#American Farm Bureau Federation

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #26

July 5-12 2024

The IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats. The program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owned more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. Thanks to money in Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power again.

The Biden administration announced a $244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program. This marks the largest investment in the program's history with grants going out to 52 programs in 32 states. The President is focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people and more people are taking part in the apprenticeship program than ever before. Republican pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers.

The Department of Transportation announced the largest single project in the department's history, $11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel. Part of the $66 billion the Biden Administration has invested in our rail system the tunnel, the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson. Once finished it's believed it'll impact 20% of the American economy by improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast.

The Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to save auto worker's jobs and convert factories to electronic vehicles. The Biden administration will used the money to save or reopen factories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia and retool them to make electric cars. The project will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement with The Appraisal Foundation over racial discrimination. TAF is the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last year found that TAF was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black, making it the least racially diverse of the 800 occupations surveyed. Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD TAF will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

The Department of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots. The DoJ shut down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts that were linked to a Russian Bot farm. The bots used AI technology to not only generate tweets but also AI image faces for profile pictures. The effort seemed focused on boosting support for Russia's war against Ukraine and spread negative stories/impressions about Ukraine.

The Department of Transportation announces $1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses. 80% of the funding will go toward zero or low-emission technology, a part of the President's goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is part of the $5 billion the DOT has spent over the last 3 years replacing aging buses with new cleaner technology.

President Biden with Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a new agreement on the arctic. The new trilateral agreement between the 3 NATO partners, known as the ICE Pact, will boost production of ice breaking ships, the 3 plan to build as many as 90 between them in the coming years. The alliance hopes to be a counter weight to China's current dominance in the ice breaker market and help western allies respond to Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.1 billion for greater rail safety. The program seeks to, where ever possible, eliminate rail crossings, thus removing the dangers and inconvenience to communities divided by rail lines. It will also help update and improve safety measures at rail crossings.

The Department of the Interior announced $120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters. This funding is part of half a billion dollars the Biden administration has spent to help tribes build climate resilience, which itself is part of a $50 billion dollar effort to build climate resilience across the nation. This funding will help support drought measures, wildland fire mitigation, community-driven relocation, managed retreat, protect-in-place efforts, and ocean and coastal management.

The USDA announced $100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer. Known as "SUN Bucks" or "Summer EBT" the new Biden program grants the families of kids who qualify for free meals at school $120 dollars pre-child for groceries. This comes on top of the traditional SUN Meals program which offers school meals to qualifying children over the summer, as well as the new under President Biden SUN Meals To-Go program which is now offering delivery of meals to low-income children in rural areas. This grant is meant to help local governments build up the Infrastructure to support and distribute SUN Bucks. If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

USAID announced its giving $100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation. President Biden at his press conference last night said that Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a ceasefire deal that will end the war and release the hostages. US negotiators are working to close the final gaps between the two sides and end the war.

The Senate confirmed Nancy Maldonado to serve as a Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Maldonado is the 202nd federal Judge appointed by President Biden to be confirmed. She will the first Latino judge to ever serve on the 7th Circuit which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact. Allies from Japan to Iceland confirmed their support for Ukraine and deepening their commitments to building Ukraine's forces and keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders such as British Prime Minster Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit

[directactionforhope]

"Starting this month [June 2024], thousands of young people will begin doing climate-related work around the West as part of a new service-based federal jobs program, the American Climate Corps, or ACC. The jobs they do will vary, from wildland firefighters and “lawn busters” to urban farm fellows and traditional ecological knowledge stewards. Some will work on food security or energy conservation in cities, while others will tackle invasive species and stream restoration on public land. 

The Climate Corps was modeled on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, with the goal of eventually creating tens of thousands of jobs while simultaneously addressing the impacts of climate change. 

Applications were released on Earth Day, and Maggie Thomas, President Joe Biden’s special assistant on climate, told High Country News that the program’s website has already had hundreds of thousands of views. Since its launch, nearly 250 jobs across the West have been posted, accounting for more than half of all the listed ACC positions. 

“Obviously, the West is facing tremendous impacts of climate change,” Thomas said. “It’s changing faster than many other parts of the country. If you look at wildfire, if you look at extreme heat, there are so many impacts. I think that there’s a huge role for the American Climate Corps to be tackling those crises.”  

