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This evening's music features St. Louis blues singer and guitarist Clifford Gibson. Enjoy!

"This, to me, is the ultimately heroic trait of ordinary people; they say no to the tyrant and they calmly take the consequences of this resistance."

-- Philip K. Dick

News and Opinion

Worth a full read:

As Trump Threatens Secret Police Deployment Nationwide, Democrats Debate Expanding Surveillance Powers and New Money for DHS

The rogue deployment of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration’s vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security. In March, a sweeping set of government authorities to monitor people in the United States expired, and Congress continues to debate what limits should be put on such powers before reauthorizing them. And the House is debating its next DHS funding bill, with the Congressional Progressive Caucus pushing leadership not to bring it up for a vote given Trump’s abuse of power and DHS agents’ role in a Portland arrest.

House Democratic leaders, however, are considering lumping in DHS funding with appropriations for the departments of Labor and Health and Human Services, making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said that the CPC is urging leadership either to not bring up the bill at all or to break it off from Labor-HHS and allow for a separate vote. “What you’re seeing is this giant Trump administration machine deputize every arm of government to engage in their agenda at the expense of democracy and the Constitution, so there aren’t traditional boundaries anymore for any of those pieces of legislation,” Jayapal said. “Every argument is about, do you want to give more tools to the Trump administration to destroy our Constitution?”

But the debate over the government’s surveillance power is happening in a shroud of confusion, as lawmakers are unclear precisely what the intelligence community currently considers legal, given the classified nature of the operations. Leaked Republican talking points suggest the intelligence community is pushing for legal blessing of dragnet surveillance, and the ability to use the data caught up in those dragnets — not to buttress existing investigations with a warrant but to begin new ones.

The GOP talking points, first obtained by Gizmodo and passed out by the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggest that investigators could use “Internet data as a starting point” in launching an investigation. That’s a radical departure from what is understood to be legal and would allow the Department of Homeland Security to collect data on, for instance, every person who visited a website sympathetic to protests in Portland, then begin to surveil each of those people, hunting for a crime that could justify an arrest — an arrest that could then be carried out by unidentified federal troops driving unmarked vans. ...

On Tuesday, Sens. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe demanding assurance that the government is no longer conducting surveillance under the expired authorities, and asking whether the government believes it has authority to conduct such surveillance absent the legislation. The letter includes a reference to an extra-legal mass data collection project Barr himself authorized within the Drug Enforcement Administration when he was serving as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush.

Because so much of the intelligence activity implicated by the legislation lies behind a veil of classification, lawmakers are left to rewrite the rules by piecing together clues. This leaked point is perhaps the most significant clue that the intelligence services are pursuing the ability to perform warrantless, dragnet searches — or are already doing so.

Portland tensions rise as federal forces use flash-bangs against protesters

Protesters crowded in front of the US federal courthouse in Portland and the Oregon city’s justice center late on Monday night, before authorities cleared them out with flash-bang grenades. ... The actions of the camouflaged and unidentified officers, sent to the city by Donald Trump without local consent, are raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis. ...

State and local authorities are awaiting a ruling in a lawsuit filed last week, in which Oregon’s attorney general, Ellen Rosenblum, said masked federal officers have arrested people on the street, far from the courthouse, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars.

“The idea that there’s a threat to a federal courthouse and the federal authorities are going to swoop in and do whatever they want to do without any cooperation and coordination with state and local authorities is extraordinary outside the context of a civil war,” said Michael Dorf, a professor of constitutional law at Cornell University.

“It is a standard move of authoritarians to use the pretext of quelling violence to bring in force, thereby prompting a violent response and then bootstrapping the initial use of force in the first place.”

Trump is radicalizing middle class white women now, too.

'I wanted to take action': behind the 'Wall of Moms' protecting Portland's protesters

It took the killing of George Floyd to get Jane Ullman to finally pay attention to what the police were up to in America. But it was the sinister sight of federal agents in camouflage snatching demonstrators off the streets of Portland that got her out to protest. The chief financial officer for tech startups in Oregon’s biggest city joined hundreds of other mothers dressed in yellow in a “Wall of Moms”, turning out each evening to stand as a human barricade between protesters and agents dispatched by Donald Trump to aggressively break up Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Ullman, a mother of two, said it was her first demonstration in support of racial justice. “As an upper-middle-class white woman in the whitest city in America, I couldn’t stand by any longer,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of self-educating since George Floyd. Reading and learning. The feds’ part in it pushed me over the top. I wanted to take action. But it was the ‘Wall of Moms’ that brought me out.”

