* 21 entries including: America's Constitution (series), green energy & business (series), arsenal plane, skyborg drone, pandemic & green energy, and Bell eVTOL.
* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The exchanges of fire between Israelis and Palestinians early this month have died down. As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Israel's Gaza Challenge: Stopping Metal Tubes Turning Into Rockets" by Jonathan Saul, John Irish, & Arshad Mohammed Parisa Hafezi, 23 May 2012), during the shooting, the Palestinian Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other militant groups fired roughly 4,360 rockets from Gaza during the conflict. About 680 fell short into the Gaza Strip, while Israel's Iron Dome interceptors shot down about 90%. Many of those that got through the Iron Dome shield fell more or less harmlessly into open areas, but about 60 or 70 hit population centers.
Rockets have long been used by Palestinian militant groups. Before Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, its Gaza settlements were often hit by short-range mortar and rocket fire from nearby Palestinian towns. The Palestinians also relied on gunmen and suicide bombers, but from 2003, the Israelis started walling off Palestinian areas, and so rockets became increasing important.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad smuggled in factory-made missiles via the Egyptian Sinai until the 2013 coup that overthrew Islamist Mohammed Mursi, Egypt's first democratically-elected president. The new government under Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Cairo largely shut down that infiltration route by destroying tunnels into Gaza. Palestinian militant groups then began to build their own rockets locally, leveraging off Iranian advice.
The Palestinians now have rockets with ranges of up to 200 kilometers (125 miles), and with warheads with weights ranging up to hundreds of kilograms. It is believed that there are at least three underground factories in Gaza, churning out rockets. A senior European official, speaking anonymously, said of the latest round of fighting: "We were extremely surprised by Hamas' capacities this time around. They had long-distance rockets they didn't have before. That is all down to Iran."
Daniel Benjamin, a former US State Department coordinator for counterterrorism, said of the rockets: "They're extremely simple to fabricate and they use metal tubing, metal pipes. They often, believe it or not, will use detritus from Israeli missiles." They're very cheap to make, and funding their production is not really a problem, militant groups being able to siphon funds off of aid money -- and also obtaining revenue from dozens of businesses they control across the Middle East.
The Israelis inflicted considerable damage on Gaza during the recent fight, and funds are pouring in for reconstruction. The US has sent aid, with President Joe Biden saying that it was being done "in a manner that does not permit Hamas to simply restock its military arsenal." However, without intrusive monitoring, there's very little way of determining where the money goes once it gets into Palestinian hands -- and donors have not yet got to the point of threatening to cut off funds if observers are not allowed in.
* On 23 May, a Ryanair Boeing 737 en route from Athens to Vilnius -- in Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk by a bomb threat and a Belarusian fighter jet. There, Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich, who had organized protests against the government, was snatched off the plane and thrown behind bars. International condemnation fell immediately on Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka. More practically, most airlines cut their flights to Belarus, and Western governments slammed sanctions on Belarus. Nonetheless, Pratasevich remains in jail.
* On Friday, the Senate conducted a vote on whether to approve a commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol riot. It didn't get the 60 votes needed for approval, which was no surprise to anyone -- certainly not to Democratic leadership, and may have been welcome -- now they don't have to humor the Republicans any more, and can set up a select committee to do the job without interference. There were comments on Twitter, suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been extraordinarily agreeable in making concessions to the GOP over the commission, for the simple reason that she knew they would vote it down in the end. The tale of Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football has not been lost on the Democrats.
The Republicans didn't stop the game, they just dealt themselves out of it; the game goes on without their interference. The committee may well move faster than a commission could, wrapping things up in a report in three to six months, then passing it on to the Department of Justice for action. I would expect that the committee will be set up quickly, though "quickly" doesn't mean the same thing to Congress that it does to most people. Legislatures are like that.
I also expect that the committee will be bipartisan, including Republicans who voted YES on the commission. Those who voted NO will not be able to complain about being excluded -- again, they dealt themselves out of the game.
* Come Tuesday, it will have been two weeks since my second Moderna vaccine shot, and I should be in as good shape, pandemic-wise, as I'm going to get. Nothing much has changed otherwise; I'm still masking and social distancing for the moment. I was pleased to find out that Colorado, along with a number of other states, is conducting a vaccine lottery through June, giving me a chance to win a million dollars. OK, that's a fun idea, but I'm not going to give it much more thought. If I win, great, but the odds are it won't.
America's transition back to normalcy is, unsurprisingly, complicated. On 27 May, while Idaho Governor Brad Little was out of state, conferring with fellow Republican governors, Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin issued an executive order repealing all state mask mandates, telling the people of Idaho: "You don't need the government to tell you what to do."
Little returned the next day and rescinded the order, calling it "an irresponsible, self-serving political stunt." McGeachin shot back that Little "chose to revoke your personal freedoms."
I very much doubt that COVIDiocy is a winning strategy over the longer run. However, it remains alive and well on social media. AP reported that French social media influencers were approached by a mysterious ad agency named Fazze, out of London, to perform a smear campaign against the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, implying it was dangerous. French YouTuber Leo Grasset was one of those approached; he rejected the offer, saying: "I can't work for a client that won't give its name and who asks me to hide the partnership." -- and went to the media, telling AP: "Too many red flags."
French Health Minister Olivier Veran commented: "It's pathetic, it's dangerous, it's irresponsible, and it doesn't work." There was no ad agency named Fazze in London. Such leads as could be obtained hinted at connections to Russia. Obviously, there are people who are COVIDiots because they're dimwits, but also obviously, there are multiple organized and funded campaigns to promote it. It would be very interesting to find out exactly WHO is driving these campaigns, and WHY.
* The Eastern USA is now enduring a plague of 17-year cicadas. CNN Congressional correspondent Manu Raju freaked out on camera when one crawled down his collar; it was an undignified, but forgiveable performance. Now cicada recipes are appearing here and there -- cicada tacos, chocolate-covered tacos, and so on. We only rarely see (actually more hear) cicadas in Northeast Colorado. I think I might be willing to try the tacos; not so sure about the chocolate-covered cicadas.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (152): Bill Clinton was born as William Jefferson Blythe III on 19 August 1946 in Hope, Arkansas, being the son of Virginia Dell Cassidy and William Jefferson Blythe JR, a traveling salesman. Bill never knew his father, since he had been killed in a car accident three months before Bill was born. Soon after Bill was born, Virginia left to attend nursing school in New Orleans, leaving young Bill in the care of her parents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy, who ran a "Mom & Pop" small grocery store.
Virginia came back from nursing school in 1950, to marry Roger Clinton, who worked in the family car dealership in Hot Springs, Arkansas -- with Virginia and Bill then moving to Hot Springs. Bill attended local elementary and high schools. He was a voracious reader and active in student organizations; he had a particular interest in music, learning to play the tenor saxophone, admiring prominent jazz sax players. He contemplated becoming a musician, but instead tilted toward the study of the law, with political ambitions.
From 1964 to 1967, Clinton was an intern and then a clerk in the office of Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright. Thanks to scholarships, Clinton was able to attend the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC, obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service degree in 1968. On graduation, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to University College, Oxford, where he ended up studying for a degree in political philosophy.
Part of Clinton's motivation for being in Oxford was to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War -- indeed, Clinton was very concerned about being drafted, though when he got his draft number, it was very high, meaning he wasn't going to be drafted. He returned from Oxford in 1970, to attend Yale Law School -- where, the next year, he met Hillary Rodham, a law student a year ahead of him. Eventually, they moved in together. They both went to Texas in 1972 to work on George McGovern's presidential campaign.
After graduating from Yale Law School in 1973, Clinton returned to Arkansas and became a law professor at the University of Arkansas. In 1974, he ran for the US House of Representatives against Republican John Paul Hammerschmidt. Clinton was defeated, by a 48% to 53% margin -- which was a good showing, and encouraging.
Bill married Hillary on 11 October 1975. They would have one child, Chelsea (born 1980). The next year, 1976, Bill Clinton ran for Arkansas attorney general; he had no opposition in the general election, and was of course elected. In 1978, he decided to run for governor -- and won, defeating Republican candidate Lynn Lowe, a Texarkana farmer. Clinton was only 32 years old when he took office, and accordingly became known as the "boy governor".
Clinton focused on education reform and improvement of the state's road network, with his wife Hillary heading a successful committee on urban health care reform. However, his term had false steps as well, notably an unpopular motor vehicle tax -- and Clinton was voted out of office in 1980. He joked that he was the "youngest ex-governor" in American history.
Clinton spent two years at the Little Rock law firm of Wright, Lindsey and Jennings -- but he hadn't given up on politics, and managed to be re-elected as governor in 1982. This time, he kept the office for ten years -- aided by the fact that, in 1986, Arkansas changed its term of office for the governor from two to four years. As governor, Clinton modernized the state's economy and improved its educational system, with Hillary Clinton chairing a committee that recommended a wide range of reforms; he also removed the sales tax on medications, and raised the property-tax exemption.
Clinton also became more active in national Democratic politics, taking a leading role in the "New Democrats", manifested in the "Democratic Leadership Council (DLC)". Following Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1984, the DLC accepted that the Reagan Era was the rule of the land, and that the Democrats needed a "Third Way", to move towards the center -- promoting welfare reform, smaller government, and other policies not in line with traditional liberalism. Indeed, as governor, he became an advocate of the death penalty, and oversaw a number of executions. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: The US military has embraced drones in a big way, acquiring the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator -- and then the GA MQ-9 Reaper, which has generally replaced the Predator in service. The Pentagon is now looking to replace the Predator, with the US Air Force requesting proposals for an "MQ-Next" program in June 2020.
Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin released imagery of their offerings for the Air Force's MQ-Next program, with NorGrum pushing its swarming "SG-2" concept. Northrop's flying-wing design bears a close resemblance to the X-47B the company designed for the Navy, including using the same "Distributed Autonomy/Responsive Control" flight management system, which allows for operators to task multiple drones to fly autonomously according to parameters set by the user. Lockheed has released another flying-wing design; Boeing, General Atomics, and Kratos are also working on proposals.
Ultimately, the military may obtain more than one type. The influential Will Roper, until early 2021 the Air Force's top acquisition official, suggested that as the number of offerings from drone makers grows, it may become more economical and effective to operate a family of drones, with some built for high-end penetrating strike and reconnaissance missions and others for low-end surveillance, obtained from commercial off-the-shelf manufacturers. Roper told reporters:
BEGIN QUOTE:
You might make the case that the Department [of the Air Force] needs both -- but I wanted to give our team time to discuss with industry options that exist on both sides of that divide. We've got a lot of interesting responses, and I'm in discussions right now with the operational side of the Air Force about what they think the requirement is going to be.
END QUOTE
Richard Sullivan, Northrop's vice president of program management, says the company is considering a variety of designs as proposals:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The customer didn't really give us strict requirements. We know that the scenario calls out environments with a pretty significant threat scenario. And so, what would we do to mitigate those? We looked at those things, and we came up with a family of concepts ... trying to solve the problem across the landscape in terms of the ranges, the threats and the costs.
END QUOTE
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("World's Biggest Drone To Launch Satellites Into Space From Mid-Air" by Nick Lavars, 3 December 2020), US-based startup company Aevum, out of Huntsville AL, has now unveiled an oversized drone, named the "Ravn X", which will launch small satellites into orbit.
The Ravn X has a high swept wing, a single turbofan engine, a sweep vee tail, and retractable tricycle landing gear. The drone can operate on runways as short as 1,600 meters (a mile) long. It has an operating weight of (55,000 pounds) with payload, a wingspan of 18 meters (60 feet), a length of 24 meters (80 feet), and is 5.5 meters (18 feet) in height. It will carry a two-stage solid-fuel booster that can put from 100 kilograms (220 pounds) into low Earth orbit.
Aevum officials say the company has already obtained more than $1 billion USD in launch contracts. Among its customers is the US Space Force, which will use the Ravn X system to launch its ASLON 45 mission in 2021 to place a set of small satellites in low Earth orbit. The business plan is based on conducting 8 to 10 launches a year at prices ranging from $5 million USD to $7 million USD a launch. The company is looking forward to a larger "Ravn" drone that can put 300 kilograms (1,000 pounds) into LEO, and also a booster with a recoverable first stage. No word on whether Aevum envisions other applications for their big drone.
[ED: A 3U CubeSat typically weighs about 4 kilograms (9 pounds), a 6U CubeSat of course about twice that. So ... a 100-kilogram payload means the ability to put about a dozen 6U CubeSats into orbit. 100 kilograms seems to be the "sweet spot" for small launchers.]