Most of the current positions are staffed through state or nonprofit entities, such as the Montana Conservation Corps or Great Basin Institute, many of which work in partnership with federal agencies that manage public lands across the West. In New Mexico, for example, members of Conservation Legacy’s Ecological Monitoring Crew will help the Bureau of Land Management collect soil and vegetation data. In Oregon, young people will join the U.S. Department of Agriculture, working in firefighting, fuel reduction and timber management in national forests. 

New jobs are being added regularly. Deadlines for summer positions have largely passed, but new postings for hundreds more positions are due later this year or on a rolling basis, such as the Working Lands Program, which is focused on “climate-smart agriculture.”  ...

On the ACC website, applicants can sort jobs by state, work environment and focus area, such as “Indigenous knowledge reclamation” or “food waste reduction.” Job descriptions include an hourly pay equivalent — some corps jobs pay weekly or term-based stipends instead of an hourly wage — and benefits. The site is fairly user-friendly, in part owing to suggestions made by the young people who participated in the ACC listening sessions earlier this year...

The sessions helped determine other priorities as well, Thomas said, including creating good-paying jobs that could lead to long-term careers, as well as alignment with the president’s Justice40 initiative, which mandates that at least 40% of federal climate funds must go to marginalized communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change and pollution. 

High Country News found that 30% of jobs listed across the West have explicit justice and equity language, from affordable housing in low-income communities to Indigenous knowledge and cultural reclamation for Native youth...

While the administration aims for all positions to pay at least $15 an hour, the lowest-paid position in the West is currently listed at $11 an hour. Benefits also vary widely, though most include an education benefit, and, in some cases, health care, child care and housing. 

All corps members will have access to pre-apprenticeship curriculum through the North America’s Building Trades Union. Matthew Mayers, director of the Green Workers Alliance, called this an important step for young people who want to pursue union jobs in renewable energy. Some members will also be eligible for the federal pathways program, which was recently expanded to increase opportunities for permanent positions in the federal government...

 “To think that there will be young people in every community across the country working on climate solutions and really being equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the workforce of the future,” Thomas said, “to me, that is going to be an incredible thing to see.”"

-via High Country News, June 6, 2024

--

Note: You can browse Climate Corps job postings here, on the Climate Corps website. There are currently 314 jobs posted at time of writing!

Also, it says the goal is to pay at least $15 an hour for all jobs (not 100% meeting that goal rn), but lots of postings pay higher than that, including some over $20/hour!!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

John Deere's repair fake-out

Last week, a seeming miracle came to pass: John Deere, the Big Ag monopolist that — along with Apple — has led the Axis of Evil that killed, delayed and sabotaged dozens of Right to Repair laws, sued for peace, announcing a Memorandum of Understanding with the American Farm Bureau Federation to make it easier for farmers to fix their own tractors:

https://www.fb.org/files/AFBF_John_Deere_MOU.pdf

This is a move that’s both badly needed and long overdue. Deere abuses copyright law to force farmers to pay for official repairs — even when the farmer does the repair. That’s possible thanks to a practice called VIN locking, in which engine parts come with DRM that prevents the tractor from recognizing them until they pay hundreds of dollars for a John Deere technician to come to their farm and type an unlock code into the tractor’s console:

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

Like all DRM, VIN locks are covered by Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a 1998 law that criminalizes distributing tools to bypass “access controls,” even if you do so for a lawful purpose (say, to fix your own tractor using a part you paid for). Violations of DMCA 1201 carry a penalty of 5 years in prison and a $500k fine — for a first offense.

This means that Deere owners are locked into using Deere for repairs, which also means that if Deere decides something isn’t broken, a farmer can’t get it fixed. This is very bad news indeed, because John Deere tractors are just computers in a fancy, mobile case, and John Deere is incredibly bad at digital security:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

That’s scary stuff, because John Deere is a monopolist, and a successful attack on the always-connected, networked tractors and other equipment it supplies to the world’s farmers could endanger the global food supply.

Deere doesn’t want to make insecure tractors, but it also doesn’t want to be embarrassed by security researchers who point out that its security is defective. Because security researchers have to bypass Deere tractors’ locks to probe their security, Deere can leverage DMCA1201 into a veto over who gets to warn the public about the mistakes it made.

It’s not just security researchers that Deere gets to gag: the company uses its repair monopoly to threaten farmers who complain about its business practices, holding their million-dollar farm equipment hostage to their silence:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

This all adds up to what Jay Freeman calls “felony contempt of business model,” an abuse of copyright law that allows a monopolistic corporation to reach beyond its own walls and impose its will on it customers, critics and competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

If Deere was finally suing for peace in the Repair Wars, well, that was wonderful news indeed — as I said, a seeming miracle.

