing in the way. Early on in the environmental review process, FWS employees were told that if they raised concerns about the science or suggested overly protective measures for the refuge their name would be identified to Wackowski as an “obstructionist.” At one point, according to multiple sources, Wackowski threatened to fire the FWS regional director and transfer the refuge manager after an internal memo was leaked to the Washington Post .


According to interviews with more than a dozen current and former DOI employees, including three who previously held the position of senior adviser, Wackowski has frequently involved himself in scientific matters typically left to career employees and has often favored corporate interests.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, right, a longtime proponent of oil and gas drilling in ANWR, speaks on the phone at her campaign headquarters, with Steve Wackowski at left.

“Part of the job is having the agencies carry out top-level policy directives,” said Pat Pourchot, who served as senior adviser for Alaska Affairs during the Obama administration. But he added, “You’ve got to keep a hands-off approach to honest, deliberate agency research and processes.”

Wackowski has done the opposite. In an unprecedented move, Wackowski was named co-chair of the international board that manages the Porcupine caribou herd, one of several important species the refuge was created to protect. The position has traditionally been held by FWS personnel. In that role, Wackowski has prevented the International Porcupine Caribou Board, made up of U.S. and Canadian members, from weighing in on the environmental review for oil and gas leasing in the refuge. Drilling in the refuge could disrupt the caribou’s traditional migration patterns and the way of life of native Alaskans who depend on them.

Wackowski, who previously worked for a company that conducts polar bear research on behalf of the energy industry in Alaska, has also been closely involved in the review process for seismic surveys of the refuge—used to locate oil and gas reserves—an activity that could threaten the already imperiled polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea. The federally listed subpopulation has declined by about 40 percent in the past few decades. By meeting with one of his former colleagues who works for a company that does polar bear surveys and sometimes provides data to FWS, Wackowski was found to have violated his ethics pledge, according to a recent investigation by the DOI inspector general. The report found that neither Wackowski nor the business benefited from the interaction and that Wackowski had acted under the mistaken belief that the communications were permissible. But one FWS employee in Alaska said Wackowski’s frequent contact with his former colleague was “very awkward” and raised concerns among staff internally. “He has done a lot of things prior special assistants haven’t done.”

DOI did not respond to detailed questions for this story. In a statement, a spokesperson referred to the allegations as “baseless” and a “disgusting” attack on Wackowski’s character. “Mr. Wackowski is a trusted member of Interior leadership who cares deeply about serving Alaskans and the American people,” DOI said.

But outside of the department and among some career employees, Wackowski’s performance has been viewed as the triumph of politics over science with long-term implications for the environment and public health.

“Given Wackowski’s background,” said Deborah Williams, who held Wackowski’s job for five years during the Clinton administration, “it is important to ask whether he, in his role as senior adviser, is representing the public interest.”

Caribou are one of the defining features of the Arctic landscape and also a staple of what is still predominately a subsistence diet among Native communities on the North Slope. The Gwich’in, who live just outside of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and oppose any development there, refer to the coastal plain as the “sacred place where life begins” because it serves as the birthing grounds for the Porcupine caribou herd. The village of Nuiqsut, which sits west of the refuge and is now surrounded by oil development, has already seen notable changes in behavior of the central arctic herd, which, according to a recent USGS study, has begun to consistently avoid developed areas.

Not long after he was appointed in 2017, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO from a former DOI employee, Wackowski took an unusually keen interest in the Bureau of Land Management’s approach to evaluating effects to caribou. He involved himself in the technical details of the environmental review process for oil and gas drilling in sensitive areas, sometimes dismissing the work of career employees and contractors who have worked with the department for decades, according to the documents. At one point, just three months into the job, he abruptly canceled a public meeting on the impact of development in the village of Nuiqsut without explanation, angering the tribal government. Meanwhile, DOI has also disbanded the North Slope’s subsistence advisory panel, which had been designed to foster communication and information sharing between the department and local governments.