* As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("Martin UAV developing New V-Bat Unmanned Aircraft" by Pat Host, 17 November 2020), the Martin Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle company -- it appears no direct connection with Lockheed Martin -- is now working on an enhanced version of its "V-Bat" drone.
The V-Bat is a "tailsitter" or "pogo" aircraft, taking off and landing on straight up, flying horizontally between times. It has a small piston engine driving a ducted fan on the tail, and long tapered wings set to the rear. It appears the ducted fan assembly also functions as tailfins. Weight of the drone is 40 kilograms (88 pounds) and wingspan is 2.75 meters (9 feet). It has been evaluated by the US Army, and performed hundreds of sorties off a ship in support of a US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) counter-narcotics mission off the coasts of Central America and northern South America. The new version will have improved endurance and payload capacity.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ARSENAL PLANE: As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("US Air Force Arsenal Plane Revival Sparks Intense Debate" by Steve Trimble, 2 June 2020), the US Air Force has established an "arsenal plane" as a high short-term priority, as a major component of a shift in force structure.
A proposal to modify Lockheed C-130 and Boeing C-17 cargolifters to air-drop existing and new long-range munitions is now favored as a short-term solution by the Air Force Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office, which is charged with developing new operational concepts by the Air Staff. However, the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC), which has responsibility for the bomber fleet and inventory of intercontinental ballistic missiles, would prefer to develop a new aircraft optimized for the mission and not borrow strike capacity from an already overburdened air mobility fleet.
Neither concept is endorsed by the Mitchell Institute, the think tank arm of the Air Force Association (AFA). A report from the institute argues that the most cost-effective solution is to buy more B-21 bombers, instead of developing more long-range munitions to support the Arsenal Plane concept. All the parties involved agree that the airborne component of the Air Force's long-range strike capability is inadequate, even after Northrop Grumman delivers at least 100 B-21s. The B-21s are expected to replace a fleet of 20 Northrop B-2s and 62 Rockwell B-1Bs and operate alongside about 75 Boeing B-52s.
According to a fleet forecast in the Mitchell Institute report, the Air Force inventory could decline to about 120 bombers by 2032 as the B-2 and B-1B fleets are retired. The forecast suggests the Air Force will order about 120 B-21s by 2040. Combined with 75 B-52s, however, the fleet would still be about 30 aircraft short of the minimum judged required by the Air Force today. Closing that gap -- either by loading long-range munitions on existing airlifters, developing a new aircraft for that purpose or buying more B-21s -- is driving the internal debate.
The debate centers on cost-effectiveness and capacity. A stealthy bomber, such as the B-21, is more expensive than a cargolifter, but it doesn't need expensive, unpowered munitions because they can be released closer to the target. On the other hand, the B-21 remains early in the development phase, and high-profile defense programs tend to stretch out.
Various forms of the Arsenal Plane concept have been discussed since the 1970s. As former President Jimmy Carter's administration considered options to the Rockwell B-1A, the Defense Department briefly proposed the "Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft" -- a Boeing 747 modified to launch cruise missiles. The idea reemerged nearly 30 years later as the program that led to the B-21A began taking shape. In 2006, the Congressional Budget Office considered an "Arsenal Aircraft" based on a Boeing C-17 loaded with a supersonic cruise missiles, to conclude that it would be less effective than a penetrating bomber and require an extra $3.5 billion USD to order more C-17s.
Further studies have shown that the B-21 is more cost-effective than a cargolifter launching cruise missiles, but the idea refuses to go away. In 2016 Will Roper -- then director of the Strategic Capabilities Office in the Pentagon -- unveiled an Arsenal Plane concept showing a Lockheed C-130-like aircraft dispensing palletized munitions. Roper then became the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology, & Logistics, with the Arsenal Plane moved to the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).
In early 2020, the AFRL completed the first test of a new palletized munition dropped by an MC-130J. The system, designated the "Cargo Launch Expendable Air Vehicles with Extended Range (CLEAVER)", featured six munitions on a pallet. A follow-up test involving an airdrop from C-17s took place later. Incidentally, in 2006, a C-17 was used to air-drop a launcher for a hypersonic boost-glide missile.
If the B-21 is more cost-effective than the Arsenal Plane, then why is work on the Arsenal Plane continuing? It makes somewhat more sense when it is realized that cargolifters like the C-130 are already used as attack assets, carrying palletized weapon systems such as automatic cannon and smart munition launchers. Why not extend that capability to bigger munitions with greater range?
Even at that, there are only so many C-130s to go around, and skeptics don't like the idea of looting them to create more strike assets. That implies obtaining new assets for the job, and if that's done, they might as well be B-21s. The issue with the Arsenal Plane is that it means different things to different people, with advocates trying to find a formula that makes sense. Maybe they will -- maybe they won't.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (7): In 1978, James Black -- a scientist in the employ of ExxonMobil -- wrote in an internal report: "Man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical." Company bosses read the report, and ignored it. Over the next three decades, ExxonMobil officials cast doubt on climate science, and lobbied energetically against climate-friendly government policies.
In 2015, InsideClimate News, a website, found the report. They formed part of the evidence in a case brought against ExxonMobil by the attorney-general of New York state. The accusation was that the company had misled investors about the risks to its business from climate-related regulations. On this narrow charge, the judge was unconvinced, ruling in ExxonMobil's favor in December 2019. However, the judge wisely didn't close the door on further litigations, concluding that "nothing in this opinion is intended to absolve ExxonMobil from responsibility for contributing to climate change."
Many businesses see climate litigation as a growing threat. Data from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University show that in the 1990s only a handful of cases were brought against companies, while the following decade saw about 20. However, since 2010 there have been over 110. The cases mainly target fossil-fuel producers, and come in three flavors,
The first, and the most ambitious, are those brought by American states and cities against such oil majors as ExxonMobil and Chevron. A typical claim is that an oil company has extracted fossil fuels and sold them for profit -- leading to climate events that have caused damages, for which the company should be liable. The big legal challenge is to establish a clear chain of causation. The scientific link between emissions and climate change is solid enough, but to connect a single firm's actions to a specific disaster is not at all easy. One lawyer working on them says that it could take a decade for any of these lawsuits to secure a conviction.
However, environmentalists are encouraged by the success of lawsuits against Big Tobacco since the 1970s. Both industries knew about the problem for many years; both used similar tactics to spread doubt about causation. Some of the same think-tanks even produced "research" intended solely to muddy the waters for both Big Tobacco and Big Oil. In fact, some of the same scientists and publicists were used as well -- according to the Center for International Environmental Law, a Washington-based lobby group.
If cases follow a similar route as those against Big Tobacco, the companies targeted could pay dearly. The 2-Degrees Investing Initiative, a think-tank, conducted a study that inspected 17 energy companies and, based on the settlements that were made by tobacco firms, estimated that they could be hit with liabilities of $58 billion to $107 billion USD annually. On average, that amounts to between 5% and 20% of the companies' pre-tax earnings.
The second sort of cases are those that look over climate change through the prism of human rights. In December 2019, the Philippines commission on human rights ruled that oil majors could be sued on human-rights grounds. That links two strands of law which were previously largely separate. This provides a strong jumping-off point for further litigation.
The third are cases brought against individual executives. Such actions are common outside the climate-change arena: bankruptcies are sometimes followed by shareholder claims against board members. Nigel Brook of Clyde, a law firm, expects this form of climate litigation to grow. Bosses' duty-of-care obligations will increase as more information about the impact of climate change comes to light, while activist green investors will see this as yet another weapon to use in the struggle.
Investor activism has already yielded some results. In 2018 ClientEarth, a group of environmentally minded lawyers, bought shares in Enea, a Polish utility, giving them a foot in the door to challenge the economic argument for building a new coal-fired power plant. Their lawyers argued that the 1.2 billion euro investment would destroy shareholder value -- and in August 2019, a judge ruled in their favor.
The bosses are not always the targets; activists are also taking on governments in court. In December 2019, the Dutch supreme court ordered the government to cut the country's greenhouse-gas emissions by a quarter from 1990 levels by the end of 2020, the first time a court has forced a government to take direct climate action. Two months later, a court in London said that the British government's decision to expand Heathrow Airport was unlawful because it had not taken national climate commitments into account. Both cases could have broader implications for businesses, particularly utilities and airlines.
The legal risks are growing, one reason being that skepticism over climate science has been driven deep into the fringe by ever-stronger research. Another reason is that activists are starting to target firms outside the fossil-fuel industry: a trial was begun in Australia that asked whether a pension fund ought to do more to protect savers' money from climate risks. Carmakers are particularly vulnerable to climate litigation, but electrical-power providers, air and sea transport, and even cement makers are under threat.
Judges have not been traditionally all that friendly to climate litigation, but attitudes are changing. In a speech in August 2020, Lord Sales, an English high-court judge, argued that "the old dichotomy between a company's financial success and its environmental profile is collapsing". Australian judges have expressed similar sentiments. As judges retire and younger ones take their place, the judiciary is becoming more climate-conscious.
The great hope for businesses harassed by consumers, regulators, and lawyers may be technological change. Even business lobby groups such as America's Chamber of Commerce support this, with Marty Durbin -- head of the chamber's energy arm -- saying: "Innovation is one area everyone can get behind." He points to American shale gas, which took off in the 2000s after a technological breakthrough. The price of gas plummeted and its share of American power generation rose from 20% in 2006 to 38% in 2019, overtaking coal. A booming new industry was created that helped America cut emissions. Today, tumbling oil prices mean that many frackers are going bust, and there has also been an environmental backlash against shale gas. However, for the next wave of climate-minded entrepreneurs, the technology boom is only getting started. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: A vote on 1-06 Capitol Riot Commission successfully made its way through the House of Representatives. 35 Republicans voted for it, which was good in itself, but they were only a fraction of the GOP in the House. Democrat Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio got up and thanked the Republicans who voted for the bill -- but then lit furiously into the rest: "To the other 90 percent of our friends on the other side of the aisle, HOLY COW! Incoherence! No idea what you're talking about!"
He recalled how the GOP had gone aggressively after Hillary Clinton following the 2012 Benghazi attacks: "BENGHAZI! You guys chased the former Secretary of State all over the country -- spent millions of dollars! We have people scaling the Capitol, hitting the Capitol Police with lead pipes across the head, and we can't get bipartisanship?"
Ryan said the GOP failing to support the commission was a "slap in the face" to America's cops, and concluded: "If we're gonna take on China, if we're gonna rebuild the country, if we're gonna reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality -- and you ain't one of them!"
Now the bill goes to the Senate, where the GOP seems strongly inclined to shoot it down. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that if it was, the Democrats would put together an investigation based on existing committees, presumably with sympathetic Republicans prominently involved. It is not easy to know if Pelosi ever really thought the 1-06 Commission would get through the Senate, or if she was just calling out the Republicans before moving on anyway. What happens next is not clear.
* In related news, comments from one Matt Shuham, writing on TPM.com, discussed how Jacob Chansley -- the infamous "QAnon Shaman", caught on video in the Capitol riot -- suggested to the court that, maybe, Donald Trump deserved some of the blame for what Chansley had done. The court, not surprisingly, did not buy that. Harry Litman, a former US attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, said: "It doesn't matter if they were answering [Trump's] call in terms of their own guilt or innocence. The law doesn't recognize it as an excuse. Whatever brought them there, whatever they were spurred on to do, social media postings or whatever, they're equally guilty under the Federal statutes."
However, Chansley's not the only one who's made that argument -- and a number of lawyers, including some defending Capitol rioters, said that though it wouldn't get the defendants off the hook, they could get a lighter sentence out of it. With over 400, going on 500, people facing Federal charges, the prosecutors will be inclined to go easy on most of the defendants, so they can focus on real troublemakers. Harry Sandick, a Former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
One strategy is to say: "Look, I was misled, I misunderstood this, I'm sorry. I now know I shouldn't have done this, that that was wrong, but I was watching all these people on TV, and I heard what the President said." Not that that would excuse what was done, but it might be a mitigating fact for some judges at sentencing.
END QUOTE
Chansley's attorney, Albert Watkins, said his client had Asperger's syndrome, adding that Chansley's mental state, and the impact of Trump's "propaganda" efforts, would play a role in his case:
BEGIN QUOTE:
A lot of these defendants -- and I'm going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully -- but they're all fucking short-bus people. These are people with brain damage, they're fucking retarded, they're on the goddamn spectrum.
