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This evening's music features Chicago blues piano player Henry Gray. Enjoy!

"I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

-- John H. Brown

News and Opinion

US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book says

The US is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe”, a member of a key CIA advisory panel has said. The analysis by Barbara F Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego who sits on the Political Instability Task Force, is contained in a book due out next year and first reported by the Washington Post.

At the same time, three retired generals wrote in the Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military”. Such concerns are growing around jagged political divisions deepened by former president Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election.

Trump’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was caused by electoral fraud stoked the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, over which Trump was impeached and acquitted a second time, leaving him free to run for office. The “big lie” is also fueling moves among Republicans to restrict voting by groups that lean Democratic and to make it easier to overturn elections.

Such moves remain without counter from Democrats stymied by the filibuster, the Senate rule that demands supermajorities for most legislation. In addition, though Republican presidential nominees have won the popular vote only once since 1988, the GOP has by playing political hardball stocked the supreme court with conservatives, who outnumber liberals 6-3. All such factors and more, including a pandemic which has stoked resistance to government, have contributed to Walter’s analysis. ...

Walter, the Post said, concludes that the US has passed through stages of “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” and may now be in “open conflict”, beginning with the Capitol riot. Citing analytics used by the Center for Systemic Peace, Walter also says the US has become an “anocracy” – “somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state”.

How Dems Justify Hating Half the Country

Gun purchases accelerated in the US from 2020 to 2021, study reveals

Gun purchases accelerated in the US during 2020-2021 compared to 2019, with more than 5 million adults becoming first-time gun owners between January 2020 and April 2021 compared to 2.4 million adults in 2019, a study on new gun ownership reveals.

The survey, conducted by Professor Matt Miller at Northeastern University and published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine, shows that between January 2019 and April this year, around 7.5m people, or 2.9% of all US adults who had not previously owned guns, purchased them.

Most, or about 5.4 million people, brought the weapons into homes that had not previously had them.

“The proportion of gun sales to new gun owners compared to existing gun owners is around the same at 20%,” Miller told the Guardian. “What changed is the volume of gun purchases.” According to the study, the total number of gun purchases rose from 13.8m to 16.6m between 2019 and 2020. Of those, approximately half of all new gun owners were female and nearly half were people of color.

According to the study, 55% of new gun owners were white, 20.9% were Black and 20% Hispanic. But that distribution, says the author, was in place before the onset of the pandemic. “New gun owners are more likely to be Black and they’re more likely to be female,” Miller says.

Krystal Ball: Voters BURY Neoliberalism in the Place Where it Was Born

Gabriel Boric vows to ‘fight privileges of the few’ as Chile’s premier

Gabriel Boric has vowed to unite Chile, fight “the privileges of the few” and tackle poverty and inequality after winning a decisive victory over his far-right opponent to become the South American country’s youngest premier. ...

The triumph of Boric, who belongs to a generation deeply opposed to the extreme economic model bequeathed to Chile by the Pinochet dictatorship, comes two years after a rise in metro fares triggered huge protests and demands for drastic changes to the political and economic system.

“Men and women of Chile, I accept this mandate humbly and with a tremendous sense of responsibility because we are standing on the shoulders of giants,” he said in front of a vast crowd packed into a Santiago boulevard.

“I know that the future of our country will be at stake next year. That is why I want to promise you that I will be a president who will take care of democracy and not jeopardise it, a president who listens more than he speaks, who seeks unity, who looks after people’s daily needs, and who fights hard against the privileges of the few and who works every day for Chilean families.”

Boric said his generation wanted to have their rights respected and not be treated “like consumer goods or a business”, adding the country would no longer allow Chile’s poor to “keep paying the price” of inequality.

Gabriel Boric Win in Chile Is “Huge Victory” for Social Movements That Fought Off Far-Right Threat

Worth a click and a full read. Haaretz article here.

Classified documents reveal Israeli government cover-up of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948

Recently released documents, including minutes of Israel’s provisional government meetings in 1948, throw fresh light on the Nakba (“Catastrophe”) of 1948-49, when around two-thirds of Palestinians living in what is now Israel were driven from their homes. An investigation by Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, published in Ha’aretz, produces incontrovertible evidence that the conquest of Palestinian villages and the expulsion of their inhabitants during the Arab-Israeli war were achieved by criminal actions amounting to ethnic cleansing. Israel’s leaders knew this, with Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion opposing demands for a full investigation with the power to subpoena witnesses and the crimes swept under the carpet.

