Parking lot canopies and rooftops

Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community wrote that none of the 2024 Republican hopefuls (yeah, were getting into that again) inspires the fervent loyalty that the nasty guy does. In addition to loyalty the nasty guy inspires violence. And, as Jacob Ware of the Council for Foreign Relations, the target of the violence isn’t just Democrats. Also targeted are Republicans declared to be insufficiently loyal to the nasty guy. That could be a problem for a candidate wanting to challenge him for the nomination for president. Aysha Qamar of Kos discussed an interview of McKay Coppins of The Atlantic shown on CNN. Coppins talked about how many of Republicans hate the nasty guy. They very much want to move on from him. But they can’t go after him directly without a backlash from his base (see above). So many of them are hoping he’ll disappear. There are two ways that might happen. First, he could be hauled off to prison as a result of the many criminal charges against him. Second, he might die. His weight and age may make that happen soon, but maybe not as soon as they would like. Last summer Kansans were asked to agree to removing a provision in the state constitution protecting abortion. With that gone the state legislature could pass laws regulating (banning) abortion. The proposal was soundly defeated, protecting abortion rights. Christopher Reeves of Kos wrote the Kansas legislature wants to try again. The reasoning...

[Rep. Randy] Garber believes that the original bill needed to be simpler and more to the point. This goes along with Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner’s point after the amendment was defeated in August because it did not go far enough: If it were a clear outright ban, it would have passed. When Republicans are out of ideas in Kansas, this is the well they return to over and over and over again. After more than a decade of dealing with the Kansas state house, I can tell you if Republicans spent as much time thinking about roads, jobs, and the economy as they do thinking about your medical rights and what goes on in your pants, we would all be driving on yellow brick roads and our pockets would be stuffed full of cash. That doesn’t appear likely to happen anytime soon, though, and as Garber shows, this certainly won’t be the last of the anti-abortion radical legislation to be put forward in the next two years.

It’s strange they think the citizens are for abortion bans and they were just confused by the previous tactic. Polls tell a different result. Of course, it isn’t just Kansas. Laura Clawson of Kos wrote that the Republican National Committee is telling its candidates they need to go on the offense on abortion. The plan has two parts. The first is to lie about the Democrat’s position – claiming Democrats are for abortion up to the moment of birth and for abortion to select gender and avoid such things as Down syndrome (these are not Democrat positions). The second part is to get more states to pass abortion bans by lying about when a fetus can feel pain. That happens about the time of the third trimester – about the time the Roe decision starts to limit abortion. Alien Boy tweeted a game show display that asks contestants to name something that scares conservatives. Already displayed are things like The Truth, Unarmed Black Men, LGBT, Lady Parts, Mexicans, Progress and a few more. There is one more spot on the board for contestants to guess. What do you think it says? Dartagnan discussed Republicans repeatedly comparing the debt limit to credit cards and how wrong that comparison is. Barely Speaker McCarthy is one that has been saying it.

They use this analogy because it serves a dual purpose: First it conjures up an image familiar to just about everyone, attaching an aura of moral “responsibility” to an otherwise complex process that most Americans can’t or won’t bother to understand. Secondly, it paints Democrats as reckless spendthrifts while ignoring the outsize role of unfunded Republican tax cuts in ballooning the national debt. ... It’s clearly a focus group-tested theme the GOP intends to push as the country approaches the brink of disaster, probably intending to shout it loudly even as the country tumbles over the precipice into an unprecedented fiscal calamity that will also impact the global economy. The problem, though (leaving aside the fact that the U.S. government cannot, does not, and has never operated in any fashion similar an individual “household”), is that the analogy is pure garbage. Its most obvious flaw is that the U.S. government is not just the borrower here, but the lender as well: We are, in fact, the credit card company and can raise our limit, if necessary, anytime we want. (In fact we have, dozens of times, over the past century.) And our “government” is made up of the very people afforded the right to pass laws on how much to spend, and what to spend it on. As Benen notes, “[I]f House Republicans want to introduce legislation to cut spending they consider unnecessary, they’re welcome to do so at any time,” without holding the country hostage.