But they're our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our coworkers -- they're part of our country. These aren't bad people, they don't have prior criminal history. Fuck, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since fucking Hitler.
END QUOTE
Commentary on Twitter could not agree on whether Watkins is incompetent or brilliant. One particularly remorseful defendant, Anthony Antonio, was similarly described by his attorney, Joe Hurley, as suffering from "Foxitis". Hurley said that, for months, stuck home due to the pandemic, Antonio watched endless hours of the cable television station, and eventually came to accept Trump's bogus claims of a stolen election. Hurley added that the "Foxitis" claim wasn't a defense in itself, but instead crucial context, an explanation of why his client marched to the Capitol in the first place:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I want to separate him out from that herd of thugs that belong behind bars to set an example for the rest of the thugs that are out there ... "Foxitis" is not a defense — it's pointing the finger of accusation where it belongs: to the slithery snake.
END QUOTE
Sensible people would have to think: "There's definitely some truth in that." Incidentally, relative to GOP claims that the rioters were merely "tourists", a comment on Twitter put that in perspective:
Philip Germain / @Philip_Germain: If Jan 6 rioters were just tourists, then how did they miss the gift shop?
* President Joe Biden has continued to push his big infrastructure plan. According to REUTERS.com, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has thrown her considerable influence behind the plan, telling the US Chamber of Commerce in an online conference that the plan, despite its tax hikes, will improve the profitability and competitiveness of American corporations.
Yellen said that the "American Jobs Plan" infrastructure investments would have a direct payoff to the American people, create jobs, and simply "return the corporate tax rate toward historical norms." She said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We are confident that the investments and tax proposals in the Jobs Plan, taken as a package, will enhance the net profitability of our corporations and improve their global competitiveness. We hope that business leaders will see it this way and support the Jobs Plan.
END QUOTE
Biden's proposal ranges beyond traditional infrastructure such as roads and bridges, with investments in broadband networks, research and development, modernized schools, and expanded child care to bring more women into the workforce. Yellen said that the package will "make up for lost time" in investing in renewable energy technologies and protecting against cyber threats, concluding:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The transition to a greener economy will provide a multi-decade boost to the economy, creating jobs along the way as the private sector participates in the development of new technologies, new investments, and the new products that will drive the global economic transformation.
END QUOTE
The Chamber of Commerce, to no surprise, is unenthusiastic about raising the corporate tax rate, which was cut to 21% from 35% by the Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress in 2017. Biden is proposing to raise the rate to 28%, while negotiating a global minimum corporate tax with major economies.
Yellen also commented that Biden's related American Families Plan will enhance education from early childhood to community college to help build a competitive workforce and fight childhood poverty. The plan would be financed by increases in tax rates for the wealthiest Americans, and higher capital gains taxes for those earning more than $1 million USD a year.
Yellen said that the Biden Administration wants to help American industry by fighting for a level playing field, and will "confront adversaries who take advantage by ignoring or abusing rules and norms of behavior".
Chamber CEO Suzanne Clark replied to Yellen's remarks that that tax hikes would raise barriers to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. "The data and the evidence are clear, the proposed tax increases would greatly disadvantage US businesses and harm American workers." That's disingenuous: Biden's taxes are lower than those imposed by the Obama Administration, and corporate profits were sky-high during the second Obama term. More disingenuous is the Chamber's belief that, to get funding, the administration should rely on increasing fuel taxes, and other user fees. In short: "Tax consumers, not us." Color me not surprised.
Incidentally, a cease-fire was called in the fighting in Israel this last week, after 11 days of violence. Joe Biden praised the cease-fire, as could be expected, but it was probably according to plan. The Israelis knew they would be under pressure to stop shooting from the moment they started, and kept it up until they accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. Biden had to be relieved in any case: he's got things to get done, and trying to keep things straight in Israel amounts to an impossible distraction.
* I got my second Moderna vaccine shot last Tuesday. I drove out to east of the freeway, at the county fairgrounds, and got shot up. There was a Wendy's nearby, so I experimentally picked up a Wendy's burger. Bad decision.
My arm got somewhat sore, but it started to fade about six hours later. I thought I would be out of the woods by the time I went to bed, but I had an uncomfortable night, and woke up feeling crummy. It's always hard to pick out cause-&-effect with health issues, and I wasn't sure if it was really the vaccine that was the problem or the Wendy's burger, which clearly didn't agree with me. In any case, I didn't feel worse than I would with a case of indigestion.
I cleaned up, exercised, felt a lot better. I felt somewhat run-down later in the day, but the uncomfortable night might have had something to do with that. My arm was a bit sore the next morning, but it faded out during the day. Overall, the vaccination was no huge bother. Two weeks and I'm home free.
That leaves the question of masking. Obviously, I'll have to stop wearing a mask sooner or later, but when? Not just yet. One Derek Thompson, writing in THE ATLANTIC, did a study of what happened when Texas Governor Greg Abbott lifted the mask mandate for his state. There were expectations of disaster, but things did not get worse. Why?
MAGAbots of course said it was because masks don't work, but that's nonsense: studies elsewhere showed they demonstrably work. A more plausible explanation is that good weather and vaccination kept cases down -- but Thompson believed the real reason was because Abbott's declaration did nothing. People who had been wearing masks kept on wearing them, those who weren't, had no masks to take off.
The simple reality is that we can't be waiting on the antivaxxers to get back to our normal lives, since there's no way to coerce them to get vaccinated, and no way of knowing when they will. Once the supermarket staff stops wearing masks, so will I. When people stop wearing masks, it might actually help waverers get vaccinated, since refusing to wear a mask won't be a public statement any more, and so neither will be refusing to vaccinate.
The state of Ohio decided to promote vaccination by offering five million-dollar lottery prizes to those who got vaccinated, with the money provide by Federal COVID relief funds. It was surprisingly effective, with a big jump in vaccinations. There was some exasperation on Twitter that people needed to be bribed to do the sensible thing, but I was casual on the matter: "These people are wishy-washy. They think the pandemic isn't dangerous -- the media is lying when it says it is -- but vaccines are dangerous -- the media is lying when it says they're not. They can be easily swayed by baubles and such." [ED: Not always, it seems, since the incentives didn't get them to vaccinate in any numbers.]
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (151): The second major SCOTUS case of the Bush Administration, "MICHAEL H. V GERALD D.", involved a man referred to by the court as "Michael H.", who had an affair with a woman and got her pregnant. A few years later, Michael H. wanted visitation rights to the child, though the woman had married someone else, who was legally the child's father. Although Michael H. proved he was the father with a blood test, under California law, he could only assert his fatherhood until the child at issue was two years old. Michael H. was passed that limit, so he went to court. In 1989, SCOTUS turned him down, voting 5:4 against him.
The third case, CRUZAN V. DIRECTOR OF THE MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, involved one Nancy Cruzan, a young woman who was in a car accident in 1983. Her injuries left her in a vegetative state and on life support, with no hope of recovery. After five years, the parents asked the hospital to disconnect her, but the hospital couldn't do it without a court order. The parents reported that Nancy had indicated she didn't want to be on life-support if she couldn't live "at least halfway normally", and tried to get a court order.
SCOTUS judged 5:4 in favor of the parents; Nancy was taken off life support, and died the day after Christmas, 1990. However, the court stated that states had the right to stop the process if there were not "clear and convincing evidence" of a wish to not linger on life-support. In other words, the final decision was up to the states. This decision led to a rash of Americans making up "advance directive forms", to clarify what should be done if they were incapacitated.
Bush announced his reelection bid in early 1992, and he felt confident of being re-elected. However, his willingness to raise taxes had alienated Right Republicans, and the economy had gone soft. The Democrats nominated Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, a moderate. Clinton didn't seem like an overpowering opponent, and he didn't get his campaign off to the best start. Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot then launched a third party bid, saying that neither party could really lead America. Third-party candidates had rarely done very well, but Perot took the lead early on, but then Clinton surged ahead, and in the end won the election. Bush blamed Perot for his defeat, but exit polls suggested that Perot stole votes from both other candidates about equally. Perot's relatively strong showing suggested that maybe billionaires had a crack at the White House.
As with most presidents in their lame-duck periods, Bush issued a set of pardons -- most notably granting executive clemency to six former senior government officials implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal, including former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. On leaving office, the Bushes retired to Houston; he gave paid speeches, and did some work as a corporate advisor. He supported his son George W. in the 2000 presidential election, but did not actively campaign for him. When George W. became president, he occasionally consulted with his father on affairs of state.
In retirement, George H.W. Bush generally kept a political low profile. He became friends with his presidential rival Bill Clinton, with the two men collaborating in public-service ads. Barbara Bush died on 17 April 2018, age 92; George followed her on 30 November 2018, age 94. They were both buried at the George W. Bush Memorial Library in College Station, Texas. The aircraft carrier USS GEORGE W. BUSH had been launched in 2006; Houston International Airport had been named after him in 1997.
As president, George W. Bush was firmly pragmatic and Center-Right, much more concerned with maintaining the status quo than rocking the boat. He was willing to compromise with the Democrats. Although his administration did have its successes in domestic policy, none were earth-shaking; he is best remembered for foreign policy, being in office during the transition to the post-Cold War world. He is now seen as a good if not great president -- to the extent he is remembered; the lack of controversy in his presidency would almost guarantee that, as with Gerald Ford, few bothered to revisit his years in office. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for April included:
-- 07 APR 21 / STARLINK 24 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1634 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This was the 24th Starlink batch launch.
-- 08 APR 21 / SHIYAN 6-3 -- A Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2301 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the third "Shiyan (Experiment) 6" satellite into low-Earth Sun-synchronous orbit. Shiyan means "experiment" in Chinese, and was announced to be focused on space environment and technology studies -- one of the technologies tested was a new "nanocomposite" super-black coating designed to prevent stray light from confounding optical cameras. It was built by the Institute of Microsatellite Innovation, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The first two Shiyan 6 satellites were launched on Long March 2D boosters from the Jiuquan space center in northwestern China in November 2018 and July 2020. Unlike the smaller Long March 2D rocket, the Long March 4B rocket has a third stage to loft heavier payloads or deploy satellites into higher orbits. The first two Shiyan 6 satellites were deployed at lower altitudes than the third.
-- 09 APR 21 / SOYUZ ISS 64S (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0342 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 64S / MS-18" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) support mission. The crew included flight commander Oleg Novitskiy (3rd space flight) and engineer Pyotr Dubrov (1st space flight), both of Russia's RKA, plus Mark Vande Hei (2nd space flight) of NASA.
The capsule docked with the ISS Rassvet module a few hours after launch, following two orbits of the Earth. They joined Soyuz MS-17 / MS-63S commander Sergey Ryzhikov and his two crewmates, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Kate Rubins, along with SpaceX Crew 1 Dragon astronauts Michael Hopkins, Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi.
The ISS had a ten-member crew for a week, before Ryzhikov, Kud-Sverchkov and Rubins returned to Earth on Soyuz MS-17. Five days later, however, the Crew 2 Dragon capsule arrived, bringing Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Japan's Akihiko Hoshide and ESA's Thomas Pesquet to the ISS, momentarily bringing the complement up to 11. The Crew 1 members -- Hopkins, Glover, Walker and Noguchi -- then came back home.
Crew transfer with the ISS has been complicated by the introduction of the Dragon Crew capsule. After the retirement of the Shuttle, the Soyuz was the only transport to the station; now the US has their own transport again. However, NASA wants to ensure that some astronauts keep flying on Soyuz, with some cosmonauts flying on the Crew Dragon, in order to prevent total reliance on one system.
-- 23 APR 21 / SPACEX CREW DRAGON ISS 2 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0949 UTC (local time + 4), carrying a "Crew Dragon" space capsule on its second flight with a crew to the International Space Station. The crew included NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough (3rd space flight), Megan McArthur (2nd space flight), Japanese astronaut Hoshide Akihiko (3rd space flight), and European Space Agency astronaut Thomas Pesquet (2nd space flight).
The capsule docked with the ISS Harmony module a day after launch. For a few days, the space station had 11 occupants before the departure of the earlier Crew 1 astronauts.
The booster used on Friday's launch was the same Falcon 9 first stage that sent the Crew 1 astronauts toward the space station on SpaceX's previous crew mission. The Crew Dragon Endeavour spaceship was refurbished and upgraded following its first flight to the space station last year, with improvements to its launch abort system, exterior paneling, and interior layout.