The Akevot report reveals that testimonies about several massacres of Palestinians and war crimes committed by Israeli military forces during the 1948-49 war were presented to the cabinet in 1948. The report refutes the government’s lying claims that the Palestinians fled of their own accord, or due to the incitement of their leaders. Its public relations machine worked long and hard to portray Israel as a country built on empty, neglected or uninhabited land. Censorship was used to ensure that any evidence challenging such a view was suppressed and any criticism denounced as anti-Semitism. That censorship continues more than seven decades later.

This was bound up with suppressing the fact that the establishment of the state of Israel as a Jewish State, in a country where Jews constituted just one-third of the population, necessitated the forcible dispossession of the Palestinian inhabitants and can only be maintained through constant repression. ...

As part of the government’s cover-up of its crimes against the Palestinians, it has systematically hidden evidence of its expulsion of villagers. As Israeli journalist Hagar Shezaf explained in Ha’aretz, teams from the Defense Ministry’s Malmab, its secretive security department, whose activities and budget are classified, have scoured Israel’s archives and removed historic documents relating not only to Israel’s nuclear project and relations with foreign governments but also evidence of the Nakba. ... A former head of Malmab, Yehiel Horev, admitted he had launched the project to conceal the 1948 atrocities to prevent unrest among the country’s Arab population. Asked why documents that had already been published about the origin of the refugee problem were being removed or were in open and accessible archives but could not be published, he explained that this was to undermine the credibility of studies about the history of the refugee problem since any allegations could not be substantiated by referring to the source document. ...

Under Netanyahu, the Defence Ministry repeatedly extended the confidentiality period for the oldest documents in the Shin Bet and Mossad archives, Israel’s domestic and external spying agencies respectively. In February 2019, it was extended again to 90 years. The IDF’s archive, which is according to Akhivot the largest in Israel, “is sealed almost hermetically. About 1 percent of the material is open.” That these crimes and their cover-up by successive generations of Israeli politicians are being exposed points to the opposition developing against Israel’s growing embrace of apartheid and support for some of world’s most authoritarian and fascistic regimes.

US Fed chief worried about “wages push” in coming year

The small uptick in wages of US workers, driven by the competition between businesses to find new employees, has set off shockwaves throughout corporate America. In recent days, top economic policy makers, Wall Street analysts and the media have warned that the biggest danger to the capitalist economy is not the Omicron variant, but a potential “wages push” by workers next year, which could upend the entire financial system.

At a press conference last week, Jerome Powell, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, said nothing about the horrific loss of life during the pandemic, noting only that the Delta variant “had an effect of slowing down hiring” and “hurt the process of the global supply chains getting worked out.” Dismissing the dangers of the more infectious Omicron variant, he added, “I do think wave upon wave, people are learning to live with this.”

Powell’s remarks followed the meeting of the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee, which voted to carry out three quarter-point interest rate hikes in 2022 and begin tapering its asset purchases to address inflationary pressures in the US economy. The announcement was a reversal from their position nine months ago, when Fed officials indicated that there would be no rate increases until 2024.

Powell made clear that the Fed’s concern over inflation was not the impact that the 6.8 percent consumer price hike—the highest in four decades—is having on workers’ living standards. Instead, he said, wages had “risen briskly” in recent months, and it has become clear to the central bankers that increasing wages are “both larger in [their] effect on inflation and more persistent.”

Powell said the decisive factor behind the decision to raise interest rates was the October 29 Employment Cost Index (ECI) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which, he said, showed a “very high” 5.7 percent rise in hourly labor costs over the last three months.

Displaying 'Inhuman Disdain' for Working Families, Manchin Said Child Tax Credit Would Be Used for Drugs

As 36 million families across the U.S. appeared unlikely to receive any further child tax credit payments after the New Year following Sen. Joe Manchin's refusal to support the Build Back Better Act, progressives on Monday were outraged over reports that the threat to the payments stems from the right-wing senator's belief that parents might use the money for drugs or other uses he deems unnecessary.

