Trump Voters Terrifying

46% of Americans are ready to re-elect Donald Trump according to recent polling. That’s a truly stunning number especially since only 46% are committed to electing a Democrat to replace him. That nearly half of Americans are on board with a man whom even Republican congressman Justin Amash says clearly obstructed justice and should be impeached shows that they don’t care what he does wrong he’s their guy and they’re sticking with him.

If you’ve read the Mueller report like I have you too understand what Amash is talking about as it lays out the case for obstruction of justice quite clearly. Worse still he has instructed members and former members of his administration to defy congressional subpoenas preventing their investigations from gathering evidence.

The trade war he set off with China and other countries is causing farmers to lose billions of dollars in sales so his administration is providing $15-20 billion in federal assistance to soy bean farmers among others who have been harmed by the backlash. Family farmers are the ones most harmed and the least helped causing unusually high levels of farm bankruptcies.

Harley Davidson moved some manufacturing out of the country in order to avoid tariffs on sales in Europe and elsewhere. Many of those Carrier air conditioner jobs in Indiana that Trump made so much about saving during the 2016 election have now moved to Mexico anyway. There are many other examples of the trade war and Trump’s economic policies hurting more than helping.

Just this week Trump announced "I don’t want to fight. But you do have situations like Iran, you can’t let them have nuclear weapons — you just can’t let that happen.”  Republic Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas claims it would take just two strikes to wipe out Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo failed to convince House members of any real threat from Iran in their meeting earlier this week. This is the same kind of sabre rattling and falsehood pedaling that the Bush administration engaged in during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.

About two miles of new border wall/fence has been built on the southern border and Mexico hasn’t paid a dime toward it. Five immigrant children have died in custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while separated from their parents who were legally seeking asylum in the United States. Rather than sending more immigration judges to process asylum applicants Trump has contracted with private prison operators to house immigrants.

Trump’s cabinet selections have repeatedly been caught with their hands in the cookie jar, often for lavish travel expenses on the tax payer dime. Some have resigned in disgrace but others like Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin hang on. Those not engaged in outright theft are often incompetent such as Secretary of Education Betsy DuVos who doesn’t understand basic educational terms and principles or Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson who showed no understanding of the terms describing real estate finance at a recent congressional hearing.

None of this phases nearly half of the American public, I find that terrifying.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 24, 2019

Trump's National Security Team Out to Make War

While the national news cycle seems focused on the Mueller Report and the Trump administration’s denial of its conclusions as well as access to the full version Trump and his handpicked advisors like National Security Advisor John Bolton, Special Representative for Venezuela Elliot Abrams, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seem to be shopping for a nice small war. Trump has been antagonizing Iran since his first days in office and last year unilaterally withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, officially named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. For the last several months he and his enablers have been escalating rhetoric and threats against the duly elected leader of Venezuela.

Elliot Abrams is best known for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, which supplied weapons to right wing insurgents in Nicaragua, during the Reagan administration, and led to his conviction in 1991 on two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress.

John Bolton is also of Iran-Contra scandal alumnus and has worked tirelessly to undermine nuclear weapons reduction and biological weapons treaties. Until last year Bolton was chairman of the Gatestone Institute, a nonprofit organization that disseminated false anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim information, where Bolton published articles on Iran and other topics.

Mike Pompeo denies climate change and claims that reduced sea ice in the Arctic Circle is a good thing as it can lower the cost of international trade. Pompeo is known for making bombastic and false statements like claims that China is investing in facilities in northern Canada of which there are no such investments. He has also state strong support for torturing prisoners of war.

Trump has been talking about military intervention in Venezuela since the summer of 2017 including asking advisors why the US wasn’t at war with Venezuela, noting that “they have all that oil and they’re right on our back door.” Just last week Pompeo stated that American troops might be used in support of the overthrow of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro.

Earlier this week, Bolton announced that the United States was dispatching an aircraft-carrier strike group and bombers to the Middle East, saying that the U.S. is sending “a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime” and threatening “unrelenting force.” Actually the deployment has been scheduled for months as part of a rotation of forces. Nevertheless the unprovoked comments follow a yearlong campaign of threats and intimidation aimed at Iran, after the administration’s withdrawal one year ago from the Iran nuclear deal. Since then, the United States has instituted tough new sanctions aimed at crippling Iran’s economy and cutting off its oil exports.

Over the past few weeks, the campaign of threats and what the White House calls “maximum pressure” has intensified. In early April the administration took provocative action via the State Department announcement that it was labeling Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tehran’s main military arm, a terrorist group. Trump seems to be following Bush's pattern of manufactured false charges that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, the Trump administration is painting the Iranian nation as a terrorist threat. In the two-decade history of the State Department’s terrorist listing no nation's entire armed forces have ever been designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Watch for further sabre rattling as Congress pursues its investigation of the Mueller report and Trump’s financial dealings. Don’t be shocked if Trump starts a war in an effort to preserve his presidency.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 10, 2019

Costs of Climate Change

Some of my friends organized a booth at the Earth Day event last weekend. It was designed to explain the need for action to address global climate change and the Green New Deal as a method of doing so. I helped man the booth and had the opportunity to discuss some of the issues with a variety of folks who stopped by. Most of those I spoke with wanted to know more about the issues. One lady in particular struck me as she was unconcerned about the impact of climate change as long as she could turn on her television when she wanted to she felt taking action was too costly.

Climate change is estimated to have cost the nation an average of $24 billion per year over the last decade and will likely rise to $35 billion per year by 2050. The reality is that it’s too costly not to take action.

Looking just at the impact within U.S. borders, current research estimates the cost of carbon emissions is nearly $48 per ton. An average American is responsible for 15.5 tons of carbon emissions per year causing a cost of $744 per year. The same study estimates India's localized social cost of carbon at around $86 per ton, this is because while they emit far less carbon that many other nations due to their geography they suffer some of the worst effects of climate change. Saudi Arabia’s localized social cost of carbon is $47, and China, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates are $24 per ton. Several other countries face damages above $20 per ton. The global cost when the economic impact on all nations is added up is around $417 per ton. The study’s authors believe those to be underestimates. The researchers used an empirical data that captures all market impacts of climate change that could already be seen affecting the economy by 2014. That data doesn't include potential catastrophic events, short-term costs of adaptation, biodiversity loss, or the longer-term impacts of sea level rise and ocean acidification such as that which is killing the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and causing ocean fisheries to vanish.

Two of the greatest drivers to those costs are health issues, especially premature deaths, and coastal property damages and land loss. We already see barrier islands here on the Texas Gulf Coast being eroded by increasingly powerful storms and hurricanes, add to that rising sea levels and our coastline is going change significantly over the next century.

The effects of higher greenhouse gas emissions levels on global climate become most evident around 2050, when temperature, precipitation, and sea level rise projections begin to rapidly diverge from 20th century norms. With substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the increase in global annual average temperature compared to the 1800’s could be limited to less than 3.6°F (2°C). Without significant greenhouse gas mitigation, the increase in global annual average temperature could reach 9°F or more by the end of this century. Certain aspects of Earth’s climate system take longer to respond to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, such as global sea level, so some degree of long-term change will be locked in for centuries to come regardless of future reductions in emissions. Early greenhouse gas emissions reductions can mitigate climate impacts in the nearer term, such as reducing the loss of arctic sea ice and the effects on species that use it. In the longer term reductions can mitigate impacts by avoiding critical thresholds, such as Antarctic ice sheet collapse and the resulting consequences for global sea level and coastal homes and businesses.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - May 3, 2019