-- 25 APR 21 / ONEWEB 6 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Vostochny at 2214 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put 36 "OneWeb" low-orbit comsats into space. OneWeb plans to put a constellation of hundreds of comsats into near-polar low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
-- 26 APR 21 / NROL 82 (USA 314) -- A Delta 4 Heavy booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 2047 UTC (local time + 8) to put a secret military payload into space for the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The payload was designated "NROL 82". The largest of the Delta 4 family, the Heavy version features three Common Booster Cores mounted together to form a triple-body rocket.
-- 27 APR 21 / SMALLSATS x 9 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6 booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0320 UTC (local time - 8) to put a set of smallsats into near-polar orbit. It was a rideshare mission, named "Chang Zheng Kuaiche (Long March Express)". It was coordinated by the China Great Wall Industry Corporation, the commercial arm of China's space agency.
The nine payloads included:
This was the 5th flight of the LM6 light booster, from its first flight in 2015. The LM6 is a three-stage, all-liquid-propellant, vehicle -- about 29 meters (95 feet) tall, and can lift a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) payload into low Earth orbit. It was developed by the China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation.
-- 29 APR 21 / STARLINK 25 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0344 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This was the 25th Starlink batch launch.
-- 29 APR 21 / TIANHE 1 -- A Long March 5B booster was launched at 0323 UTC (previous day local time - 9) from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island to put the "Tianhe (Heavenly Harmony) 1" payload into orbit. It was the core module for a new modular Chinese space station.
The core module is the largest and heaviest spacecraft ever built in China, about 16.6 meters (54.4 feet) long, with a maximum diameter of 4.2 meters (13.8 feet), and a launch mass of 22,500 kilograms 49,600 pounds. The core module resembled the first section of Russia's Mir space station, but the Tianhe spacecraft was longer and heavier.
Three Chinese astronauts may visit the Tianhe core module as early as June to begin a three-month stint in orbit, with future crew missions building up to stays as long as six months. The first crew will be preceded by launch of a cargo freighter to provision the space station.
The launch of the Tianhe core module was the first of 11 missions before the end of 2022 to install additional elements on the space station, and ferry cargo and astronauts to the orbiting research laboratory. The remaining 10 missions to continue construction and outfitting of the space station will include the launch of two more research modules, plus four Tianzhou cargo ships and four Shenzhou crew spacecraft.
The joining of the Tianhe module with the station's two similarly-sized research labs will give the complex the shape of a "T". The Tianhe, or "Heavenly Harmony," core module will serve as astronaut living quarters, a command and control element, an airlock for spacewalks, and a docking port for attachment of future crew and cargo vehicles. The module had medical equipment, a galley and dining area, sleep stations, and other facilities for astronauts, plus handrails on the exterior to help taikonauts on spacewalks.
The fully-assembled outpost will mass 66 tonnes (72 tons), about a sixth the mass of the International Space Station, being closer in size to Russia's retired Mir station than the ISS. With cargo and crew vehicles temporarily docked, the Chinese station's mass could reach nearly 100 tonnes (110 tons).
China launched two Tiangong prototype space labs in 2011 and 2016. Tiangong 1 hosted two Shenzhou crew in 2012 and 2013, while China's most recent crewed spaceflight mission, Shenzhou 11, docked with Tiangong 2 in 2016. In total, China has launched six astronaut missions on Shenzhou capsules since 2003.
China also flew a Tianzhou freighter capsule, similar in function to Russia's Progress or SpaceX's Cargo Dragon capsule supporting the International Space Station. The first Tianzhou freighter took off on a Long March 7 booster in 2017 and docked with Tiangong 2, proving out automated docking and in-orbit refueling technology.
Officials are now moving ahead with integrating the full space station complex in low Earth orbit between 350 kilometers (210 miles) and 450 kilometers (280 miles) above the Earth. The "Tianzhou 2" freighter will be launched in the near future, with "Shenzhou 12" then carrying the first 3-person taikonaut crew to the station. That will be followed by "Tianzhou 3" and then "Shenzhou 13", whose crew will conduct the first full 5-month stay on the station.
The Tianhe core module features life support hardware to recycle urine and exhaled breath condensate, while scrubbing carbon dioxide. The station has a design life of 15 years. The core module has an internal living volume of about 50 cubic meters (1,765 cubic feet). With all three modules, the living space will grow to 100 cubic meters (3,884 cubic feet). That's a little bit more than a quarter of the volume of the International Space Station.
One of the two research modules scheduled for launch in 2022, named "Wentian", will have a larger airlock than the Tianhe core module to support spacewalks instead of just docking, plus a robotic arm to move payloads and science experiments outside the space station.
The other research module, named "Mengtian", is similar to Wentian, but has a special airlock to transfer cargo and instruments between the interior and exterior of the space station. In addition to the two new modules China is readying for launches in 2022, the space station will also be visited by two more Tianzhou cargo spacecraft and two more Shenzhou crew ships in 2022.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SKYBORG DRONE: As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("US Air Force Launches Three-Year Fielding Plan For Skyborg Weapons" by Steve Trimble, 7 July 2020), the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is now working on development of a combat drone named "SkyBorg", to go into operation in 2023.
SkyBorg is along the lines of the "loyal wingmen" drones being developed around the world, and last discussed here in 2019. The loyal wingman concept visualizes one or several drones controlled or managed by a crewed aircraft to perform a variety of surveillance, support, and strike tasks during a mission. The drone could also operate independently, with the capability to launch and recover hundreds of such systems without the need for runways or even bases.
Skyborg is intended to be "attritable" weapon system -- meaning that it is re-usable, but not suitable for long-term use. The development program is also intended as a test case for a new approach in acquisition philosophy, with networks of collaborative software coders and aircraft manufacturers replacing the traditional approach of a supply chain controlled by a single prime contractor. Production of the drones will involve advanced flexible manufacturing techniques, including 3D printing, with a digital data stream running from development, to production, to field operations.
Will Roper -- assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics -- says: "Even though we call Skyborg an attritable aircraft, I think we'll think of them more like reusable weapons."
The Skyborg propulsion systems -- including expendable subsonic and supersonic jet engines, possibly 3D-printed -- will be rated with a fraction of the service life expected of a fully reusable UAS or crewed aircraft. Roper says: "We'll do whatever number of take-offs and landings they're 'spec'd' for, and then we'll attrit them out of the force as targets and just buy them at a steady rate." [ED: Presumably they'd scavenge the avionics, substituting a cheaper flight system.]
The Skyborg is seen as an important weapon load-out for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. Pilots will have the discretion of having a Skyborg carry out a mission and return to base, or be expended. Eventually, they will expand their repertoire, Roper saying:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I don't think it'll just be fighters. I think they'll fly with bombers. I think they'll fly with tankers to provide extra defensive capability. That's what I love about their versatility and the fact that we can take risks with them.
END QUOTE
The primary intended user of Skyborg is the USAF Air Combat Command (ACC). ACC commander General Mike Holmes sees attritable air combat assets as an essential component of US strategy: "If [China and Russia] know that they have to target only tens or even hundreds of ports and airfields, we have simplified their problem," says ACC chief Gen. Mike Holmes. The new class of attritable aircraft, he says, are designed so that "we can still provide relevant high-tempo combat power to be freed up from a runway."
The AFRL is already flying machines like the XQ-58A Valkyrie -- mentioned here, also in 2019 -- that pave the way towards Skyborg, and is contracting for design studies from industry players including Boeing, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.
Most critically, Skyborg will incorporate artificial intelligence software that will allow it to navigate and perform missions semi-autonomously. The Leidos company is developing a package that can be plugged into any Skyborg demonstrator from any company. The USAF is currently performing Skyborg experiments with a Kratos UTAP-22 drone, a derivative of the BQM-174 target.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (6): Along with top-down efforts to cut CO2 emissions, there's also pressure from the bottom up. Climate-conscious bosses say consumers are demanding greener products, especially in Europe. A survey by Yale University found that almost a third of Americans say they bought products because a company is taking steps to reduce global warming, while over a quarter say they have avoided products sold by firms opposed to such efforts. Company boycotts, energized by social media, pose rising reputational risk. Some big firms, including Amazon and Nestle, have changed environmental policies following the threat of mass consumer action.
Sweden hints at the future. Shoppers seem to be turning away from polluting products. Even before covid-19, "flygskam (flightshaming)" appears to have cut demand in 2019 for European flights from Sweden on SAS and Braathens, two Scandinavian airlines, by 4% and 12%, respectively.
Smart firms are preparing for the transition by decarbonizing now. Broadly speaking, four approaches have been followed. The first is to sell off dirty assets or buy clean ones. Royal DSM, a Dutch chemicals company, cut its carbon emissions by 90% from 2006 to 2019. According to Feike Sijbesma, its former boss, about half of the cuts came from selling carbon-intensive business units such as petrochemicals -- which means the carbon is still being generated, but Royal DSM is no longer responsible. Recently, oil major BP bought stakes in two offshore wind projects in America from Equinor, Norway's state-owned oil giant.
The second approach, used particularly by firms with high vehicle or power emissions, is to buy cleaner energy, while otherwise retaining their business models. As pointed out by Nigel Topping, an adviser to the British government, the more clean power that firms buy, the more costs fall. Around 260 companies have pledged to use only renewable energy from 2050 or earlier. Since 2008, companies have bought more renewable power than the annual electricity capacity of Vietnam. Green cars are in fashion, too. Over 80 firms, including Amazon, have vowed to add many more electric vehicles to their fleets.
The third approach is to invest in new low-carbon products. Corporate spending on climate-related investments crept up from $135 billion USD in 2013 to $172 billion in 2018, according to the Climate Policy Initiative, an advisory group. Some of this is in-house. Consider, for example, Maersk, a giant in shipping, an industry that accounts for about 2% to 3% of global emissions. If Maersk wants its ships to stop all emissions by 2050, it needs the new technology by 2030. It is examining new fuels, from ammonia to alcohol.
Other firms are investing in startups. JBS and Tyson, two meat-sellers, have invested in plant-based protein; while Zunum Aero, a Seattle-based outfit, plans to bring a small hybrid-electric aircraft to market. Zunum's backers include Boeing and JetBlue, an airline. Oil majors' venture-capital arms routinely invest in clean-energy firms; Chevron, Occidental Petroleum and ExxonMobil have all bought into startups trying to pall CO2 from the air.
The fourth approach is to decarbonize supply chains. Andrew Howard, of asset-management firm Schroders, says that on average, 60% of a company's carbon risk lies in its supply chain -- not least because suppliers hit by regulatory costs may pass them back up the chain. However, cutting carbon out of supply chains is very tricky. The first problem is data: most companies have large numbers of suppliers, few of which track environmental metrics.
Next is the difficulty of persuading them to take action. Some companies are taking an assertive stance on doing so: Ikea has a 100 million euro fund to help suppliers buy renewable energy, while Scania -- a Swedish manufacturer of trucks -- trains suppliers on decarbonization, and conducts sustainability audits. Henrik Henriksson, Scania's boss, grows that those who don't get with the program will lose Scania's business. It may seem bullying to pressure suppliers to decarbonize, but it's merely recognizing the challenge:
Among the biggest polluters, decarbonization efforts are weak. A report by the Transition Pathway Initiative, a research project set up by asset owners, looked at 238 energy, industrial and transport firms with big carbon footprints -- to find out that a mere 18% are on course to cut their emissions enough to help meet the 2C target. A study by Climate Action 100+ yielded much the same result.
Carbon taxes provide an incentive to decarbonize; some companies dread them, but others see them as an opportunity. Carbon-efficient firms in high-emitting industries will gain an edge. They would pay a small toll under carbon taxes, while large costs would hobble inefficient competitors. Consider the aluminum industry. Producing one tonne of the metal typically generates about 13 tonnes of CO2, but that figure varies greatly depending on the power source; it can be cut to four tonnes using low-carbon energy to power smelters. All the largest non-Chinese producers now offer low-carbon products.
Firms that do not welcome change are quietly lobbying against climate regulations. InfluenceMap, a research firm, says that since 2015 lobbying efforts among oil companies have slowed -- but the American Petroleum Institute (API), a powerful trade group, increased its lobbying after Donald Trump's election to encourage regulatory rollbacks. The API's lobbying efforts did not go unnoticed by the public, their commercials being mocked by comedians. Some oil firms, such as BP and Equinor, have publicly distanced themselves from the API, while not publicizing their contributions to it.