Ullman was not alone. What began as a small symbolic act of defiance on Saturday grew into the principal demonstration two nights later, as thousands packed the streets and squares outside the county jail and federal courthouse in downtown Portland for one of the largest protests to date. At the heart of it were hundreds of women dressed in yellow and singing “Hands up, please don’t shoot me” – evidence that not only has Trump’s dispatch of federal agents failed to stop the protests, it has reinvigorated them.

New Local Lawsuit Challenges 'Violent and Unlawful' Attacks on Portland Protesters by Trump's Secret Police Force

A pair of Oregon state lawmakers joined with a local lawyer, church, and advocacy group on Tuesday to bring yet another lawsuit against federal government agencies over President Donald Trump's ongoing militarized crackdown on Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Federal Protective Service, and U.S. Marshals Service are named as defendants in the new legal challenge led by state Reps. Janelle S. Bynum (D-Clackamas) and Karin A. Power (D-Milwaukie), attorney Sara D. Eddie, First Unitarian Church of Portland, and the Western States Center.

The lawsuit (pdf), filed in the U.S. District Court in Portland, follows separate suits from the ACLU and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum initiated after videos and reporting started to emerge last week of unidentified federal agents driving around the city in unmarked vehicles and snatching people off the streets.

Although the actions of federal law enforcement agents in Portland have drawn intense condemnation on a national scale, Trump has not only ignored calls to stand down from Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown—both Democrats—but has actually threatened to replicate the takeover in other major Democrat-led cities such Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Oakland, and Philadelphia.

In the new case, the plaintiffs accuse the defendants of violating the 10th Amendment, which was intended to limited the authority of the federal government by declaring that "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

The plaintiffs' complaint says that "while the federal government may protect its property and personnel, the federal government is constrained by the Constitution from policing the City of Portland broadly speaking, and there is no positive delegation of authority in any law that makes the federal government's recent forays into general policing in Portland either legal or constitutional."

"The power to engage in ordinary law enforcement is one of the long-recognized powers that belong to the states and to their municipalities," Cliff Davidson, an attorney at Snell & Wilmer, the firm filing the suit, told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

According to OPB:

The Western States Center, an Oregon-based activism group, alleges that the arrival of federal law enforcement reversed progress the organization had made in de-escalating conflict between the Portland Police Bureau and protesters. The organization said, as a result, it has had to expend significant resources to mitigate the harm caused by federal officers.

The Unitarian Church of Portland has a protest witness group that has been monitoring demonstrations. Its members allege participation has dropped notably since federal officers started making arrests on Portland city streets.

"There was not a similar drop when Portland Police Bureau maintained their role as the police in Portland, and federal law enforcement limited itself to protecting federal facilities and personnel," the lawsuit states.

The suit also "contends federal officers, who have gone beyond the sidewalks outside the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse, have encroached on state powers and violated the First Unitarian Church of Portland's right to protest and practice social activism that are tenets of its faith and protected under the First Amendment's free exercise of religion clause," The Oregonian reported.

The plaintiffs in this case are seeking "a court order that restricts the federal officers' actions to the federal courthouse and demands that the federal officers identify themselves and have probable cause to arrest anyone," the newspaper added, noting that Rosenblum and the ACLU's suits "are seeking temporary restraining orders to restrict federal law enforcement in Portland."

The Pentagon is getting concerned about law enforcement dressing up in US military uniforms

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has made the Trump administration aware of his concerns with the appropriation of the US military's uniforms by law enforcement agencies as they face off with protesters in cities like Portland, Oregon, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday afternoon.

"We saw this take place back in June, when there were some law enforcement that wore uniforms that make them appear military," Defense Department spokesman Jonathan Hoffman said to reporters, referencing the George Floyd protests throughout the country earlier this year. "The secretary has a expressed a concern of this within the administration, that we want a system where people can tell the difference," he added.

The confusion became apparent after video footage and pictures showed law enforcement officials, many of whom refused to identify themselves or the agency they were working for, wearing the U.S. Army's camouflage uniform as they confronted demonstrators.

This confusion has been compounded after other activists, such as the Boogaloo movement, wore pieces of the same uniform or carried with them military-style gear to the same protests throughout the country.