According to HuffPost, before Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced Sunday that he "cannot get there" to support the $1.75 trillion investment in social spending and climate policy, the senator privately told colleagues that "he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit (CTC) payments on drugs instead of providing for their children."

The reported comments revealed "an inhuman disdain for regular people," tweeted progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler. ...

Manchin's reported comments brought to mind "the myth of the welfare queen," tweeted HuffPost opinion columnist Nathalie Baptiste.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Peter Schweyer, a Democrat, said comments like Manchin's "disgust me."

"Sen. Joe Manchin—who is a multimillionaire—doesn't think his poor constituents can be trusted with a little help," tweeted Schweyer on Monday. "That this tax credit won't be used for diapers or baby formula, won't be used for doctors visits or rent—but for drugs."

According to the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, among Manchin's constituents in West Virginia who received the CTC, more than half used the payments to buy groceries. Thirty-nine percent said some of the payments went to buying clothing, 38% said they used them to pay essential bills, and more than a quarter reported using the CTC to help with rent or mortgage payments.

The Social Policy Institute, which surveyed people in every state last summer regarding their use of the CTC, found similar results in other states, with about half of recipients nationwide reporting that they mainly used the payments to buy food.

Manchin's opposition to the Build Back Better Act is poised to leave about 70% of his own constituents without the monthly payments.

Schumer vows vote on Build Back Better despite ‘no’ from Manchin

Democrats will keep working on Joe Biden’s Build Back Better spending plan “until we get something done”, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer told colleagues on Monday – a day after a stunning move by Joe Manchin of West Virginia drew accusations of betrayal from the White House and seemed to leave the president’s agenda dead in the water.

In a letter to colleagues, Schumer wrote: “We are going to vote on a revised version of the House-passed Build Back Better Act – and we will keep voting on it until we get something done.”

He also put senators on notice that they will “consider voting rights legislation as early as the first week back” next month, a timeline for another part of Biden’s agenda and an olive branch to disillusioned progressives.

INSIDE BIPARTISAN Push To INVESTIGATE Amazon's Abuse

Record-High 81 Jurisdictions Set to Raise Minimum Wages in 2022

Efforts to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour may have stalled, but a report out Monday shows that a record number of states, cities, and counties are set to boost their minimum wages in 2022—an indication that grassroots organizing for a higher pay floor is continuing to bring results across the United States.

In total, according to the new analysis by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), 81 U.S. jurisdictions will hike their minimum wages in 2022, raising base-level pay for millions of workers.

NELP noted in its report that in the new year, the minimum wage will reach or exceed $15 per hour in 17 cities and counties, including Washington, D.C. and localities in California, Illinois, Maryland, and Minnesota.

Rebecca Dixon, NELP's executive director, argued in a statement that the growth of the nationwide Fight for $15 movement—which began with mass walkouts in 2012—has been "accelerated by the pandemic's exposure of stark inequities and hazardous work conditions," leading to a striking upsurge in labor actions and union drives across the country.

"Underpaid workers, especially Black and brown workers, have been mobilizing to demand higher wages, safer workplace conditions, and dignified jobs—and they're succeeding," said Dixon. "Faced with a tight labor market, employers will have to act quickly in order to retain discontented workers."

NELP estimates that if current laws remain in effect, around 40% of the U.S. workforce will be covered by $15 minimum wage measures by 2026.

Yannet Lathrop, a researcher at NELP and the author of the new report, told USA Today that while the federal minimum wage remains stagnant at $7.25 an hour, $15 is "becoming the default minimum" in parts of the country thanks to persistent grassroots campaigning led by fast food workers and other low-wage employees.

"This is the result of that organizing," Lathrop said.

In February, House Democrats passed a coronavirus relief package that would have raised the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2025, but Senate Democrats ultimately stripped the pay raise from the bill in deference to the unelected Senate parliamentarian, who argued the provision violated the upper chamber's arcane budget reconciliation rules.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) later attempted to reattach the provision despite the parliamentarian's advisory opinion, but eight members of the Senate Democratic caucus joined Republicans in voting the Vermont senator's amendment down.

Since the failure earlier this year, congressional Democrats have not launched another attempt to pass the $15 federal minimum wage measure.