But — like all miracles — it was too good to be true.

The MOU that Deere and the Farm Bureau signed is full of poison pills, gotchas, fine-print and mendacity, as Lauren Goode documents in her Wired article, “Right-to-Repair Advocates Question John Deere’s New Promises”:

https://www.wired.com/story/right-to-repair-advocates-question-john-deeres-new-promises/

For starters, the MOU makes the Farm Bureau promise to end its advocacy for state Right to Repair bills, which would create a repair system governed by democratically accountable laws, not corporate fiat. Clearly, Deere has seen the writing on the wall, after the passage in 2002 of Right to Repair laws in New York and Colorado:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/when-drm-comes-your-wheelchair

These two bills broke the corporate anti-repair coalition’s winning streak, which saw dozens of state R2R bills defeated:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

Deere’s deal-with-the-devil is a cynical ploy to brake R2R’s momentum and ensure that any repairs are carried out on Deere’s terms. Now, about those terms…

Deere’s deal offers independent repair shops access to diagnostic tools and parts “on fair and reasonable terms,” a murky phrase that can mean whatever Deere decides it means. Crucially, the deal is silent on whether Deere will supply the tools needed to activate VIN locks, meaning that farmers will still be at Deere’s mercy when they effect their own repairs.

What’s more, the deal itself isn’t legally binding, and Deere can cancel it at any time. Once you dig past the headline, the Deere’s Damascene conversion to repair advocacy starts to look awfully superficial — and deceptive.

One person who wasn’t fooled is sick.codes, the hacker who has done the most important work on reverse-engineering Deere’s computer systems, culminating in last summer’s live, on-stage hack of a John Deere tractor at Defcon:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/15/deere-in-headlights/#doh-a-deere

Shortly after the announcement, Sick.codes tweeted how the fine-print in the MOU would have prevented him from doing the work he’s already done (including “a direct stab at me lol”):

https://twitter.com/sickcodes/status/1612484935495057409

As with other instances of monopolistic, corporate copyfraud — like, say, the deceptive Open Gaming License — the John Deere capitulation is really a bid to take away your rights, dressed up as a gift of more rights:

https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/706163316598407168/good-riddance-to-the-open-gaming-license

[Image ID: Hieronymus Bosch's painting, 'The Conjurer.' The Conjuror's shell-game table holds a small John Deere tractor that the audience of yokels gawps at. One yokel is wearing a John Deere hat. The conjurer is holding a wrench.]

[bfpnola]

introductory excerpts on COINTELPRO

it came to my awareness that some folks don't know what COINTELPRO is still, so imma drop some excerpts from the wikipedia page. ofc there are a billion other resources you can check out, especially firsthand accounts, but this is always a good place to start! link attached below:

[Note that the embedded link above's photo has the following caption: "COINTELPRO memo proposing a plan to expose the pregnancy of actress Jean Seberg, a financial supporter of the Black Panther Party, hoping to "possibly cause her embarrassment or tarnish her image with the general public". Covert campaigns to publicly discredit activists and destroy their interpersonal relationships were a common tactic used by COINTELPRO agents."]

The Introduction:

COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program; 1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal[1][2] projects actively conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations.[3][4] FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI[5] deemed subversive,[6] including feminist organizations,[7][8] the Communist Party USA,[9] anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights and Black power movements (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, independence movements (including Puerto Rican independence groups such as the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Socialist Party), a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan[10][11] and the far-right group National States' Rights Party.[12]

Methods COINTELPRO Utilized

According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used five main methods during COINTELPRO:

Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit, disrupt and negatively redirect action. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.

Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used a myriad of "dirty tricks" to undermine movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials, and others to cause trouble for activists. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences.[74]

Harassment via the legal system: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.[73][75]

Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.[73] The objective was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements.

