The courts have now rejected DeSantis’ racist redistricting map to block Black voters, and he has rejected $350 million for Florida from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. And, not surprisingly, he lacked the decency to meet with the President when he came to Florida to explain to Floridians how the federal government would help them. Do I need to tell you again how inferior Republican governance is compared to Democrat governance?
Republican christofascist and racist Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has said the people of his state will not get the $350 million President Biden intended to go to Florida. Credit: CNN
President Joe Biden is offering one of his White House challengers hundreds of millions of dollars to spend in his state. The only problem: that opponent is refusing to take it.
The Inflation Reduction Act makes Florida eligible for some $350 million in energy efficiency incentives. But Gov. Ron DeSantis has rejected the funding and other measures, creating the most prominent blockade by any Republican governor against Biden’s economic agenda.
And there’s nothing the White House can do besides hope he changes his mind.
The rejection has the potential to create significant ripple effects, politically and economically, in the coming months. As the president and his Cabinet members go around the country boasting about the IRA, rebates for energy-efficient purchases — the majority of the funding that DeSantis has refused — have played a particularly prominent role. That’s not just because they underpin the administration’s climate agenda but because they provide […]
Yesterday I published an excellent long paper showing how people living in Red states don’t live as long as people in Blue states because of the poor Republican governance. But that’s just the beginning of the Republican inferiority. Here is another story describing how the Republican anti-abortion legislation is destroying healthcare for women, just as is happening in other Red states. I read these articles and papers in the professional literature and am left appalled and saddened by the misery and death the Republicans are causing in the states they control. And continually surprised that the voters in Red states routinely vote against their own wellbeing.
From left: Dr. Alan Braid, demonstrators outside of the Texas state capitol, and Dr. Jessica Rubino. Credit: Gina Ferazzi, Sarah Karlan, Amanda Andrade / The Guardian / Getty
Nearly a year before the US supreme court eviscerated Roe v Wade, the court allowed an unprecedented abortion ban to take effect in Texas, serving as a harbinger of what was to sweep over the rest of the country.
The most restrictive abortion law at the time, with no exception for rape, incest, or lethal fetal abnormality, Senate Bill 8 barred care after six weeks of pregnancy, and carried a private enforcement provision that empowered anyone to sue a provider or someone who “aids or abets” the procedure.
The move successfully wiped out almost all abortion care in the second-most populous state in the US. When Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization hit, the state doubled down, criminally banning all care and solidifying itself as the largest state in the US to outlaw abortion.
In the two years since,Texas abortion providers – some of the first in the US to experience a nearly post-Roe world – […]
This is a brilliant article. Please read it. It describes the Great Schism from the perspective of longevity, and its historical antecedents. It is one of the best papers I have ever read on these issues. It also, once again, demonstrates that Republican governance is always inferior to Democrat governance because wellbeing is not the Republicans most important priority. It also gives us the best political cultural map of the U.S., that I have seen.
Where you live in America can have a major effect on how young you die.
On paper, Lexington County, S.C., and Placer County, Calif., have a lot in common. They’re both big, wealthy, suburban counties with white supermajorities that border on their respective state’s capital cities. They both were at the vanguard of their states’ 20th century Republican advances — Lexington in the 1960s when it pivoted from the racist Dixiecrats; Placer with the Reagan Revolution in 1980 — and twice voted for Donald Trump by wide margins. But when it comes to how long their residents can count on living, the parallels fall apart. Placer has a Scandinavia-like life expectancy of 82.3 years. In Lexington, the figure is 77.7, a little worse than China’s.
Or take Maine’s far-flung Washington County, the poorest in New England where the per capita income is $27,437. The county is a hardscrabble swath of blueberry fields, forestland and fishing ports that was ravaged by the opioid epidemic and is almost completely white. It has one of the worst life expectancies in […]
Brad Plumer, Climate Reporter - The New York Times
Stephan:
Here is a new variation of an old clean energy source, geothermal, that uses an adaptation of the fracking technologies. This seems to suddenly be getting a lot of attention, as this article describes. I will watch to see how this develops.
Pipes from the Blundell geothermal plant carrying hot water to generate electricity. Credit…Brandon Thibodeaux / The New York Times
In a sagebrush valley full of wind turbines and solar panels in western Utah, Tim Latimer gazed up at a very different device he believes could be just as powerful for fighting climate change — maybe even more.
It was a drilling rig, of all things, transplanted from the oil fields of North Dakota. But the softly whirring rig wasn’t searching for fossil fuels. It was drilling for heat.
Mr. Latimer’s company, Fervo Energy, is part of an ambitious effort to unlock vast amounts of geothermal energy from Earth’s hot interior, a source of renewable power that could help displace fossil fuels that are dangerously warming the planet.
“There’s a virtually unlimited resource down there if we can get at it,” said Mr. Latimer. “Geothermal doesn’t use much land, it doesn’t produce emissions, it can complement wind and solar power. Everyone who looks into it gets obsessed with it.”
Traditional geothermal plants, which have existed for decades, work by tapping […]
While the United States swims in a septic tank of hate and grievances, and the Republican Party is not even prepared to admit that climate change is real, China has decided to do something serious about air pollution. Here is what has happened. I think this is important because it shows that when there is the will to do it, major positive change is possible.
Beijing once infamous for its poor air quality is now dramatically improved. Credit: Beijing Blue
Proving that change is possible if the will to create it is present, Chinese megacities like Beijing that were once famous for their apocalyptic grey skies are enjoying the lowest levels of air pollution they’ve experienced in the 21st century.
Falling 42% from an average high in 2013 when Chinese air pollution was higher than 50 particles per cubic centimeters of city air, the change has increased the lifespan of Chinese urbanites by 2.2 years.
The news comes from a report published by the University of Chicago called the Air Quality Life Index which listed some of the actions taken by the Chinese government to reduce air pollution, described by the CCP as a “war on pollution.”
This has included reducing the presence of heavy industry like steel production in city centers, as well as restricting coal power plants from being built inside cities while shuttering those that were already there.
Some cities like Beijing have reduced the number of […]