While stressing that workers nationwide have "made tremendous gains" since the Fight for $15 movement kicked off nearly a decade ago, Lathrop observed in the new report that millions of workers live in states and localities that have not taken action to raise their minimum wages, making "ongoing efforts to raise the federal wage floor... critical."

Lathrop also pointed to "possible ballot initiatives in Nebraska, Idaho, and California, which will give voters a chance to approve $15 to $18 minimum wages during the 2022 midterm elections."

"Twenty states have refused to raise their wage floors above the federal rate for over a decade," Lathrop wrote. "Roughly half of those states are located in the U.S. South, where a majority of Black workers live, and where, not surprisingly, they experience higher levels of poverty and downward economic mobility."

How Dark Money Bought A Supreme Court Seat

A conservative dark money group led by former President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser Leonard Leo bankrolled Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court confirmation campaign with nearly $22 million in anonymous cash, while another nonprofit that Leo helps steer saw a fundraising bonanza and showered cash on other organizations boosting Barrett, according to tax returns obtained by The Daily Poster. The new tax returns shed light on how Barrett’s successful last-minute confirmation campaign was aided by a flood of dark money. They also reveal the rapid growth of Leo’s already highly successful dark money network and its tentacles in the broader conservative movement.

Corporate interests with access to nearly unlimited money have a huge stake in tilting the court to the right. In recent years, the court has played a pivotal role not only in swaying social policy, but also in shifting economic policy and corporate regulations. In Barrett’s first year, she has already sided with corporate interests on a landmark climate case involving an oil giant that employed her father for decades, and she refused to recuse herself in a donor transparency case involving a foundation tied to a dark money group that backed her confirmation.

Leo is a longtime executive at the Federalist Society, a group for conservative lawyers. He formed the Rule of Law Trust (RLT) in 2018, and the group quickly raised nearly $80 million. RLT started spending that money in 2020, donating $21.5 million to the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN), another group steered by Leo that played a key role in Republicans flipping the Supreme Court and building a conservative supermajority. JCN spent millions pressing Republican senators to block Obama’s 2016 Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, and subsequently spent millions boosting each of Trump’s high court nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Barrett — all while Leo was advising Trump’s judicial strategy.

Jury begins deliberations in Kim Potter’s trial over killing of Daunte Wright

The jury in the manslaughter trial of Kim Potter, the suburban Minneapolis police officer who says she meant to use her Taser instead of her gun when she shot and killed the Black motorist, Daunte Wright, began deliberating on Monday afternoon.

A prosecutor had told jurors earlier in the day that Potter knew what she did was wrong, she made a “blunder of epic proportions” and that she did not have “a license to kill”.

Prosecutor Erin Eldridge said in closing arguments in Potter’s manslaughter trial that the former Brooklyn Center police officer was a “highly trained” and “highly experienced” 26-year veteran who acted recklessly.

“She drew a deadly weapon,” Eldridge told the court. “She aimed it. She pointed it at Daunte Wright’s chest, and she fired.”

Although there is a risk every time an officer makes traffic stop, that didn’t justify Potter using her gun on Wright after he pulled away from her and other officers on 11 April as they were trying to arrest him on an outstanding weapons possession warrant, Eldridge said. ...

State sentencing guidelines call for just over seven years in prison upon conviction of first-degree manslaughter and four years for second-degree. Prosecutors have said they plan to push for longer sentences.

Progressives THREATEN Biden Primary After BBB FAILURE

Critics Warn Biden Car Emission Rules Not Enough

Finalized rules targeting emissions from cars and light trucks announced by the Biden administration Monday drew tepid welcome mixed with rebuke from climate groups who said the new standards, while an improvement, fail to meet the urgency of the planetary crisis.

"These rules are little more than a speed bump on the road to climate catastrophe when the president needed to make a U-turn," said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement.

"Storms, wildfires, and heatwaves have grown far worse over the past decade, so auto pollution rules must be far stronger," he said. "These aren't."

The standards announced by the Environmental Protection Agency will apply to new cars through model year 2026, with cars rolled out in the final year of the period requiring an average of 55 miles per gallon. The labels that reflect real-life conditions need to be at least 40 mpg—a jump from the 32 mpg rule required by the Trump administration.

The EPA said the rules represented "the most ambitious vehicle emissions standards for greenhouse gases ever established for the light-duty vehicle sector in the United States" that would, by 2050, "result in avoiding more than 3 billion tons of GHG emissions," equivalent to over half the nation's carbon emissions in 2019.