Along with regulations, firms that emit large quantities of carbon are increasingly fearing litigation. The tobacco industry has long been under fire in the courts; might climate-change suits be next? [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news of this last week was yet another outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, with Israelis pounding Gaza, and the Palestinians launching scores of rockets into Israel. It's hard to say much about it, other than we'd rather such things didn't happen -- but they do, and it's hard to think of what to do about them.
Videos of the little Israeli Iron Dome interceptor missiles maneuvering to destroy the rockets were very impressive -- somebody on Twitter said it was like the old MISSILE COMMAND game, but for real. The Palestinians launched rockets in barrages in hopes of overwhelming Iron Dome; the Israelis responded by moving up more batteries. They're working on lasers now, which would be even harder to overwhelm, and are likely to field them before very long.
In the meantime, the Palestinians have been conducting a massive propaganda offensive on Twitter. One tunes it out. Hard-hearted? Everybody uses Twitter for propaganda, it all sounds the same after a while -- and it's easy to guess that quite a bit of it is dishonest, some of it even outright scams. It isn't clear that Twitter is a very effective medium for getting the message out.
* Back in the USA, as predicted, Liz Cheney was booted out of her leadership position with the House Republicans. As also could be predicted, she was hardly contrite -- even taking the offensive to go on Fox News to call out the GOP leadership, and telling Fox anchor Bret Baier: "We all have an obligation, and I would say Fox News especially, especially Fox News, has a particular obligation to make sure people know the election wasn't stolen."
It was a fractious interview, with Baier and Cheney talking over each other continuously. Nobody pushes the Cheneys around. A woman on Twitter linked Liz's dad Dick to Darth Vader; I replied with a GIF of Darth Vader saying: YOU HAVE DISAPPOINTED ME FOR THE LAST TIME. The Cheneys are not particularly likeable people, but they command respect. Anyway, I will be most surprised if Liz Cheney doesn't start pushing for a 1-06 Commission in the coming week. She's already dropped hints. We'll see.
* In the meantime, the Troglodyte Right has been sniping at the Biden Administration for "trouble every day" -- the crisis at the southern border, the fighting in Israel, a shortfall in jobs growth, and a spike in inflation, though the last two are likely to be short-lived. In a particular irony, they even throw rocks at Biden for "mishandling" the COVID-19 pandemic. Some people have conveniently short memories.
Biden's first priority right now is to push through his infrastructure program, which will require raising taxes on the wealthy. Congressional GOP leadership has made it clear to Biden that they won't accept any increase in taxes. Speaking for the administration, White House press secretary Jen Psaki shot back: "The President's red lines are inaction, and are anything that would raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year."
Biden is not budging on that issue, telling reporters: "We're not going to deprive these executives their second or third home, travel privately by jet. It's not going to affect their standard of living at all. Not a little tiny bit. But I can affect the standard of living that people I grew up with."
Biden's talk of raising taxes on the wealthy goes over well with the public, and of course the taxes are essential to his ambitious plans. However, he's got a bigger agenda -- in effect, to end the Reagan Era and rethink America's economy. Biden told the nation on a prime-time address: "Trickle-down economics has never worked, and it's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out." As David Brooks of THE NEW YORK TIMES wrote:
BEGIN QUOTE:
This moment is like 1981, the dawn of the Reagan Revolution, except in reverse. It's not just that government is heading in a new direction, it's the whole paradigm of the role of government in American life is shifting. Biden is not causing these tectonic plates to shift, but he is riding them.
END QUOTE
Ronald Reagan started out in the White House by saying: "The government is the problem." Reagan was by no means a bad person, and having been elected to the presidency, had the right to conduct an experiment, taking America down the Right path. Unfortunately, that experiment led in the end to Donald Trump, who Reagan himself would have recognized as a crooked loser -- indeed, it can be argued that Trump has driven the tectonic shift more than Biden.
Reagan's experiment failed. It is now up to Biden to take the lessons of bitter experience, and begin a new experiment. Of course, there's the irony that the Right tries to make him out as a wild-eyed radical, when he's nothing of the sort, and his policy ideas are not really extreme or unprecedented.
* The employment shortfall was discussed in an article from THE NEW YORK TIMES ("Unemployment Is High -- Why Are Businesses Struggling to Hire?" by Neil Irwin, 7 May 2021). The article began by suggesting that a continuing hiring shortfall would, of course, bog down the economy over the longer run. Yeah; so why aren't people getting jobs when unemployment is high? There are four competing explanations.
The first is the one favored by the MAGAbots: unemployment benefits are too generous, and so people aren't eager to find jobs. There is some truth to this, with the generous US economic stimulus checks correlated to some disinterest in finding jobs. However, they were at a time when jobs were hard to find.
Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who studied the impact of the 2020 stimulus payouts, doesn't buy the "freeloader" hypothesis, noting that US companies have been hiring at record rates -- it's just that the demand for workers is particularly steep right now. Dube says this won't be a problem for long: "Maybe an unemployed person spends several additional days unemployed because of the $300. But if it's a problem, it takes care of itself. It's nothing compared to the broader trajectory of the reopening, which swamps anything on the unemployment insurance front."
Second, people are scared about picking up COVID-19 by getting a job. They may not be so worried about it for themselves, but they may be worried about passing it on to family members who are more vulnerable. One item of evidence in support of this idea: there appears to be correlation between vaccinations and a rise in employment rates.
Indeed, this last week the US Centers For Disease Control issued new guidelines, saying people didn't have to wear masks if they had been vaccinated -- but added a long list of qualifications, suggesting no real practical change in guidelines. States that have been good about pandemic control are continuing on track for the time being, states that aren't are going to shrug and go ahead in any case. The US has seen a dramatic slowdown in the vaccination rate, even though much of the population hasn't been vaccinated. It appears the CDC's announcement was simply an indirect appeal to Americans to get vaccinated.
Along much the same lines, many states are now curtailing jobless benefits, with President Biden effectively endorsing them. It's not very hard to get vaccinated now, while the vaccines are proving highly effective, with an excellent safety record. The simple reality is that the USA won't get back to normal until people get vaccinated, and so they are being encouraged to do so.
Third, and this seems to be a big problem, the pandemic has interfered with schools, day care, and care-giving for elders -- meaning people have had to stay at home to take care of their children or elders. Based on surveys taken in late March, over 8 million Americans had to stay home to provide care, and these numbers are not declining for the moment. As long as schools, day care centers and elder care are still limited, businesses will find it harder to find workers.
Fourth is the question of pay. The sectors that have done well during the pandemic have been on hiring binges. Amazon alone added 500,000 employees in 2020, with a wage floor of $15 USD an hour. Companies like Walmart, Target and home-improvement and grocery chains have been similarly hiring aggressively with wages about at that levels.
Restaurants typically don't offer such money, particularly to tipped employees. They have hiring shortfalls because people are getting better jobs. Dube says: "When certain sectors have disadvantages like not enough tipped earnings or worries about the pandemic, you would expect reduced labor supply to those sectors and greater labor supply to other sectors that have experienced increased demand, like logistics."
There's a clear connection here with the push towards a $15 USD minimum wage. Some businesses, like Amazon, have accepted it. Once it becomes a custom, even without a government mandate, businesses that don't meet it will find it hard to hire help. In any case, the pandemic threw shocks into the US economy -- and though there's every good reason to expect an economic boom this year, we're not back to normal yet, and the new normal may have significant differences from the old.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (150): In reaction to the Savings & Loan crisis, the Bush Administration helped push through the "Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, & Enforcement Act of 1989", which provided assistance to and supervision of the S&Ls. Also in 1989, the Bush Administration proposed a bill to amend the Clean Air Act, the update being intended to deal with acid rain and smog, by mandating lower emissions of pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide. Although there was resistance from business interests, the bill was passed. However, there were limits to Bush's environmental consciousness; for example, he was opposed to stricter auto mileage standards.
In 1990, Bush signed into law the "Americans With Disabilities Act", which had been working its way through Congress since 1988. The act was an extension of civil rights legislation going back to the 1960s; it barred employment discrimination against qualified individuals with disabilities, and also required that businesses and public facilities make "reasonable accommodations" for the disabled, while providing an exception when such accommodations imposed "undue hardship". Some conservatives resisted the bill, but Bush was enthusiastic -- one reason being that his son Neil had struggled with dyslexia.
Other efforts in 1990 included:
Bush appointed two justices to the Supreme Court:
There were three major SCOTUS decisions during Bush's term. The first, TEXAS V. JOHNSON, involved one Gregory Johnson who, during a 1984 protest against Ronald Reagan in Dallas, Texas, burned a US flag, which was illegal in Texas. He was sentenced to a year in prison, and ordered to pay $2,000. He challenged his conviction, on the basis that his 1st Amendment rights had been violated. In 1989, SCOTUS ruled 5:4 in Johnson's favor, and the decision still stands. Bush would later push for an amendment to the Constitution to ban flag-burning -- but it was, as generally the case in calls for Constitutional amendments, effectively posturing; the matter had too little practical significance to make it through the difficult amendment process. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from INDEPEDENT.co.uk ("Animatronic Creature Was Built With The Support Of Animal Rights Group PETA" by Anthony Cuthbertson, 16 October 2020), Edge Innovations of Hayward, California -- which develops high-tech products such as animatronics for the video industry, theme parks, and research -- has developed a convincing robot dolphin.
The dolphin has a length of 2.5 meters (8.5 feet), weights 250 kilograms (550 pounds), and has skin made of medical-grade silicon. The pricetag is in the $3 million to $5 million USD range, the intent being to sell it to be used in Hollywood movies and aquatic theme parks in place of living animals. Edge Innovations founder and CEO Walt Conti says: "There are like 3,000 dolphins currently in captivity being used to generate several billions of dollars just for dolphin experiences. And so there's obviously an appetite to love and learn about dolphins."
The work was assisted by animal-rights group PETA. Edge has previously made robot sea creatures for films, such as a robot orca for the movie FREE WILLY, and sees the robot dolphin as leading to other marine animatronics, such great white sharks, or even reptiles that roamed Jurassic-era seas millions of years ago.
* According to an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Biomorphic Battery Functions Like A Natural Fat Reserve For Robots" by Nick Lavars, 19 August 2020), engineers at the University of Michigan who are working on small robots have developed a battery that doubles as a structural element in a robot.
They chose to use the cheap, non-toxic zinc-air cell as a basis for their battery. Such cells transfer hydroxide ions between a zinc electrode and air cathode, via a membrane made out of a water-based polymer gel and the aramid nanofibers used in Kevlar vests. The aramid nanofibers lend themselves to structural battery designs, which the researchers have tailored for small robots that look like worms or scorpions.
Nicholas Kotov, who led the research, points out that robots are often designed to accommodate batteries that take up around 20% of their available onboard space, and contribute around 20% of their overall weight. Merging the batteries with the robot structure could easily cut that in half, even more than an order of magnitude -- meaning a robot that has more power storage with less weight.
* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("World First: Dutch Brewery Burns Iron As A Clean, Recyclable Fuel" by Loz Blain, 04 November 2020), the Swinkels Family Brewers in the Netherlands has become the first business in the world to use powdered iron as a fuel.
It is generally known that some metals -- magnesium and zirconium, for example -- will burn. Iron is well-known to oxidize, rusting when wet, but it will actually burn in powdered form. The end product is still rust, iron oxide, with no other emissions, at least in principle. Better yet, an electrolyzer, using electricity from renewable sources, can separate the rust back into iron and oxygen again. It is, in principle, a highly efficient energy storage scheme.
As a fuel, iron powder's advantages include the fact that iron is cheap and abundant, easy to transport, has a good energy density, and has a high burning temperature of up to 1,800 degrees Celsius (3,272 degrees Fahrenheit). In storage, it doesn't need to be cooled or pressurized; it only needs to be kept dry. Chan Botter -- of the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, leader of the student team SOLID, which investigates metal fuels -- says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
While we're proud of this huge milestone, we also look at the future. There's already a follow-up project which aims to realize a 1-megawatt system in which we also work on the technical improvement of the system. We're also making plans for a 10-MW system that should be ready in 2024. Our ambition is to convert the first coal-fired power plants into sustainable iron fuel plants by 2030.
END QUOTE
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PANDEMIC & GREEN ENERGY REVISITED: It was mentioned here last spring that the COVID-19 pandemic has been doing green energy a lot of good. An article from REUTERS.com ("Green Energy Ratchets Up Power During Coronavirus Pandemic" by Susanna Twidale, 22 July 2020) expanded on that theme.