According to the documents, Wackowski also has played a key role in shaping the department’s assessment of the impact of development on hunting and other resources, which will have long-lasting implications for the North Slope. In October 2017, when BLM was drafting its environmental analysis for the Greater Mooses Tooth 2 project—a major ConocoPhilips development in the National Petroleum Reserve west of the refuge—Wackowski effectively undermined the methodology used to evaluate how new infrastructure including roads, well pads and pipelines would affect subsistence use in Nuiqsut.

In a preliminary analysis largely drafted under the Obama administration, BLM had concluded the development would likely have a significant impact on when and where hunters pursued caribou—a finding that in theory could lead to the implementation of mitigation measures to make up for any losses. This is exactly what had happened with the earlier Greater Mooses Tooth 1 development in 2015 and it had prompted new mitigation rules by the Obama administration. In that case, ConocoPhillips paid $8 million into a reserve fund to offset a variety of negative effects on environmentally sensitive areas including wetlands and on subsistence use. (In one of his first executive orders, Trump rescinded the Obama-era policy and mitigation became voluntary.)

Wackowski largely rejected the BLM designations “major, moderate or minor” that had been used by the agency for years to indicate the estimated environmental impact on subsistence of the project under review. On a conference call in October 2017, he vigorously challenged the conclusions of the BLM experts and the contractor, whose research showed that just under 50 percent of Nuiqsut’s hunters were likely to modify their behavior if GMT2 were approved. Using DOI criteria and past practice, that would constitute a major impact. Using mostly anecdotal evidence, Wackowski argued that hunters in Nuiqsut had adapted to the ongoing development and that if fewer than 50 percent of them changed their hunting behavior then the impact would not qualify as major.

At one point, according to a transcript of the phone call obtained by POLITICO, Wackowski accused a BLM employee of “misusing” and “misrepresenting” the data. He also told the agency its “analysis was not sound.” The contractor said the findings were based on “hard data” and that impact criteria were “very useful.” Even though the BLM conclusions were based on 40 years of research and observation, Wackowski’s view ultimately prevailed, lowering the bar for oil and gas development across Alaska’s North Slope.

After receiving requests from ConocoPhilips and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, one of the largest landowners in Alaska and a Murkowski supporter, BLM agreed to remove the impact criteria from the draft environmental impact statement. “We received feedback from both DOI personnel, ConocoPhillips and ASRC that the impact criteria was too subjective and warranted review and refinement,” the project coordinator wrote in an email to the BLM Alaska state director.

One former BLM employee raised concerns that removing the impact criteria might violate scientific integrity. “Without knowing how far this will go, I would say that I seem to be verging on violating some of the core ethical principles of [my field],” the employee wrote to a supervisor.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, left, arrives with Sen. Lisa Murkowski at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee in May 2018.

Wackowski was appointed by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke as co-chair of the advisory board that provides recommendations on management of the Porcupine caribou herd, replacing a longtime Fish and Wildlife employee, though he appears to have no expertise in the subject. (Wackowski has a bachelor’s degree in computer science and a master’s in science and technology intelligence.) The International Porcupine Caribou Board is made up of delegates from the U.S. and Canada and has long advocated for protecting the refuge’s coastal plain, where more than 200,000 caribou migrate and give birth every spring. After traveling across the coastal plain, the herd makes its way into the Canadian Arctic and is an important resource for First Nations people in the Yukon and Northwest Territories. According to the agreement that established the board in 1987, one of its primary objectives is to “conserve the Porcupine caribou herd and its habitat” and to minimize adverse long-term effects.