Breonna Taylor Activists Are Live-Streaming Their Hunger Strike

More than three months of protests, email and letter campaigns and petitions haven’t pushed local authorities to arrest the cops responsible for the death of Breonna Taylor, so a group of activists are trying a more dramatic tactic: a full-on live-streamed hunger strike.

Louisville residents Ari Maybe, Amira Bryant, Vincent Gonzalez, and Tabin Ibershoff kicked off an indefinite hunger strike from a local Airbnb Monday at noon. The crew said they will “restrict all calorie intake,” with the exception of black coffee, green tea, water, and vitamin supplements, until officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove are removed from their positions and stripped of their pensions.

Though the four Kentuckians will be the face of the strike being live-streamed on Facebook, they won’t be tackling it alone. They told VICE News they have a network of 35 local volunteers, including medical professionals with the Louisville Street Medics who will be on-site to ensure their safety. They are also raising money to help pay for the Airbnb — which they booked so they could be filmed together and shelter in place during the pandemic — and medical supplies needed to support them in the days to come. As of Tuesday morning, they’ve raised $1,118 of their $2,300 goal and gained 573 followers on the group’s Facebook page.

Find out if your useless congressworm is in favor of a failed state with a massive military. Roll Call is here.

139 House Democrats Vote With GOP to Reject 10% Pentagon Budget Cut

Anti-war groups vowed to keep fighting to slash the bloated Pentagon budget after the House of Representatives on Tuesday rejected a proposal to cut U.S. military spending by 10% and invest the savings in housing, healthcare, and education in poor communities.

The final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) amendment sponsored by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) was 93-324, with 139 Democrats joining 185 Republicans in voting no. The failure of the Lee-Pocan amendment means the final version of the House NDAA will propose a $740.5 military budget for fiscal year 2021, a more than $2 billion increase from the previous year.

"Ninety-three members of Congress stood together to oppose a bloated $740 billion defense budget," Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, tweeted following the vote. "Though our amendment didn't pass, progressive power is stronger than ever. We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality."

Trump admits pandemic will 'get worse' at first Covid-19 briefing in months

Donald Trump has admitted that the coronavirus pandemic is likely to “get worse before it gets better” at his first press briefing devoted to the issue since April. Facing dire poll numbers, surging cases and sharp criticism for lack of leadership, the US president returned to the White House podium attempting to show more discipline in both style and substance.

In several notable reversals, he urged people to wear face masks, promised his administration was working on a “strategy” and wrapped up in less than half an hour, avoiding his digressions in past briefings that culminated in a proposal to inject disinfectant in Covid-19 patients.

The pandemic will “probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better”, Trump said, reading from scripted remarks. “Something I don’t like saying about things, but that’s the way it is.” It was a marked shift from his claims last month the virus is “fading away” and “dying out”. And having once dismissed its remnants as “embers”, he now conceded that it is raging in states led by Republican governors. ...

After months of refusing to wear a mask in public, Trump finally did so on 11 July and has since claimed it is patriotic. “We’re asking everybody that when you are not able to socially distance, wear a mask,” he said. “Get a mask, whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact. They’ll have an effect, and we need everything we can get.” Producing a mask from his suit pocket, he added: “I carry the mask ... I have the mask right here. I carry it and I will use it gladly.”

ALEC Is Close to Passing Model Bill That Would Protect Companies From Coronavirus-Related Lawsuits

The American Legislative Economic Council, a conservative Koch-backed group that is holding its 47th annual meeting this week, is working to develop a model bill for state legislatures to create corporate liability protections related to the coronavirus. Finding a way to protect corporations from lawsuits by employees who are required to work during the coronavirus pandemic at the state and federal levels has been a priority for both ALEC and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in recent months.

In May, the ALEC Criminal and Civil Justice Task Force, which models policy “to protect the legal system from frivolous litigation that threatens its reliability,” debated corporate liability on a conference call with members. Later that month, the task force unanimously passed a model policy on the issue, according to an email obtained by The Intercept. “If it is approved by the ALEC Board of Directors,” the email states, “it will become ALEC model policy.”