Critics of renewable energy have long pointed to the inconstant operation of renewable energy sources like solar and wind as a fundamental flaw, However, from the spring, renewable energy has proven very dependable, accounting for well over half of output in some European countries, while grid operators demonstrated they could successfully manage larger doses of fluctuating energy flows. Rory McCarthy -- energy storage senior analyst at global consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie -- says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
This has been a real test of how resilient the grids are, and we know they coped because the lights stayed on. Maybe this will give confidence to governments and policy makers who were apprehensive, that they can be more ambitious about the number of renewables on the grid.
END QUOTE
However, the recent boost for wind and solar power came for all the wrong reasons: the health crisis tipped the world into recession, pushing down electricity usage by more than a fifth in some countries, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). With electricity in lower demand, most grid operators turned to the cheapest energy supplies to meet the falling demand. Wind and solar power can be expensive to install, but can produce power cheaply once the installations are built -- and they are often backed by government subsidies and mandates.
Data from Finnish energy technology group Wartsila, collated from Europe's electricity grid operators, shows renewables generated an average of 44% of power across the 27-nation bloc and Britain from April to June, when many countries were in lockdown, against 37.2% in the same period of 2019. Daily peaks hit 53%. The leading performer was Austria, which saw renewables average 93% from a previous 91% -- thanks largely to hydropower. Portugal saw its share of renewable energy surge to 67% from 49%, while in Europe's biggest economy Germany, it averaged 54%, up from 47.5%.
The increase in the share of renewables is essential if the European Union wants to achieve its climate and energy goals and cut harmful greenhouse gas emissions blamed for climate change. The EU's target is to meet 32% of its energy needs, including transport, from renewable sources by 2030.
Britain's National Grid has set itself a target of being able to operate a completely carbon-free electricity system by 2025, which it says would be the world's first. The coronavirus lockdown provided an early test, with renewables hitting a peak share of 67.5% of electricity in May. The country also went without coal power for 67 days from April 10 to June 16.
Without much energy storage, managing variable renewable energy flows can be tricky. The grid managed fluctuations by relying, in part, on a tool named "demand side response (DSR)", according to Julian Leslie, head of networks at the UK's National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO).
DSR coordinates power supply with users, asking the users to time their consumption to match power generation, Dan Tonkin, who runs operations at the Cornish Ice Company, a firm that supplies ice for the fishing industry in southwest Britain, has been one of the beneficiaries of this system. Tonkin says he gets emails from network managers as part of a trial that tell him the best times to turn on his energy-intensive machinery -- when supplies were ample and prices cheap. He says: "For example, they'll say that the following day they want me to run at 100%, which means I can operate virtually free."
A similar system is in place in India, where officials in 2017 started asking farmers in some regions to water fields in the daytime to make use of higher solar and wind energy. They had previously been expected to irrigate late at night or in the evening to preserve power supplies during the day for other industries. As elsewhere in the world, the share of renewable energy in India's electricity market climbed during the COVID-19 lockdown, hitting a record high of 30.9% in the week of June 15 from 17.9% in mid-March, according to the IEA said.
While Britain's DSR system of matching power generation with consumption provides some relief to grids, it is not a miracle cure. The country's National Grid has regularly had to fall back on "curtailments" -- paying power producers to shut down when electricity supply is too high and risks disturbing operations.
Jorge Pikunic, managing director of business solutions at British utility Centrica PLC, said those costs were a problem: "The solution to balancing the system of the future does not lie in curtailing. Instead, we should ... encourage the use of flexible technologies such as DSR and storage."
Keen to encourage the development of battery technology, the British government said on 14 July it was cutting red tape and relaxing planning rules to make it easier to launch large-scale energy storage projects. The United States is a world leader when it comes to storage, particularly battery technology, and some businesses are investing heavily in the sector. California, which has the most installed solar capacity of any US state, hopes to more than quadruple its battery capacity in the short term, to just over 900 megawatts.
Ben Backwell, CEO of the Global Wind Energy Council, a Brussels-based trade association, said governments will have to keep up the momentum for renewables: "Depending on how quickly demand revives we would expect incumbent fossil fuels to come back into the market and for the share of renewables to return to levels closer to those before COVID, unless there are policy changes."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (5): Conservatives have traditionally been contemptuous of renewable energy, but that's gradually changing. In 2013 Georgia Power, the state's electricity monopoly, had little interest in solar power. Debbie Dooley -- a preacher's daughter and co-founder of Atlanta's Tea Party, a hard-right Republican faction -- was annoyed, seeing rooftop solar as a means of moving America towards energy independence. Forming an alliance with the Sierra Club, she established the Green Tea Party coalition. It helped defeat a bid by Georgia Power to hit rooftop-solar customers with high fees. Since that time, Georgia's solar capacity has jumped more than 13-fold.
Today, politicians on both Right and Left are introducing green regulations. The Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics counts over 1,900 pieces of climate legislation around the world, almost two-thirds having been enacted in the past decade. Many firms aren't happy to hear that. By one estimate transition-related regulation, particularly carbon pricing, and technological disruption could reduce the market capitalization of 1,400 of the world's biggest companies by 3%, or $1.6 trillion USD. The costs will not be evenly spread; for some, the figure will be as high as 60%. Only a small minority of companies, anticipating carbon pricing, are decarbonizing.
Climate-change regulation is not going away; policymakers, driven by voters, are setting ever stricter standards. Over 70 countries have committed to reaching net-zero by at least 2050. All but one of the G7 countries have made similar commitments -- the exception being the USA, because President Donald Trump believed climate change was nonsense, and withdrew the USA from the Paris climate-change agreement. Trump influenced leaders elsewhere; Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro has pursued environmentally destructive policies.
In the face of Trump, many American states and cities pushed back. Some went to the courts to challenge Trump, and others introduced their own green rules. Thirty of the 50 states have established renewable-power portfolios; more than ten have low-carbon fuel standards for cars. Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and Trump is in the rearview mirror, if still raising dust. Biden plans to spend $2 trillion USD in four years on low-carbon infrastructure and energy; he wants to join others by going for net-zero by 2050, and emissions-free electric power by 2035. Biden was part of the team that helped negotiate the Paris Agreement, which he plans to rejoin.
An early test of Biden's ambitions may be America's "nationally determined contribution (NDC)". These are decarbonization plans that countries promised to devise under the Paris Agreement. Their cumulative impact is not currently sufficient to meet the Paris goals, but the signatories also agreed to "ratchet up" their NDC ambitions every five years. The first round of updates were due in 2020; Biden is likely to announce a new NDC in early 2021.
Biden is also likely to push for national carbon pricing, which would be a huge boost for the idea. About half of current NDCs mention the idea. In 2010 about 5% of the world's emissions were covered by a carbon price; today, that figure is over 15%. In 2021, China is expected to roll out the world's biggest scheme. The EU currently has the next-largest, and plans an expansion. However, the price of carbon varies enormously. In most cases, it is far below $75 USD a tonne of CO2, the level the IMF says would be needed to meet the 2 degree Celsius target. In some places, the price has started to climb. It hit record highs in California and Oregon in late 2019 due to tougher fuel-emissions standards. Having corrected an oversupply problem, the EU price also rose to 24 euros a tonne in January 2020, up from 8 euros in 2018.
How might a surge in climate regulation affect business? An analysis by Vivid Economics, a consultancy, and the Principles for Responsible Investment, a UN-backed group of investors, gives some answers. The researchers looked at the exposure of about 1,400 publicly-listed companies to "transition risks"—technological and regulatory threats from decarbonization. Some $1.6 trillion USD, 3.1%, of market capitalization, would be wiped off the value of the MSCI All Country World Index, a gauge of global stockmarkets. This assumes regulations are enacted from 2020. If policymakers delay five years, even faster decarbonization will be needed, meaning stricter rules and a sharper revaluation of assets. In such a case, values may fall by 4.5%. Jason Eis of Vivid Economics warns that the longer policymakers delay, the greater the shock.
Whenever it occurs, the shock will be focused. In the least-damaging scenario, four-fifths of companies would see their value move up or down by less than 10%. However, the impact on the remaining fifth is bigger. The worst-performing 100 firms would lose 43% of their value; the best performers would gain 33%. Energy is the hardest-hit sector, followed by other high-emitting industries such as utilities and mining. Within sectors there are winners and losers too. Companies that embrace low-carbon strategies will do best; heavy polluters will suffer most. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news of last week was a monster dust-up among the Republicans that began when Liz Cheney -- the third most-senior GOP among the House of Representatives -- decided she'd had enough of Trump Mania, and spoke out against it, tweeting:
Liz Cheney / @Liz_Cheney: The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Anyone who claims it was is spreading THE BIG LIE, turning their back on the rule of law, and poisoning our democratic system.
As a result, it is likely that Cheney will be booted out of her leadership position. What she will do then is not clear to anyone but herself. It may be interesting. Certainly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's response in her blog was interesting, dripping with acid:
BEGIN QUOTE:
From The GOP Leadership: HELP WANTED -– NON-THREATENING FEMALE
Word is out that House GOP Leaders are looking to push Rep. Liz Cheney from her post as House Republican Conference Chair -- their most senior woman in GOP leadership -- for a litany of very Republican reasons: she won't lie, she isn't humble enough, she's like a girlfriend rooting for the wrong team, and more.
So what exactly are House GOP Leaders looking for in a #3? Punchbowl News AM got the scoop and, well, it's not surprising ... they want a woman who isn't a "threat" to them.
END QUOTE
The term "non-threatening female" does not describe Pelosi. Anyway, Pelosi's entry into the picture suggests an answer to the puzzle as to why she's been slow to put together a 1-06 Commission. The GOP has been stalling, so why hasn't she just bypassed them and gone forward? It would seem Pelosi saw this coming -- as Speaker, of course she knows what goes on across the aisle in the House -- and is waiting on Cheney. Once the dust settles, it is very plausible that Cheney will drive the 1-06 Commission from the Right side of the aisle, with GOP leadership in a very awkward position to push back against her.
The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson defended Cheney, in his usual style, in a conversation with Bill Maher:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The party I helped build over 30 years has become a bunch of people who want to be transgressive -- they want to get out, swing their dicks around, and have people yell at them and scream: "You're canceling me for burning the house down!" -- while they're burning the house, for the most part. Joe Biden is doing a good job in part because Joe Biden doesn't get up in the morning and think: "How am I going to set the world on fire by tweeting some crazy shit?"
... [Liz Cheney] represents, Bill, something so dangerous to them. Because, to be a supporter of the Republican Party, you're all in on the myth that Trump won the election. You're all in on the lies that support it, you have to build a scaffolding of lies every day. Like the pyramid of bullshit has to get taller and taller. And she won't do it, she just won't do it. As someone who knows the Cheneys, these people -- they don't fuck around, they're serious people.
END QUOTE
At a press conference President Joe Biden commented, much more mildly:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It seems as though the Republican Party is trying to identify what it stands for. And they're in the midst of significant sort of mini-revolution going on in the Republican Party.
I've been a Democrat for a long time. We've gone through periods where we've had internal fights, disagreements. I don't remember any like this. We badly need a Republican Party. We need a two-party system. It's not healthy to have a one-party system. And I think the Republicans are further away from trying to figure out who they are and what they stand for than I thought they would be at this point.
END QUOTE
* Trevor Noah's DAILY SHOW ran a video titled: "Shhh -- It's Quiet Time With Joe Biden" -- with slumberland graphics overlaid. What? I turned on the sound, to find it was a compilation of Biden publicly speaking in ... whispers. I laughed; Biden does that for emphasis, I've seen it, but never paid it any mind. Beats "Air Horn" Trump.
And then there's Major, one of the Biden's two dogs, who has had trouble adapting to life in the White House, occasionally taking a nip at people. THE ONION reported on the latest trouble he got into: "Major Biden In Trouble Again After Burying Antony Blinken In Rose Garden!"
Incidentally, the mild-mannered Secretary of State Blinken is getting great reviews from our allies, who of course find him a refreshing change from the belligerent Mike Pompeo, and who are relieved not to be treated as enemies any more. There's been talk that the Trump Administration did American foreign relations long-term damage, but that seems overblown. Obviously, our allies welcome a friendly face; as far as disagreements go, we've always had them.