Sitting on the board has given Wackowski an opportunity to influence the group’s response to what will be the most profound change the refuge has ever seen. (At one point when the acting director of FWS was preparing for hearings on the refuge, Wackowski sent him background material in which he claimed that, “caribou do NOT calve in the 1002 area.” This was incorrect: the coastal plain, sometimes referred to as “the 1002,” provides critical calving habitat for the caribou.) “It was a surprise to us,” said Craig Machtans, the Canadian co-chair of the caribou herd board. “FWS had a member in good standing as chair. And they replaced him.” It was a surprise to the FWS, too, which was not notified of the change until a month after it happened, according to an FWS employee.

“What they were trying to do was shore up control and influence on anything related to the coastal plain,” that FWS employee told POLITICO.

One way of doing that was by preventing the board from weighing in on the environmental impact statement and suggesting a preferred alternative, which required consensus from members on both the Canadian and U.S. sides. Canadian members of the board were eager to submit comments on the draft environmental impact statement for oil and gas leasing in the refuge but needed the cooperation of their American counterparts. Though the Canadians were ready to move forward, Wackowski and other members on the U.S. side wouldn’t agree to submit comments, which effectively prevented the board from doing so. In the end, the Porcupine caribou board did not comment on what is the most important development to take place in the refuge since it was created 40 years ago.


Wackowski has also tightly controlled public information related to the refuge.

In August 2018, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the coastal plain—the largest ever recorded on the North Slope—rattling homes in the village of Kaktovik and sending tremors as far away as Fairbanks, hundreds of miles away. Normally the U.S. Geological Survey, which is part of DOI, would respond quickly to such an event, often fielding calls from reporters around the world and explaining any risks to the human population or nearby infrastructure. (In this case, there were concerns that the Trans-Alaska pipeline could have been damaged.)

But this time, USGS was slow to respond to several queries. According to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by POLITICO, early that morning Wackowski sent an email to the USGS regional director reminding her that any inquiries related to the wildlife refuge needed to go through him; this was a departure from the usual protocol for handling a major natural disaster, which allows USGS to bypass even normal channels of approval within the public affairs office “when timeliness is critical for public health and/or safety.” Instead, Wackowski told USGS he wanted to review media requests and be given time to “pipe up on any concerns” before interviews with staff scientists were granted.

More than 24 hours later, and long after the state’s earthquake center had put out a news release stating that it “anticipate[d] a very active aftershock sequence,” USGS officials were still asking Wackowski if the agency’s leading expert on the subject could share information with the media.

“What made this unusual is that USGS had to seek permission to talk about an earthquake,” a former USGS employee familiar with the department’s response told me. Even then, USGS had to assure DOI officials it would not comment on the potential impact of the earthquake on future oil and gas development in the refuge—one of the most important and politically sensitive priorities for this administration—according to emails leaked to POLITICO.

Because the quake happened in such a remote location and there were no injuries it barely registered outside of Alaska. But Wackowski’s attempt to control the messaging is part of a broader pattern in DOI to limit debate and discussion on anything to do with the refuge. Wackowski, according to several career employees, has made it difficult for them to freely share information that might be perceived as hindering the administration’s pro-development agenda. He has also suggested that FWS staff could be removed from the review team or even lose their jobs if they raised concerns about the science or imposed overly restrictive measures on oil and gas development in the region. “If you come across as not being on board with that, your name could get elevated to Steve Wackowski as an obstructionist,” one FWS employee who has since left the agency was told by a supervisor.

Even as Wackowski has influenced the flow of information within his agency, he has actively sought data outside the department from a former colleague, a violation of his ethics pledge, according to a report by the DOI’s inspector general. Wackowski has been intimately involved in the research and review process for seismic surveys in the refuge. He communicated and met with a former colleague who does polar bear data collection and mapping on the North Slope. This triggered an ethics investigation by DOI’s inspector general. According to the recently released report, a DOI ethics attorney said that if they had known about Wackowski’s contact with his former colleague “they would have advised against it.”

DOI wouldn’t confirm that Wackowski was the subject of the report but told The Hill in an emailed statement: “The report is clear that the senior interior official in question acted responsibly and with the highest integrity.” The statement also attributed the events to a “miscommunication and misunderstanding” between Wackowski and the ethics office.