ALEC Director of Public Affairs Dan Reynolds confirmed that ALEC is considering a policy on liability protection that hasn’t yet been approved, but did not respond to questions about when the board will take it up for consideration. ALEC’s annual meeting, originally set to take place in Orlando, Florida, began on July 15 and will run through July 23. At last year’s annual conference, 1,413 people were listed as attending, including a large number of state legislators, members of the Koch network, and the Trump campaign, Documented reported. Reynolds did not respond to questions on how many people would attend this year or why ALEC had shifted its conference online to protect members amid the pandemic while arguing that companies should get additional protections should they choose to do the opposite.

As Poor and Working Class in US Face Financial Cliff, Bezos Grew Record-Setting $13 Billion Richer on Monday

Days before the expiration of federal unemployment benefits is expected to bring about a wave of evictions, food insecurity and widespread economic pain for millions of Americans, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—the world's richest person—added $13 billion to his personal wealth on Monday.

The rise in Bezos' assets represents the largest single-day net worth increase for an individual since Bloomberg began its Billionaires Index, a daily ranking of the world's richest people, in 2012. 

"In ONE DAY Jeff Bezos made well over 4,000 times what the average American earns in their ENTIRE LIFETIME," tweeted Maura Quint, executive director of Tax March.

While the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has led to an historic increase in unemployment and a new reliance on food banks and SNAP benefits for millions of Americans, Bezos is among the elite set of American billionaires who have seen their net worth skyrocket since the pandemic began. With many people forgoing shopping trips and buying products online instead—often using Amazon—the wealth of the company's CEO has grown by $74 billion since the beginning of the year and now sits at approximately $189 billion.

Such exponential growth in an individual's wealth "should not be legal," tweeted People for Shahid, a grassroots group working to elect democratic socialist Shahid Buttar to replace House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in November's general election.

In a few days, people are going to lose the $600 a week unemployment insurance lifeline that has kept them and their families afloat.

Yesterday, Jeff Bezos' net worth went up by $13 billion in one day. https://t.co/jSW2O61LPq

— Working Families Party (@WorkingFamilies) July 21, 2020

Despite the success of the expanded unemployment benefit—which was passed as part of the CARES Act in March as 10 million people lost their jobs in the days after the public health crisis was declared a national emergency, forcing the closure of businesses across the country—President Donald Trump said Monday in a private meeting that the benefit should never have been offered.

The pandemic has also ushered in a crisis of housing insecurity, with nearly a third of Americans missing their mortgage or rent payments in June. Twenty percent of renters didn't pay their rent on time in May and 31% weren't able to in April.  

As Common Dreams reported Monday, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) also saw unprecedented growth in demand this spring, and proved successful in providing a safety net for laid off and furloughed workers. Republicans are planning to cut the expansion of aid through the program as well as allowing unemployment benefits to expire. 

While Amazon reported $13.9 billion in income in 2019, Bezos' company managed to pay just $162 million in federal taxes last year—a 1.2% tax rate despite the United States' 21% federal tax rate for corporations. The previous two years, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Amazon paid $0 in federal income tax.

Jeff Bezos stole $13 billion today.

That’s more than the GDP of about 50 countries. In one day. To a single man

Jeff Bezos has added $61.4 billion to his net worth this year.

Amazon also cut $2/hour hero pay for its 400,000 warehouse workers & doesn't give them paid sick time pic.twitter.com/0Us9PBW3s0

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) July 21, 2020

Krystal Ball: Pelosi, Progressive Caucus BLOWING Stimulus Package

Progressives Demand Democrats Reject 'Outright Shameful' GOP Plan to Raid Social Security and Cut Unemployment Benefits

Progressives are pushing Democratic congressional leaders to forcefully oppose the Senate GOP's coronavirus stimulus legislation after new reporting Monday revealed the package is likely to include a payroll tax cut, a reduction in enhanced unemployment payments, conditions on school funding, and little aid to state and local governments.

"After weeks of sitting on their hands and doing nothing while infections and deaths rise and tens of millions of people fear an imminent economic catastrophe, the reported plan Senate Republicans put out today would be laughable if it wasn't so outright shameful and harmful," said Care in Action, Community Change Action, Indivisible, MoveOn, and Greenpeace in a joint statement Monday.

The advocacy groups called on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to "reject this plan outright."

"The plan put forth by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will do nothing but double down on the failed policies that put corporate profits before workers and families, and that helped get us here in the first place," the groups said. "It is not a good faith starting point to negotiations."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) confirmed to reporters Monday that the plan being crafted in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office will include a cut to the payroll tax—a funding mechanism for Social Security and Medicare. "It's one of the issues that we're proposing," said McCarthy.

