Stephen Humphries , Staff Writer - Christian Science Moniitor
Stephan:
The TCP Republicans are so pathetically and nastily stupid about immigration. The facts are that our economy would be in shambles were it not for immigrants. Read some facts. Oh, and do I need to say every human being in the United States without exception is either an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant?
Are immigrants a boon to the U.S. economy or a drag on it?
For urban centers that have experienced a surge of immigrants, the costs are staggering. For instance, the office of the mayor of New York predicted that the city will spend north of $12 billion through fiscal year 2025 to accommodate more than 100,000 migrants. But that’s a microcosm. The macro picture tells a different story.
The United States is experiencing a labor shortage, according to Dhaval Joshi, chief strategist at BCA Research, an economic analysis firm. Blame the pandemic. It led many older workers to retire early. Plus, an estimated 1.7 million native-born workers ages 25 to 55 have dropped out of the workforce since the pandemic. The surge of people who have immigrated to the U.S. legally or illegally since 2022 has helped fill those job vacancies. That’s helped stave off a recession.
“One important way to reduce inflation is to increase the production of goods and services,” says David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington. […]
Listen to Marjorie Taylor Greene and you can hear a sitting Republican Congress member openly spew Russian propaganda on the House floor and in her interviews. The TCP/Republican Party has become a band of agents in Putin’s attempt to influence the American election.
Jesse Benton Credit: Gage Skidmore
A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a Republican operative who had been pardoned by Donald Trump in the waning days of his presidency.
The District of Columbia Circuit Court rejected an appeal by Jesse Benton, a former senior aide to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Rand Paul, of his November 2022 conviction for orchestrating a scheme to conceal a $100,000 donation from a Russian national to his GOP consulting firm — and pocketing most of it.
Russian businessman Roman Vasilenko wired the money under his own name to the consulting firm, but Benton kept $75,000 for himself and gave $25,000 under his name to the presidential campaign for Trump, who posed for a photo with Vasilenko. Benton then filed a false report with the Federal Election Commission to conceal the source of the funds, the court found.
The Trump campaign was not aware of the true source of that donation.
Benton had appealed the conviction, saying Trump’s 2020 pardon should […]
More good news from the Biden administration, although the TCP/Republicans who whore for the carbon industries are trying to cripple what Biden’s Bureau of Land Management has done. If Trump were re-elected Biden’s positive wellbeing changes would all be reversed, so keep that in mind when you vote, and remind your friends and family. The wellbeing of all of us depends on Biden winning the election.
For decades, the federal government has prioritized oil and gas drilling, hardrock mining and livestock grazing on public lands across the country. That could soon change under a far-reaching Interior Department rule that puts conservation, recreation and renewable energy development on equal footing with resource extraction.
The final rule released Thursday represents a seismic shift in the management of roughly 245 million acres of public property — about one-tenth of the nation’s land mass. It is expected to draw praise from conservationists and legal challenges from fossil fuel industry groups and Republican officials, some of whom have lambasted the move as a “land grab.”
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, known as the nation’s largest landlord, has long offered leases to oil and gas companies, mining firms and ranchers. Now, for the first time, the nearly 80-year-old agency will auction off “restoration leases” and “mitigation leases” to entities with plans to restore or conserve public lands.
“Today’s final rule helps restore balance to our public lands as we continue using the best-available science to restore habitats, guide strategic and responsible development, and sustain our public lands for generations to come,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a […]
More good news from the Biden administration, this time from the Department of Energy. These small changes don’t get much attention, basically none on television, and very little in newspapers, but it is small things like changing the efficiency of light bulbs that can have big effects on the wellbeing of society. This is why I am always on the lookout for these small transitions.
Credit:Doug Jones / Portland Press Herald / Getty
The Department of Energy, or DOE, announced Friday that it’s strengthening energy efficiency requirements for light bulbs in U.S. markets, in a move anticipated to save Americans $27 billion on their utility bills over 30 years. The DOE estimates that the new standards will prevent 70 million metric tons of carbon from being emitted over 30 years — equivalent to the annual emissions of 9 million homes.
According to the new rule, light bulbs sold or imported after 2028 must have an efficiency level of at least 120 lumens per watt, almost triple the current minimum standard. Under the new standard, a light bulb as bright as an old-school 60-watt incandescent bulb would require no more than 6.5 watts of electricity.
The federal government has already once strengthened its efficiency standards under the Biden administration. Last year, the classic Edison-style incandescent bulb was almost entirely phased out. (That rule, which set the current efficiency […]
Andrew Perez, Adam Rawnsley, Ryan Bort, Asawin Suebsaeng, Staff Writers - RollingStone
Stephan:
This is why it is so important that the jurors in criminal Trump’s latest trial remain anonymous. MAGAt world goaded on by Fox Propaganda and other MAGAt media are already trying to rig the trial of their leader and, as this article describes, these people are violent and dangerous.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former President Donald Trump Credit: Hyoung Chang / The Denver Post / Getty and Joe Raedle / Getty
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, supported the unsuccessful effort to block former President Donald Trump from her state’s ballot — on the grounds that he had engaged in “insurrection” by inciting the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In return, she received an escalating torrent of abuse and violent threats.
In the seven months since Colorado residents first sued the state to keep Trump off the ballot, bringing Griswold in as a co-defendant, the number of serious threats leveled against Griswold increased more than 600 percent, according to data her office provided to Rolling Stone. The threats directed at Griswold spiked amid the high-profile Colorado court case designed to block Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from holding office — an effort that was rejected by the U.S. Supreme […]