In the meantime, the USA is trying to get vaccinated, the process being undermined by an unfortunately large number of antivaxxers -- all long on hysteria, short on sense. It takes a dysfunctional mind to think that COVID-19 isn't a problem, while a vaccine to deal with it, is. Other people on Twitter are just as annoyed:
Santiago Mayer / @santiagomayer: I’m so tired of people asking how we can trust a vaccine made in less than a year. Like bruh, you were made in 9 months, and we let you vote.
Another ongoing lunacy is the determination of the MAGAbots to prove Trump really won the 2020 election. They've been pushing a recount of the vote in Maricopa County, Arizona -- with one of their efforts being to determine if there is bamboo in the paper used for the ballots. It seems the Chinese use bamboo for wood pulp, and the story is that tens of thousands of ballots were flown in from China ... OK, I'll stop there. One of the tricks of conspirobots is to sucker people into arguing about preposterous ideas, and then talk them in circles indefinitely.
Along closely related lines, Mike Lindell -- the "MyPillow Guy" of the MyPillow Company, and a 100% MAGAbot -- is still hammering on Dominion voting machines, insisting that they cooked the 2020 vote. Dominion has already replied to Lindell and others making such claims by suing them for staggering sums; Lindell, undiscouraged, says he has the goods on Dominion, and "it's over for them." Jeff Timmer, a member of the Lincoln Project, replied:
Jeff Timmer / @jefftimmer: Lindell is doing his best to ensure Dominion’s lawsuit against him will be the first civil case ever to result in the death penalty.
Oh yes, and last week included Star Wars Day, which is a nice note to end on: MAY THE 4TH / BE WITH YOU. I passed that around on one of my email lists, suggesting to a relative that it was something of a thing these days to have something cheerful to say -- though conditions are improving.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (149): George Bush's soft approach to Mikhail Gorbachev seemed to be working; following up work under the Reagan Administration, in July 1991 the US and the USSR signed the "Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) I" treaty, with the two countries pledging to cut their strategic nuclear arsenal by 30%. That was, however, the end of the road for Gorbachev. In August 1991, hardliners launched a coup against Gorbachev; the "Vodka Putsch", as it was called, was inept and fell apart, but the Soviet Union then fell apart, being dissolved in December.
Gorbachev was out of a job, with the USSR breaking up into Russia and fourteen other states. Bush met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in February 1992, with the two leaders announcing a new era of "friendship and partnership", and agreeing to work on further arms reductions under START II. There was considerable optimism in the West that the new Russia would become a responsible international leader. Such hopes would be disappointed.
In the 1980s, the US had provided aid to Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, a dictator who trafficked in drugs -- but was acceptable to the USA because he was an anti-Communist. In May 1989, Noriega went too far, annulling the legal election of Guillermo Endara. Worried about the status of the Canal Zone, Bush sent 2,000 troops to Panama, where they engaged in exercises in violation of existing treaties. When a US serviceman was shot by Panamanian forces in December 1989, Bush ordered an invasion of Panama under Operation JUST CAUSE.
Panama City and the Canal Zone were quickly occupied; 23 Americans were killed in the operation, while several hundred were wounded. Noriega was captured, brought back to the US to stand trial for racketeering and drug charges -- and sentenced to prison, where he would remain, with relocations, to his death in 2017.
The end of the Iran-Iraq War left Iraq in a difficult financial situation. Faced with debts to Kuwait, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein conquered that country in August 1990. Kuwait was an American ally, and Bush had to respond, all the more so because Iraq posed a threat to Saudi Arabia and global oil supplies. Bush imposed sanctions on Iraq and demanded the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. At the request of the Americans -- with Soviet support -- in November 1990, the UN Security Council approved a resolution authorizing the use of force if Iraq did not withdrawal from Kuwait by 15 January 1991.
Bush skillfully assembled an international coalition to deal with the Iraqis, with a mighty force assembling in Saudi Arabia. When the 15 January deadline passed, Coalition forces began an intensive, destructive, and demoralizing bombing campaign. The Iraqis had used chemical weapons against the Iranians, and there were fears that he might use both chemical and biological weapons against Coalition forces. However, that didn't happen; Saddam Hussein launched Scud intermediate-range ballistic missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia, but they did little damage.
On 23 February 1991, Coalition forces invaded Kuwait under Operation DESERT STORM; the demoralized Iraqis were evicted in four days, with a cease-fire called a week later. About 300 Americans, as well as about 65 soldiers from other Coalition nations, were killed in action, with far higher casualties among the Iraqis. Having no mandate to go further, Coalition forces did not invade Iraq, leaving Saddam Hussein in power -- though squirming under sanctions, and a United Nations Special Commission working to ensure that Iraq did not revive its weapons of mass destruction program. A Gallup poll conducted shortly after the end of the fighting gave Bush an unprecedented 89% approval rating.
The Reagan Administration had reached a free trade agreement with Canada in 1987 that knocked down many trade barriers. Reagan had wanted a continental free-trade pact to eliminate most barriers between Canada, Mexico, and the USA; the Bush Administration pushed towards that goal, which became known as the "North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)". It would not come to fruition while Bush was in office.
The rush of public approval that Bush had enjoyed over his handling of the Gulf War didn't last. The US slipped into a mild recession in 1990, while budget deficits continued on their path of growth established during the Reagan Administration. Bush was a deficit hawk, but he was reluctant to cut spending and didn't want to raise taxes. In the end, he was forced to compromise, being willing to consider tax hikes along with spending cuts -- much to the fury of Rightist Republicans.
In September 1990, Bush and Congressional Democrats announced a compromise to cut funding for mandatory and discretionary programs while also raising revenue, partly through a higher gas tax. The compromise additionally included a "pay as you go" provision that required that new programs be paid for when they were implemented. Reaction from the GOP was highly negative, and Bush was forced to backtrack again, reducing cuts and dropping most of the fuel tax increase, but raising taxes on top earners. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("This Powerful Observatory Studying The Formation Of Galaxies Is Getting A Massive, $54 Million Expansion" by Sarah Wild, 7 February 2020), South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope array went into full operation in 2018, and has since proven a very useful probe of the Universe. It has obtained the most detailed radio image of the center of the Milky Way and discovered giant radiation bubbles within it.
MeerKAT -- the "KAT" stands for "Karoo Array Telescope" -- consists of 64 steerable radio dishes, each standing 20 meters (65 feet) tall and with a dish 13.5 meters (44.3 feet) tall, in an array about 8 kilometers (5 miles) apart. 20 more dishes are now to be added, at a cost of $54 million USD, to be split evenly between the South African government and Germany's Max Planck Society. The new dishes will be improvements on the originals, with diameters raised to 15 meters (49.2 feet). New electronics will be obtained for all of MeerKAT as well.
MeerKAT will eventually become a component of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), which will be the largest radio telescope in the world. SKA will comprise thousands of dishes across Africa and a million antennas in Australia, and a sum collecting area of 1 square kilometer. The SKA project was formally organized by a treaty among seven countries, and funding is now being arranged. It won't go online until about 2030 at earliest, with the COVID-19 pandemic possibly impacting schedule.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Lab-Evolved Algae Could Protect Coral Reefs" by Warren Cornwall, 13 May 20) corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae. If seas get too hot, the corals may eject their algae and then die, resulting in "bleaching". Vast stretches of Australia's Great Barrier Reef have bleached, with fears that the entire reef may not survive. In an exercise in "assisted evolution", researchers have grown algae in a lab that can allow corals to tolerate warmer waters and so reduce coral bleaching.
Algae live inside the cells of coral polyps that build coral reefs. The algae, known as "zooxanthellae", use coral waste products to help photosynthesize food, while in turn nourishing the coral host. In a heat wave, coral polyps eject the algae from their bodies -- possibly due to tissue-damaging molecules released by the overheated algae. Without their algae, the corals turn white, and may starve to death.
Coral geneticist Madeleine van Oppen decided to obtain algae strains that reduced the bleaching response. Van Oppen -- a leading advocate of "assisted evolution" at the University of Melbourne -- and her team focused on a common coral alga, Cladocopium goreaui. Starting with clones of a single copy of the alga to make sure they were genetically identical, they raised more than a hundred generations over four years in 31 degrees Celsius (89 degrees Fahrenheit) water, comparable to a heat wave on the Great Barrier Reef.
That done, Patrick Buerger -- a postdoc researcher on the team -- squirted ten different strains of the hot-water algae into separate vials containing coral larvae. The larvae agreeably absorbed the algae into their cells. He did the same thing to algae raised in more typical 27C (81F) water, then stuck the larvae / algae into 31C water for a week. Some of the combinations didn't stop the bleaching, but three of the algae strains did so.
There were genetic clues as to why some algae worked out better than others. In one strain of the bleach-resistant algae, genes linked to converting carbon into sugars became more active after the hot water exposure, while genes related to photosynthesis faded in influence. Van Oppen suggests that the decrease in photosynthesis protected the coral from toxic byproducts known as "reactive oxygen species" that can surge during a heat wave, while the carbon activity helped keep the coral fed.
The results are promising, but not conclusive. Will the adapted algae actually hook up with wild coral polyps? Will the adapted algae lose their new traits in some number of generations? Much more needs to be learned.
* As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Giant Virus Genomes Discovered Lurking In DNA Of Common Algae" by Elizabeth Pennisi, 18 November 2020), in 2003, researchers discovered viruses that were so big they could be seen in conventional optical microscopes. "Megaloviruses" were a great surprise, but since that time, have proven to be common. In a new surprise, researchers have found entire giant virus genomes embedded in the genomes of several common algae.
Viruses, by definition, are "obligate parasites", having to infect a host cell to reproduce. Early in 2020, researchers were puzzled to find out that megaloviruses contained genes related to cellular metabolism. What were they doing there? At Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, microbiologist Frank Aylward and his postdoc Mohammad Moniruzzaman decided to probe further by performing a dragnet search for megalovirus DNA in other genomes. They found, as Aylward says, that viral matches "kept popping up in algal genomes." They then zeroed in on the genomes of a group of algae known as "chlorophytes" -- to find that parts of megalovirus genomes were embedded in the DNA of a dozen species. Two of the algae actually possessed complete megalovirus genomes, in one of the two making up 10% of the algal genome. It appears that some of the incorporations are millions of years old.
Why is this so? That's not clear. To make matters even trickier, the viral DNA present in algae can even include genes hijacked from other algae. Andrew Roger, an evolutionary biologist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, suggests that megaloviruses amount to a way to transfer genes between algal species. That allows the host genome to take on new functions that improve the alga's ability to survive, and may have shaped the group's diversity and distribution.
Cedric Feschotte, a genome biologist at Cornell University, comments that "The sheer amount of DNA and the diversity of genes contributed by these viruses to their hosts is staggering," adding that such a "big injection of genetic material" could influence everything from the host's metabolism to its survival. Might it be a sort of symbiosis, in which the megalovirus supercharges its host?
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* BELL EVTOL: As discussed in an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Bell eVTOL Goes All-Electric" by Graham Warwick, 6 January 2020), in 2019 Bell Helicopter unveiled a hybrid-electric vertical take-off & landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the "Nexus 6HX", at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It had six tilting ducts, with props driven by electric motors, the electricity being supplied by a turbine generator.
Bell came back to CES in 2020 with a follow-on, the "Nexus 4EX", being a purely electric tilt-duct machine with four ducts and five seats. The Nexus 4EX has two tilting ducts on the forward fuselage and two at the tips of an aft wing-- a configuration closely resembling that of the Bell X-22 experimental aircraft, first flown in 1966. The tilting ducts both focus airflow through the electrically-driven fans, and provide lift in forward flight.
The cut from 6 to 4 ducts was driven by the need to improve range, which is a difficulty for all-electric propulsion. The ducts on the Nexus 4EX are short, to reduce drag; the longer ducts of the 6HX improve hover efficiency. The 4EX will have a range of about 100 kilometers (60 miles), compared with 240 kilometers (150 miles) for the Nexus 6HX. The Nexus 4EX can also be built as a "4HX", with hybrid propulsion to provide more range -- similar to that of the Nexus 6HX, but the 6HX would have better hover capability.
The Nexus machines are being designed to be clean, quiet, comfortable, affordable, reliable, and safe. Flight safety will be achieved through reliable parts and redundancy, with an eye to cost. So far, Bell has ground-tested a full-scale duct and rotor, fabricated a circular composite duct spar, and tested a one-eighth-scale model in the wind tunnel. The company is working on a system integration laboratory (SIL) "Aircraft 0" to test avionics, electrics and flight controls. Other contractors include Thales, for the flight control computer, and battery-supplier EPS.