An anonymous White House official told Roll Call that the Republican proposal under consideration would defer payment of the payroll tax to a later date. Congress would then have the option of waiving the payback requirement with separate legislation.

Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said in a statement Monday that the Trump-GOP push for a payroll tax cut amounts to an effort to "raid" the Social Security system's "dedicated revenue as a pathway to destroying it."

"If the money lost in payroll contributions is replaced with general revenue, Social Security will still be a target," warned Altman. "Currently, Social Security doesn't add a penny to the deficit. Raiding its dedicated revenue is a set up to the claim that it must be cut in the name of reining in the debt! McCarthy's statement today means that every Republican member of Congress supports defunding Social Security—unless they quickly and explicitly denounce their party's plan to raid our earned benefits."

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was among the few Republicans who publicly voiced skepticism Monday about the payroll tax cut, calling the proposal a "public relations problem" for the GOP. ...

Schumer and Pelosi are expected to meet with White House officials Tuesday to formally kick off negotiations over the stimulus legislation. The Trump administration is advocating a relief package that contains "roughly $1 trillion in new programs, though officials are expected to use budget gimmicks to make the initial package slightly larger," the Post reported.

By comparison, the $3 trillion HEROES Act passed by the Democrat-controlled House in May proposed more than $1 trillion just for state and local governments as they face pandemic-induced budget crises.

"The bill is expected to omit new aid that Democrats have sought for cities and states, instead allowing governors and local leaders more flexibility to spend the $150 billion already allocated," the Post noted.

The GOP plan will also likely include another round of $1,200 direct stimulus payments and a cut to the $600-per-week increase in unemployment benefits, which is set to expire at the end of the week. During a private White House meeting on Monday, according to the Post, "Trump criticized the enhanced unemployment benefit, saying it never should have been agreed to in the first place."

"From what we understand from press reports, McConnell's bill will prioritize corporate special interests over workers and Main Street businesses," Schumer said in a floor speech Monday afternoon. "It will fail to adequately address the worsening spread of the virus. There are currently between 20 million and 30 million unemployed Americans, and from all accounts the Republican bill will not do nearly enough for them."

As COVID Spikes in California, Latinx Workers Who "Keep the State Going" See Up to 5x the Deaths

An excellent piece by David Sirota worth a full read:

Republicans are forcing Americans to return to dangerous workplaces

During a 2019 speech about economic rights, Bernie Sanders said: “Freedom is an often-used word, but it’s time we took a hard look at what that word actually means. Ask yourself: what does it actually mean to be free?” That question is particularly pressing today, as the push to reopen the economy is cast as a liberation movement. In their telling, conservative activists say employers must be given the freedom to ignore scientific warnings and resume business as usual.

And yet, lifting stay-at-home orders is actually an assault on a core freedom – the freedom to protect oneself and one’s family from a lethal disease, without being bankrupted. A system that aimed to protect that freedom would provide the same “incessant Fed support” to workers as it is already providing to Wall Street banks. But America has constructed policies that actively try to deprive workers of that freedom and instead force them out into a deadly pandemic, under threat of being economically destroyed.

In locales across the country, millions of Americans are losing employer-based healthcare coverage, and can only get it back if they go back to their jobs as infection rates increase. In various states, officials are ending eviction moratoriums because “people generally should be back at work,” as Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, put it in a declaration saying the quiet part aloud. ...

In practice, when governors reopen their state’s economies in the name of “freedom”, they are closing their state unemployment systems to the workers who are called back to coronavirus-riddled workplaces. And states have been cracking down at the urging of the Trump administration. ...

The presumption is that – all evidence to the contrary – workplaces are inherently safe during the pandemic, and therefore refusing to go back to work inherently constitutes fraud.

All of this amplifies that question Sanders originally posed: “What does it actually mean to be free?” Conservatives have offered an answer – they employ the argot liberty to justify the current regime of coercion. But that is the kind of up-is-down logic that echoes the rhetoric George Orwell satirized in Animal Farm. Sure – going back to work is not slavery. But being forced into an unsafe workplace during a deadly pandemic is also not exactly freedom, either.

Trump Campaign INSISTS Biden Wants To Defund Police, Despite Evidence To Contrary

Krystal and Saagar: McConnell Faces MASSIVE Pressure From Kentucky Voters For Bigger Bailouts

Fossil Fuel Advocates’ New Tactic: Calling Opposition to Arctic Drilling ‘Racist’

When Alaska's all-white Congressional delegation branded opposition to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife National Refuge as a form of discrimination last month, they may have hoped to play into a national dialogue about systemic racism—not necessarily to spark it.