Undermine public opinion: One of the primary ways the FBI targeted organizations was by challenging their reputations in the community and denying them a platform to gain legitimacy. Hoover specifically designed programs to block leaders from "spreading their philosophy publicly or through the communications media". Furthermore, the organization created and controlled negative media meant to undermine black power organizations. For instance, they oversaw the creation of "documentaries" skillfully edited to paint the Black Panther Party as aggressive, and false newspapers that spread misinformation about party members. The ability of the FBI to create distrust within and between revolutionary organizations tainted their public image and weakened chances at unity and public support.[49]

The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black power movement, for example between the Black Panthers and the US Organization. For instance, the FBI sent a fake letter to the US Organization exposing a supposed Black Panther plot to murder the head of the US Organization, Ron Karenga. They then intensified this by spreading falsely attributed cartoons in the black communities pitting the Black Panther Party against the US Organization.[49] This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.[73] Another example of the FBI's anonymous letter writing campaign is how they turned the Blackstone Rangers head, Jeff Fort, against former ally Fred Hampton, by stating that Hampton had a hit on Fort.[49] They also were instrumental in developing the rift between Black Panther Party leaders Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton, as executed through false letters inciting the two leaders of the Black Panther Party.[49]

...

In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals,[78] accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them. Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther Party leader, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed, because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had not been in the area at the time the murder occurred.[79][80]

...

In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party had concluded that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily engaged in feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the agent's career goals would be directly affected by his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the Black Panther Party was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[84]

Hoover supported using false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the Black Panther Party and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."[85]

Intended Effects of COINTELPRO

The intended effect of the FBI's COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" groups that the FBI officials believed were "subversive"[58] by instructing FBI field operatives to:[59] 1. Create a negative public image for target groups (for example through surveilling activists and then releasing negative personal information to the public) 2. Break down internal organization by creating conflicts (for example, by having agents exacerbate racial tensions, or send anonymous letters to try to create conflicts) 3. Create dissension between groups (for example, by spreading rumors that other groups were stealing money) 4. Restrict access to public resources (for example, by pressuring non-profit organizations to cut off funding or material support) 5. Restrict the ability to organize protest (for example, through agents promoting violence against police during planning and at protests) 6. Restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities (for example, by character assassinations, false arrests, surveillance)

When did they start?

Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally.[9] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.[31] In 1956, Hoover sent an open letter denouncing Dr. T. R. M. Howard, a civil rights leader, surgeon, and wealthy entrepreneur in Mississippi who had criticized FBI inaction in solving recent murders of George W. Lee, Emmett Till, and other African Americans in the South.[32] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organization, was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and eventually Martin Luther King Jr.[33]

How did the news get out about COINTELPRO?

The program was secret until March 8, 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burgled an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies.[1][54] The boxing match known as the Fight of the Century between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier in March 1971 provided cover for the activist group to successfully pull off the burglary. Muhammad Ali was a COINTELPRO target because he had joined the Nation of Islam and the anti-war movement.[55] Many news organizations initially refused to immediately publish the information, with the notable exception of The Washington Post. After affirming the reliability of the documents, it published them on the front page (in defiance of the Attorney General's request), prompting other organizations to follow suit. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled case by case.[56][57]

[elwenyere]

Black Americans have been demanding compensation and restitution for their suffering since the end of the Civil War. 40 Acres and a Mule remains the nation’s most famous attempt to provide some form of reparations for American slavery. Today, it is largely remembered as a broken promise and an abandoned step toward multiracial democracy. Less known is that the federal government actually did issue hundreds, perhaps thousands, of titles to specific plots of land between 4 and 40 acres. Freedmen and women built homes, established local governments, and farmed the land. But their utopia didn’t last long. After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his successor, Andrew Johnson, stripped property from formerly enslaved Black residents across the South and returned it to their past enslavers. Over the course of two and a half years, a team of Public Integrity reporters, editors, and researchers identified 1,250 Black men and women who had earned land as reparations after the Civil War. From there, the team conducted genealogical research to locate living descendants of many of those who had received and then lost the land. For the first time, these living Black Americans were made aware of the specific land that had been given to and then taken away from their ancestors. This project is an unprecedented and innovative use of Freedmen’s Bureau records—an impossible task for most of American history, until recent advances in genealogical research and the digitization of thousands of pages of Reconstruction-era documents made it feasible.

"Forty Acres and a Lie": incredible work in investigative journalism from Reveal

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Truthout:

Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits?

As the West suffers its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited. For years, investment firms have bought up farmland throughout the Southwest, drilling to new depths for their water-hungry crops and causing nearby wells to run dry. Now, new players have entered the scene: “Water management companies” are purchasing up thousands of acres of farmland, with the intention of selling the water rights at a profit to cities and suburbs elsewhere in the state. Some argue that treating water as a commodity can efficiently get it where it is needed most. But others fear that water markets open the door to profiteering and hoarding, leaving poorer communities in the dust.