"We followed the science, we listened to stakeholders, and we are setting robust and rigorous standards that will aggressively reduce the pollution that is harming people and our planet—and save families money at the same time,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.

The agency touted climate, public health, and cost-savings benefits for consumers as a result of the change and projected U.S. drivers would save $210 billion and $420 billion through 2050 on fuel costs.

The plan will also "provide adequate lead time for manufacturers to comply at reasonable costs" and with "modest increases" to their electric vehicle fleet, the EPA said.

The Center for Biological Diversity, however, said that the new rules have problematic loopholes that allow for continued production of "gas-guzzlers." Becker said that "the next rules must force automakers to actually deliver electric vehicles, rather than just churning out promises to make them."

As a buffer against another anti-environmental administration like Trump's, Becker further urged Biden to roll out another set of auto rules "as aggressive as possible as early as possible."

“Shut Down Those Tanks”: Anger Grows in Hawaii After U.S. Navy Fuel Site Contaminates Water

Worth a full read:

Pipeline Giant Seeks Jackpot Before Climate Cataclysm

As Republican state officials insist that Canadian oil pipelines are necessary to lower energy costs for American consumers, the fossil fuel giant operating those pipelines is suddenly citing the climate crisis its products are creating as a rationale for raising those prices higher, according to new documents reviewed by The Daily Poster.

Last month, Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine — who has raked in nearly $400,000 from fossil fuel industry donors — demanded the Biden administration keep open Enbridge’s controversial Line 5 pipeline, which runs under the Great Lakes, as a way to reduce energy prices. But Enbridge just dropped a bombshell undercutting that argument: The firm told government regulators that climate change means its tar sands pipeline network only has 19 years left of economic life. That assertion could allow the company to jack up the tolls that its customers pay to transport oil through its pipelines, because pipeline operators are authorized to recoup their operational costs through rate increases — and a shorter timetable means higher levies.

The episode is a spectacle of what’s been called disaster capitalism: In this case, a fossil fuel behemoth is citing the ecological crisis it is intensifying as a justification to extract more profits from consumers already being crushed by higher prices.

“There is something ironic about pipeline companies like Enbridge conceding that they can see the writing on the wall, they’re not going to be competitive or needed less than 20 years from today, and as a result they have to raise prices today to account for that,” said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School. “There’s something incongruous about that.”

More Than 130 Groups Call on CFTC to Shut Down 'Dystopian' Water Futures Market

Warning Wall Street against commodifying what has been treated since ancient history as "a common right for everyone," more than 130 civil society groups on Monday demanded that federal regulators shut down the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's water futures market.

Food & Water Watch organized the petition, which was sent to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a year after the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) opened the world's first market for water futures contracts, based on water rights in drought-plagued California.

"Water index futures trades are contrary to the public interest as they involve the trade of an essential resource," wrote the groups, which also included Public Citizen, For Love of Water (FLOW), the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).

The organizations argued that the CME's water futures market—which the exchange self-certified before its launch, assuring the CFTC that it met the requirements of the commission's regulations—undermines California state law and violates the CFTC's own trading restrictions.

"Water is necessary and essential for life and is simply not a commodity," said Zach Corrigan, senior attorney for Food & Water Watch. "The commission should reject this shoe-horn attempt to drive investor profit under a federal law never meant to apply to a common public resource managed by the state for the public welfare."

In the water futures market, called the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index Futures, market participants are able to bet on the scarcity of water in California, where 37.3 million people are currently affected by drought conditions and where 2021 was the driest year in more than a century.

Since the market opened in December 2020, participants have been able to bet on the state's $1.1 billion spot water market, claiming quarterly contracts and placing bets on the price of 10 acre-feet of water.

As the United Nations Office of the Hugh Commissioner on Human Rights explained when the market was launched:

The new water futures contract allows buyers and sellers to barter a fixed price for the delivery of fixed quantity of water at a future date... As well as farmers, factories, and utility companies looking to lock-in prices, such a futures market could also lure speculators such as hedge funds and banks to bet on prices, repeating the speculative bubble of the food market in 2008.