In a letter to the Federal Reserve on June 16, Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowsi and Rep. Don Young, all Alaska Republicans, called on federal regulators to investigate whether the refusal of several banks to fund Arctic oil and gas projects discriminated against Alaska Natives, depriving them of social and economic benefits. The politicians had previously called the banks' refusal a discriminatory tactic "against America's energy sector." But controversy followed quickly. In the weeks following the letter, Native organizers penned op-eds and climate activists posted on social media, blasting the three members of Congress for what they viewed as a hypocritical and misleading narrative.

Oil and gas advocates have for years maintained that opposition to fossil fuel companies equals "green racism," and have portrayed the industry as providing economic aid to marginalized communities by supporting economic development, sponsoring local programs and promising reliable and affordable electricity. Some in Indigenous communities also argue in favor of fossil fuel development, given the opportunities it promises. But in Alaska and elsewhere, Indigenous activists concerned about the the future of their communities and the planet are opposing drilling and spearheading a movement to end investment in fossil fuels.

The situation is complicated. Many Black and Indigenous communities in the United States, including Alaska Natives, lack opportunities for more environmentally sustainable development because of long histories of social, economic and political marginalization. Those histories are central to the current debate, raising the question of whether an embrace of fossil fuels by some members of these communities reflects a free choice, or one made out of necessity, given the circumstances left by centuries of systemic racism.

Rich Americans’ homes generate 25% more greenhouse gasses than those less affluent

The homes of wealthy Americans are major engines of the climate crisis, research has found, with the United States’ most affluent suburbs generating as much as 15 times the greenhouse gas emissions as nearby, poorer districts.

An analysis of 93m homes in the contiguous US found that the most energy intensive dwellings, per square foot, are found in Maine, Vermont and Wisconsin, while the least energy intensive are located in Florida, Arizona and California.

Mainly due to the larger size of homes owned by the wealthy, richer Americans are generating roughly 25% more greenhouse gasses through lighting, heating and cooling their residences than poorer people.

This disparity has significant implications for the climate crisis: about a fifth of US emissions comes from residential power use. Americans are particularly voracious users of energy, with the typical person in the US using more than 30 times the amount of electricity at home than the average person in India.

“Although houses are becoming more energy efficient, US household energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions are not shrinking, and this lack of progress undermines the substantial emissions reductions needed to mitigate climate change,” said Benjamin Goldstein, a University of Michigan researcher who led the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

House Democratic Leadership Teams Up With Republicans To Keep US Troops in Afghanistan

America’s Problem With Policing Doesn’t Stop at the U.S. Border

DHS’s Portland Stunt Could Undermine the Agency For Years, Former Officials Warn

I Don’t Always Believe CIA Narratives. But When I Do, I Believe Them About China.

The Pentagon Confronts the Pandemic

After Pleading for Home Release During Coronavirus Pandemic, NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner Tests Positive

'White Collar Crime Pays': Decade After Dodd-Frank, Executives Still Lining Their Pockets

Dodd-Frank Is 10 Years Old Today and the Fed Is Back to Bailing Out Wall Street

Amid Tense Primary Fight, Powerful Democrat Rep. Richie Neal Condemned for Supporting Predatory Medical Billing Policy

Is Trump Finally Getting It?

Twitter announces broad crackdown on QAnon accounts and content

Brazil’s Coronavirus Catastrophe Is Spreading Into the Country’s Vulnerable Interior

The loneliest road trip: travels through an empty America – in pictures

Ryan Grim: HISTORIC Corruption Scandal Hits Top Ohio Republican, Could Expose Others Across Country

A Little Night Music

Clifford Gibson - Blues Without A Dime

Clifford Gibson - It's Best To Know Who You're Talking To

Clifford Gibson - Don't Put That Thing On Me

Clifford Gibson- Jive Me Blues

Clifford Gibson - Bad Luck Dice

Roosevelt Sykes/Clifford Gibson - Tired of Being Mistreated

Clifford Gibson - Old Time Rider

Clifford Gibson - Ice And Snow Blues

Clifford Gibson - Society Blues

Jimmie Rodgers w/ Clifford Gibson - Let Me Be Your Side Track