In 2013 and 2014, GSC Farm, a subsidiary of a water management company called Greenstone Resource Partners, which is backed by MassMutual, bought nearly 500 acres of farmland in Cibola, a tiny town in Arizona’s La Paz County, for just under $10 million. The farmland comes with the rights to more than 2,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water a year. (An acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to cover one acre with one foot of water.) Then in 2018, Greenstone sold the water rights, in perpetuity, to Queen Creek, a rapidly growing suburb of Phoenix nearly 200 miles away, for $24 million.

The transfer marked the first time a water management company sold Colorado River water rights. La Paz and two other counties sued to block the transfer, arguing that the Bureau of Reclamation, the federal agency that oversees water resource management, had conducted an insufficient environmental review before signing off. The counties’ request for a preliminary injunction was denied in April 2023 by a federal judge, and three months later the water began flowing down the Central Arizona Project, a 336-mile canal. Then, the judge seemingly backtracked in February 2024, ordering a more thorough environmental review.

“In the meantime, they’re still allowing for the water to flow, which we argued should have been stopped completely until the complete environmental studies have been done,” Holly Irwin, a La Paz County supervisor, told Truthout. “It’s really frustrating, not only for myself, but for the other leaders and elected officials in what we refer to as the river communities.”

The ultimate results of the lawsuit could affect how easily water management companies are able to transfer river water rights for profit in the future.

“I’ve had people already contacting me, asking, ‘Hey, look, I’m looking to buy this piece of property. It’s got water rights. Can it be transferred off the Colorado River?’” said Irwin. “Which is what we knew was going to happen. They just opened up Pandora’s box.”

Companies like Greenstone are betting that the price of water will increase. Western states generally allocate water through a “prior appropriation” policy of “first in time, first in right.” In times of shortage, those with the most senior water claims — often farmers and ranchers whose ancestors claimed Native land — are allotted their full share of water first. Now, companies like Greenstone are lining up to buy those increasingly valuable water rights.

The Colorado River provides drinking water to 40 million people across seven U.S. states, two Mexican states, and multiple tribal lands. Since 1922, its water has been allocated among the states through a framework created by the Colorado River Compact. But river volume has decreased 20 percent since the beginning of the century, leading to tense renegotiations, with the three “lower basin” states — California, Arizona and Nevada — agreeing to reduce their water shares.

Compared to Colorado River water, groundwater tends to be less regulated. Major investment banks have spent hundreds of millions buying up farms with claims to the groundwater beneath them — part of a larger movement by investors into physical assets like lumber, buildings and infrastructure.

Once pumped, groundwater aquifers in warm, dry places can take thousands of years to replenish. In an effort to conserve water basins, Arizona passed the 1980 Groundwater Management Act, heavily restricting groundwater pumping in several urban “active-management areas” (AMAs), including the Phoenix and Tucson areas. It also mandated that developers obtain a state Certificate of Assured Water Supply, demonstrating their new projects have enough water for 100 years. The law is credited as a success for protecting water levels in urban areas. But its lack of restrictions on groundwater removal from rural basins has become a concern as the state population swells and rural wells run dry.

[todaysdocument]

News from the U.S. Department of Labor, "Federal Stop-Order on Indio Farmer" (USDL-IX-59S56), San Francisco, August 3, 1959.

Record Group 174: General Records of the Department of LaborSeries: Records Relating to the Mexican Labor ("Bracero") ProgramFile Unit: Mexican Labor Program, General Correspondence

NEWS from the U. S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR

James P. Mitchell, Secretary

CONTACT: Tor Torland, Info Officer

630 Sansome Street, San Francisco

YUkon 6-3111, Ext. 647

[handwritten] Mr Robertson

File

Mexican Program [/handwritten]

[stamp] RECEIVED

AUG 4 1959

REGIONAL ATTORNEY

SAN FRANCISCO [/stamp]

FEDERAL STOP-ORDER ON INDIO FARMER

SAN FRANCISCO, August 3: Joseph Munoz, a member of the Coachella Valley Farmers Association in Indio, has been refused further authorization to employ Mexican farm workers in a decision made public today by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Under the terms of public law 78 and the international agreement between the governments of the U.S. and Mexico, Mexican nationals may be imported to work on our farms only if it has been determined by authorities that there are not enough American workers in a specific area to fill farm-labor needs there.

Munoz was found to be using Mexican nationals to sort tomatoes in his packing shed despite repeated warnings by the U. S. Labor Department and the California Department of Employment that American workers were available for the jobs.