Dartagnan also notes, as has many other pundits, that Republicans only care about the debt limit when a Democrat is in the Oval Office. Ian Reifowitz of the Kos community wrote about another problem surrounding the national debt. Since the 1950s the nation has made progress on equal rights for people who are not white, male, and straight (of course a lot more progress needs to be made). But one area has gotten worse is tax fairness. Back in the 1950s the rich paid a tax rate of about 50%. Now it is an average of 8.2%, lower than many taxpayers in the middle class. That means the federal government hasn’t had enough money to pay bills. Therefore it borrows. And that means it must pay interest on what it borrows. Reifowitz quoted economist Robert Reich who noted that most government bonds aren’t held by foreigners, but by rich Americans.

This means that a growing portion of your taxes are going to the wealthy in the form of interest payments, rather than paying for government services everyone needs. So, the real problem isn’t America’s growing federal budget deficit. It’s the decline in tax revenue from America’s wealthy combined with growing interest payments to them.

Reifowitz added:

For far too long, the rich—not the poor—have been the primary beneficiaries of unearned government largesse. That’s got to change. Right now.

We change it by electing the most progressive Democrats available. Donkey Hotey tweeted a cartoon that says:

Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Congressman, who wanted to raise the retirement age to 70, retired at the age of 48, with a full taxpayer funded government pension. You can’t make this stuff up.

Clawson discussed yet another story of about people earning $400K a year and having a hard time getting by. These are people whose income is higher than 98% of people in the US. This journalistic mess was by Megan McArdle of the Washington Post and based on a story by Gail Collins and Bret Stephens of the New York Times. Collins and Stephens framed the story responsibly. McArdle didn’t. Clawson concluded:

This defense of the $400,000 club is all about the view that it’s better for a tiny number of people to be very wealthy, a huge number of people to be poor or near-poor, and a small but vocal number of people to be only moderately wealthy and clamoring to get into the very wealthy category than for a majority of people to be secure but unremarkable in a society with less wealth concentrated at the very top. Don’t mistake it for anything but that. And if you ever find yourself in the top 10% of national income distribution and you feel inclined to argue that your personal financial struggles should be the basis upon which tax policy is made, please shut up.

Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that the oil industry announced huge and record profits for 2022. Exxon Mobil announced a profit of $55.7 billion. No, they didn’t raise prices because of supply chain issues, or the Russian war, or the pandemic. They raised prices because they are greedy. Chevron announced a profit of $36.5 billion. No, they are not using the money for clean energy alternatives so the executives’ grandchildren can live in a habitable environment. Instead, Chevron has started a $75 billion stock buyback program, which benefits only people who own the company’s stock.

This is grand news for the maybe 100 million or so people scattered throughout the world that have an investment group or two investing their money in Exxon Mobil stock. Fun fact: There are just under 8 billion people on the earth, and most, if not all, of them are affected by the pollution and human-driven climate change that oil and gas companies produce. We are also the ones who shoulder the economic weight of skyrocketing gas prices driven by greed.

Jonathan Thompson of High Country News reported that in early December Interior Secretary Deb Haaland stood near where 3,000 acres of desert had been scraped clean for the Sonoran Solar Project, which will provide power to 91,000 homes. The Bureau of Land Management will also expedite the review of three other massive solar projects in Arizona and more in California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, all on federal land. As wonderful it is to have solar to (hopefully) replace fossil fuels to generate electricity these projects can damage fragile desert ecosystems. Thompson wrote there are better places for these solar panels – as parking lot canopies and on the rooftops of Walmart. Thompson and colleagues did some calculations. Yes, these places covered with solar panels would generate enough electricity. Just creating solar canopies over the 18.6 million parking spaces in Los Angeles County could generate 44.8 gigawatts of electricity.