Before he joined DOI, Wackowski spent several years doing drone-operated survey work for Fairweather Science, a company that provides an array of services to oil and gas companies operating in the region. Fairweather is one of the only companies that conducts polar bear den monitoring using infrared cameras, which has become an increasingly important part of the permitting process as sea ice diminishes and greater numbers of bears come inland to den during the winter months. The refuge’s coastal plain has become an especially critical region for polar bears, with the highest density of denning habitat along the North Slope.

According to the inspector general’s report, in late 2017, Wackowski requested polar bear data from his former colleague to be used for a “FWS/USGS/BLM science experiment.” The Trump administration’s ethics pledge prohibits political appointees from meeting with former employers for two years; Wackowski, who had been working for Fairweather until he joined DOI, was communicating with his former colleague just several months after he was appointed, which the IG’s report considered to fall under its prohibition. The following year, Wackowski participated in a meeting with the same colleague in which polar bear research and data was discussed. He did not contact the DOI’s ethic’s office on either occasion. Wackowski told the IG that he believed conflict of interest rules did not apply to communication involving “purely scientific data” even though no such exemption exists for current federal employees .

Transparency advocates and some career DOI employees point to the fact that the founder and vice president of Fairweather Science was also CEO of the company that is currently seeking approval to conduct seismic surveys of the refuge. Wackowski met with his former boss at least twice, including on one occasion in November 2018, with Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, according to calendars and other records obtained by POLITICO. Notably, DOI ethics officials had approved the meetings reasoning that Wackowski’s former boss was not representing Fairweather but SAExploration, the company actually applying for the permit. “We found no evidence that the employee made anything less than a full disclosure of all relevant circumstances in discussions with ethics attorneys about the companies,” according to the report.

Delaney Marsco, the Campaign Legal Center’s general counsel focusing on government ethics and accountability, says it is precisely these kinds of meetings with former employers who currently have business before the department that government ethics laws are designed to prevent. “It raises very serious questions surrounding the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Marsco said.
A herd of caribou on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

SAExploration, despite being under investigation by the Securities and Exchance Commission for filing misleading financial reports, has received a nearly $7 million coronavirus-related loan. Wackowski’s former boss was placed on administrative leave and has since resigned. Meanwhile, Fairweather, Wackowski’s former employer, has also received between $2 million and $5 million, according to recently released federal data.

Deborah Williams, who held Wackowski’s job during the Clinton administration, says most Americans are not aware of just how massive the federal land footprint is in Alaska. Roughly 60 percent of Alaska’s lands are federally owned and the state is home to seven of the 10 largest national parks n the U.S. It has more offshore acreage than the rest of the country combined. The senior adviser position, as she viewed it, was designed to protect those resources and to serve the public interest.

In December 2019, just a month before the first coronavirus cases were reported in the United States, DOI held its most successful lease sale in Alaska in more than a decade, selling off about 1 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve and bringing in more than $11 million, half of which goes to the state. Under a recently released management plan for the reserve, the administration is expected to open up vast amounts of new acreage to development including the Teshekpuk Lake Special Area, which provides important habitat for caribou. These plans have been finalized during the pandemic, with limited public engagement, despite calls by some tribal leaders and conservation groups to delay the process.

In May, as the number of coronavirus cases in the country surged past 1 million, Bernhardt told Bloomberg News that a lease sale in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was still likely. Sen. Murkowski has said she expects an announcement sometime this summer. And there’s little reason to doubt the administration would pass up the historic opportunity to achieve what every Republican president since Ronald Reagan has tried but failed to do. “Reagan tried to get it. Bush tried to get it. Everybody tried to get it,” Trump told reporters in December 2017 after the tax bill was passed. “So, we’re going to have tremendous energy coming out of that part of the world.”