Bell's planning is considering not only the air vehicles, including both crewed and drone machines, but also operations, digital and physical infrastructure, and maintenance / repair / overhaul (MRO). The company is working on a computing cloud-based support system based on "AeroOS", which will provide a "digital backbone" -- managing fleet information, monitoring aircraft health and controlling the throughput of people, goods and data. AeroOS will include microservices such as passenger booking, flight scheduling, route optimization, airspace management, and fleet promotion.
AeroOS will include a high degree of autonomy, for example automatically tracking levels of battery discharge on flights, to report anomalies for correction. It will also include artificial intelligence to, say, perform flight scheduling. One of the big benefits of the AI approach is that it keeps being refined with experience. There's no schedule yet for Nexus flying demonstrators , but Bell officials envision it Nexus in service by the end of the decade.
* The Pipistrel company of Slovenia -- the name is derived from "pipistrello", Italian for "bat" -- was founded in 1989, originally producing powered hang gliders, then moving up to sailplanes and light aircraft, becoming a pioneer in electrically-powered aircraft.
Roughly apropos to Agility Prime effort, Pipistrel is now promoting the "Nuuva V300" hybrid-electric vertical take-off & landing (VTOL) uncrewed long-range large-capacity autonomous cargo drone. It is a tandem-wing aircraft, with a low-mounted wing up front and a high-mounted wing in front. There is a boom under each front wing, leading a tailfin topped by a short trailing boom under each rear wing, with three electrically-driven two-blade props on top of the lower boom, and a similar prop on top of the end of each upper boom. These eight props are used for vertical lift, being stopped in a fore-aft orientation for forward flight, which is driven by a three-blade pusher prop in the rear -- powered by an internal-combustion engine, which also drives a generator to power the eight VTOL props. The nose section tilts up for access to the cargo hold.
Top speed of the Nuuva V300 is 220 KPH (135 MPH), while maximum payload is 450 kilograms (1,000 pounds) -- although typical loads will be about two-thirds that. Typical range is about 300 kilometers (185 miles), depending on load. Flight is autonomous, as per a flight plan. Pipistrel is also working on a scaled-down version, the "Nuuva V20", with a payload of about 20 kilograms (44 pounds). The company says the Nuuva 300 will cost only a tenth as much as a helicopter of similar capability, while being less noisy, safer, and more reliable due to its simpler construction. It's not flying yet, but it should be soon, with production to begin in two to three years.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (4): Although businesses have generally been laggards in confronting climate change, a number of climate-conscious companies have been making their operations more resilient. In every one of the 60-odd geographic regions in which Microsoft operates, it has built two data centers, in case one is struck by an extreme weather event. Kurita Water Industries, a Japanese company, spent $22 million USD moving its offices to a place less exposed to cyclones. Some companies want more sophisticated analysis; according to James McMahon -- of The Climate Service, a consultancy -- a year ago it was acceptable just to model the exposure of a building, but now property companies want to know how flooding will affect rents or their assets' resale value in ten years' time.
Protecting an office or factory is reasonably straightforward; supply chains are tougher. The world economy promotes efficiency in suppliers and transporters, not resilience, while the risk to trading networks from climate change tends to be overlooked. Transport hubs are key, since airports and seaports handle huge flows of goods. Andrew Coburn -- of Cambridge University's Centre for Risk Studies, an academic group -- points out that a disaster that takes one down can have an outsized impact. Working with colleagues, he has analyzed maritime trade and identified 21 chokepoints. These include the Suez Canal, which carries 8% of global trade, and the Panama Canal, which handles 4%, where falling water levels are forcing ships to shed cargo. Similar chokepoints exist for air freight.
Another issue is critical infrastructure, such as electricity or telecoms. When power is cut, other services go down as well. Most telecoms towers have backup batteries that last for only four hours, while smartphones run out of power after about ten. After Superstorm Sandy, two-thirds of New York's fuel stations were unable to pump fuel because of power cuts.
Complexity amplifies the risk of disruption. Milan Simic of AIR Worldwide, a climate-modeling firm, says that industries that rely on many suppliers and layers of manufacturing between the raw materials and the finished product tend to have more supply-chain risk than operational risk. Three particularly exposed industries are automotive -- a single vehicle has approximately 30,000 parts, including the fasteners and screws -- consumer electronics, and semiconductors.
It makes matters worse as suppliers cluster in specialized regions. About 70% of the world's smartphones are assembled in one region of China, while another sub-region accounts for half of global laptop production. Any major calamity in those regions cuts off supply. The risk of these regions being disrupted is rising. Today, a one-in-100-year hurricane could bring semiconductor manufacturing to a standstill. By 2040 such an event will become two or even four times more frequent, according to McKinsey.
The first thing to do in trying to cope with climate risk is, of course, to set up a contingency plan. Such plans are, at present, not all that adequate. Backup suppliers are often from the same region -- meaning if one goes down, the other is likely to go down as well. Smart management of inventories helps maintain product deliveries even in the face of disruptive weather.
Katherine Klosowski -- of FM Global, an engineering / insurance firm -- says that pharmaceutical companies with bases in Puerto Rico track storms and move their products off the island ahead of hurricane season. For small products, it's not troublesome to maintain a reserve: McKinsey estimates that warehousing for semiconductors adds only 1% to the total price.
Another approach is to help suppliers become more resilient. Making factories in South-East Asia more robust would add roughly 2% to building costs. Unilever owns tea in plantations near Kenya's Mau forest. It has planted around 1.4 million trees nearby to sustain the forest's natural water supply for the plantations. However, there's only so much a company can do to anticipate problems. Marc Engel, the firm's head of supply chains, says: "About 20% of our supply chain resilience is proactive; 80% is reactive."
There will inevitably be political pressure on governments to do more, if only because taxpayers often foot the bill for climate damage through disaster recovery schemes. Around two-thirds of weather-related losses are uninsured. In 2017, America's Congress appropriated $136 billion USD in emergency funds for climate-related disasters -- which is about $1,000 USD for every American taxpayer. City governments like Miami's have introduced taxes to pay for climate defenses. Rich Sorkin believes that over the next decade, regions will compete over which can best protect its citizens: "People want to work in safe places, and capital will follow."
Governments must play a leading role in coping with climate change. New climate-friendly rules will determine how quickly companies decarbonize, and how costly it will be for those that fail to do so. That presents companies with regulatory risks that may be comparable to or greater than the physical ones from more storms and floods. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On the evening of 28 April, US President Joe Biden addressed Congress, summing up his first 100 days in office. Biden was in good form, outlining his initiatives and promoting his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. It was symbolic that, for the first time, an American president had two powerful women sitting behind him, looking over his shoulders: Vice President Kamala Harris on his right, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on his left.
The address was widely viewed, and approved of, on the Left; not so much on the Right. During the 2020 primary season, even Biden's supporters didn't see him as any ball of fire, but now he is widely admired -- except by the Troglodyte Right who find him, as a likeable old white guy, frustratingly difficult to smear. Of course, 100 days amounts to little in a presidential term, and there's so much more to do, some of the more troublesome things being:
It was noted that, while Biden mentioned Franklin Roosevelt in the address, he did not mention Barack Obama. What to read into that? Probably nothing. The Biden Administration is heavily populated by veterans of the Obama Administration; it seems more likely that Biden doesn't want to be seen as a tool of Obama. In fact, I suspect the two men often talk to each other, and agree much more often than not.
Oh, and then there's the big issue of bringing Donald Trump to justice. However, Trump's fate is in the hands of Congress, Biden not being in a position to direct action against him. Things are moving along slowly, but they are moving along -- one significant piece of evidence being a raid on Trump henchman Rudy Giuliani's apartment by the authorities. Trump could not have slept well after hearing that news; it was only one step, but it was one step in his direction. A lot of people on Twitter refuse to believe that Trump will ever answer for his crimes, but I find it impossible to believe he won't be. It's not something that could happen right away; until the other shoe drops, we're still stuck in the phony war.
Another sign of the fading away of Trump was the announcement that work on the Trump wall across the southern border was being given up. The funds for the wall had been grabbed from military facilities projects; what's left over will go back to them. Of course, even at its peak, the wall-building was nothing of the scale that Trump had promised in 2016; indeed, only a fraction of the walls built, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) was new, the rest being enhancement of existing barriers. There's long been barriers along the border, there was bipartisan support of them -- but Trump wanted to extend them to places where they simply did not make sense.
For the moment, the Republicans remain in a Trump frenzy. Utah Senator Mitt Romney, once the GOP's presidential candidate, was heavily booed at a conference for being the only Republican to vote to impeach Trump. It is very difficult to see that the extremist hysteria that has seized the party is sustainable.
Colorado went decisively Blue in 2018, with Democrats in control of the governor's office and the state legislature. The MAGAbots immediately tried to get a recall election going, which would require a petition with 630,000 signatures, a quarter of the election vote. I told a friend: "They'll be lucky if they get half that." They claimed they got 300,000 when they timed out and had to give up -- only about 12% of the vote, and less than a third of those who had voted for the Republican candidate for governor. Recently, the MAGAbots tried again, on protests against lockdown rules, with the effort simply timing out, this time in silence.
What seems to be the case is that only about half the Trump voters were crazy about him; the rest voted for him because they were lazy and found him amusing. Once those folks get bored with the circus, they'll stop voting. The Republican focus on courting the extreme is an inversion of traditional political sense, which focuses on the middle "because that's where the votes are."
As a demonstration of this inverted mindset at work, Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst gave a presentation that featured a placard describing "Liberal Fantasy Island", featuring a list of alleged Democrat priorities:
EXPAND THE COURT TAX INCREASE DEFUND THE POLICE MAKE WASHINGTON DC A STATE END THE FILIBUSTER GREEN NEW DEAL ABOLISH ICE
As Never-Trump conservative Bill Kristol pointed out, the only item in this list that Biden mentioned in his speech was TAX INCREASE, and even then it was conditional. The rest of the list ranged from "some shade of truth" to "no truth at all". Right-wing troll Dinesh D'Souza said: "Ernst hilariously mocks the Democrats for their radical agenda." -- and it was indeed hilarious, but not in the way that D'Souza thought. One Jodi Beggs commented on Twitter: "This is fine, and not completely unhinged." -- and, reflecting on the cheesy placard Ernst used, shopped it a bit:
I had been wondering about the tweets I saw concerning SEX BLIMPS. Although the text was changed, the placard did indeed look like that; I was reminded, if anyone catches the reference, of amateur Geocities websites from 20 years ago, with animated dancing bears and the like. Yes, I started out with a Geocities website.
Anyway, it seemed more like a "Fantasy Liberal Island". As a hint of the departure of Republican voters from reality, there was a number of comments about how indignant people living in trailers were over Biden's proposed hike in the capital gains tax. In contrast, most other Americans are almost effusively enthusiastic about Joe Biden. I suppose it's overdone, but after four years of Trump, getting someone who acts like a human being is a relief.
* I'm always busy at the end of the month, getting things tidied up from the last month, and ready for the new month. One errand I had to was my quarterly master recharge of all my gadgetry. The handful of gadgets I use all the time I recharge once a week, the some that I use occasionally once a month -- but every three months I make sure everything I can think of is recharged. Amazing how many gadgets I've acquired. Oh yeah, I didn't recharge my Logitech wireless keyboard, I forgot that one, I'll have to take care of that.
Another monthly thing is getting uploads to my websites logged. That turned out to be much more troublesome than usual. I always have to check the directories on my website to see if the files tally; I usually just used the Firefox browser to get the directory listings, but this time Firefox was acting balky and crazy. I suspected it was having troubles with a recent update, so I decided to re-install. I checked online, and it seemed like updating wouldn't wipe my bookmarks, so I went ahead.
I was wrong. I lost all my pile of bookmarks, and worse, FTP to my website still wasn't working. I got to wondering if the Windows command-line FTP utility could do directories to a file, and it turns out it can with:
dir . <filename.txt>
Well DUH, why didn't I do that ten years ago? As far as losing my bookmarks went, experiments showed they were truly gone, so now I am reconstructing them. My real error was not saving my bookmarks to a file before I updated -- which I knew could be done, but never had done. I got to tinkering with Firefox, and found out I could save the bookmarks to an HTML file -- which I could access as a web page to use the links. Double DUH, I should have been doing that ten years ago, too. Overall, I'm better off than I was, but improvements shouldn't have to be so troublesome.
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