The water futures market was permitted to launch thanks to the "radically deregulatory Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000," said Dr. Steve Suppan, senior policy analyst at IATP, which "allows exchanges to self-certify that new futures contracts comply with CFTC rules and core regulatory principles."

Since the CME's water futures market is "a new asset class," Suppan said, the CFTC "must not allow self-certification."

According to the petition, "self-certification has meant that neither the commission nor its staff have in fact evaluated whether the futures contracts are susceptible to market manipulation."

The CFTC strictly prohibits the trade of futures that are "readily susceptible to manipulation of the price of such contract," noted the signatories.

The groups also objected to the fact that futures contracts can be "freely traded on CME's market, thus allowing investors to profit"—a violation of California's "beneficial use" legal doctrine.

Under state law, water entitlements cannot "be used solely for speculation, such as 'to store water for monopoly.'"

"Insofar as the trading in futures may lead to excess speculation and thus hoarding of the various entitlements that are [or] can be exchanged under state law, as demonstrated below, the futures market will aid and abet violations of state law—an outcome the commission should not permit," the groups wrote in the petition.

Liz Kirkwood, executive director of FLOW, said the CME's commodification of water violates a "fundamental human right held in trust by the states for the public," adding that water is "not something to be speculated on by profiteers."

"Free market advocates claim that markets create efficiency, but the outcome is usually dystopian and horrifying," said John Aspray, an organizer with Food & Water Watch.

"In this time of global-warming-induced drought in California, the last thing we need is to gamble on our precious water resources," said Conner Everts, executive director of the Southern California Watershed Alliance, which also signed the letter.

Revealed: the Florida power company pushing legislation to slow rooftop solar

The biggest power company in the US is pushing policy changes that would hamstring rooftop solar power in Florida, delivering legislation for a state lawmaker to introduce, according to records obtained by the Miami Herald and Floodlight.

Florida Power & Light (FPL), whose work with dark money political committees helped secure Republican control of the state Senate, is lobbying to hollow out net metering, a policy that lets Florida homeowners and businesses offset the costs of installing solar panels by selling power back to the company.

Internal emails obtained from the Florida Senate show that an FPL lobbyist, John Holley, sent the text of the bill to state senator Jennifer Bradley’s staff on 18 October. FPL’s parent company contributed $10,000 to Bradely’s political committee on 20 October. A month later, Bradley filed a bill that was almost identical to the one FPL gave her. Another lawmaker introduced the same measure in the House.

Bradley said the donation was unrelated to the bill. ...

An FPL spokesman, Chris McGrath, said the company does not oppose net metering but that the law should be revised so rooftop solar users are not subsidized by other customers who continue to buy electricity and pay to maintain the power grid. FPL argues that rooftop solar could cost Florida utilities about $700m between 2019 and 2025, according to documents submitted to state regulators.

Also of Interest

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

The Pentagon’s 20-Year Killing Spree Has Always Treated Civilians as Expendable

Russia’s Non-Aggression Pact Is an Offer for Germany To Realize the US Won’t Negotiate Because the Blin-Needle Gang Will Fight to the Last German, Then Run Away

The Civilian Casualty Files

The Right is Building Armies of Confrontation

Far-right Pinochet supporter loses Chile's election. Will the neoliberal system change?

Israeli Troops and Settlers Zero in on a New Target for Attacks: Palestinian Schools

Freeing Julian Assange: What It Will Take To End This Political Case

Carbon Pipelines in the Hawkeye State

Tornadoes and storms that hit US were a derecho, says National Weather Service

Pub landlord, caretaker and monarch sought for isolated Piel Island

Alabama Miners SLAM Corporate Media Blackout Of Struggle

Russia's Putin warns West of counter measures over Ukraine threats

West OUTRAGED as Putin warns NATO of possible military response

Sarah Silverman Called Racist for Criticizing Joy-Ann Reid

A Little Night Music

Henry Gray - Lucky , Lucky Man

Henry Gray - The Little Red Rooster

Henry Gray - Watch Yourself

Henry Gray - How Could You Do It

Henry Gray - Finger snappin' boogie

Henry Gray - Katrina Katrina

Henry Gray - Mojo Boogie

Henry Gray & The Cats - Sweet home Chicago

Henry Gray, Terrance Simien & Li'l Buck Sinegal - Full Set - Crescent City Blues & BBQ Fest (2018)