Glenn E. Brockway, regional director of the Labor Department's employment security bureau, issued his decision in a letter to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association. Brockway said, in part:

"All authorizations issued to the Coachella Valley Farmers Association to contract Mexican national workers are hereby revoked with respect to the employment of Mexican national workers by the said Joseph Munoz."

The federal stop-order also specified that because of Munoz's "repeated failure to give preference in employment of United States domestic workers", no authorizations would be granted him in future to use Mexican nationals.

The move came as part of the U.S. Labor Department's continuing policy of strictly policing the foreign-labor importation program so as to ensure first preference for farm jobs to American citizens.

#####

USDL-IX-59S56

[tieflingkisser]

Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas go on strike, a standoff risking new shortages

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight, and even though progress was reported in talks on Monday, the workers went on strike. The strike affecting 36 ports is the first by the union since 1977. Workers began picketing at the Port of Philadelphia shortly after midnight, walking in a circle at a rail crossing outside the port and chanting “No work without a fair contract.”

[...]

If drawn out, the strike will force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season — potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys or artificial Christmas trees to cars, coffee and fruit. The strike will likely have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75% of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

[...]

J.P. Morgan estimated that a strike that shuts down East and Gulf coast ports could cost the economy $3.8 billion to $4.5 billion per day, with some of that recovered over time after normal operations resume.

[dandelionsresilience]

I’m not sure how reliably I’ll be able to keep up with it, but I’ve been wanting to start posting weekly or monthly Good News compilations, with a focus on ecology but also some health and human rights type stuff. I’ll try to keep the sources recent (like from within the last week or month, whichever it happens to be), but sometimes original dates are hard to find. Also, all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.

Anyway, here’s some good news from the first week of March!

1. Mexican Wolf Population Grows for Eighth Consecutive Year

““In total, 99 pups carefully selected for their genetic value have been placed in 40 wild dens since 2016, and some of these fosters have produced litters of their own. While recovery is in the future, examining the last decade of data certainly provides optimism that recovery will be achieved.””

2. “Remarkable achievement:” Victoria solar farm reaches full power ahead of schedule

“The 130MW Glenrowan solar farm in Victoria has knocked out another milestone, reaching full power and completing final grid connection testing just months after achieving first generation in late November.”

3. UTEP scientists capture first known photographs of tropical bird long thought lost

“The yellow-crested helmetshrike is a rare bird species endemic to Africa that had been listed as “lost” by the American Bird Conservancy when it hadn’t been seen in nearly two decades. Until now.”

4. France Protects Abortion as a 'Guaranteed Freedom' in Constitution

“[A]t a special congress in Versailles, France’s parliament voted by an overwhelming majority to add the freedom to have an abortion to the country’s constitution. Though abortion has been legal in France since 1975, the historic move aims to establish a safeguard in the face of global attacks on abortion access and sexual and reproductive health rights.”

5. [Fish & Wildlife] Service Approves Conservation Agreement for Six Aquatic Species in the Trinity River Basin

“Besides conserving the six species in the CCAA, activities implemented in this agreement will also improve the water quality and natural flows of rivers for the benefit of rural and urban communities dependent on these water sources.”

6. Reforestation offset the effects of global warming in the southeastern United States

“In America’s southeast, except for most of Florida and Virginia, “temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled,” due to reforestation, even as most of the world has grown warmer, reports The Guardian.”

7. Places across the U.S. are testing no-strings cash as part of the social safety net

“Cash aid without conditions was considered a radical idea before the pandemic. But early results from a program in Stockton, Calif., showed promise. Then interest exploded after it became clear how much COVID stimulus checks and emergency rental payments had helped people. The U.S. Census Bureau found that an expanded child tax credit cut child poverty in half.”

8. The Road to Recovery for the Florida Golden Aster: Why We Should Care

“After a five-year review conducted in 2009 recommended reclassifying the species to threatened, the Florida golden aster was proposed for removal from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Plants due to recovery in June 2021, indicating the threats to the species had been reduced or eliminated.”

9. A smart molecule beats the mutation behind most pancreatic cancer

“Researchers have designed a candidate drug that could help make pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, a treatable, perhaps even curable, condition.”

10. Nurses’ union at Austin’s Ascension Seton Medical Center ratifies historic first contract

“The contract, which NNOC said in a news release was “overwhelmingly” voted through by the union, includes provisions the union believes will improve patient care and retention of nurses.”

This and future editions will also be going up on my new Ko-fi, where you can support my art and get doodled phone wallpapers! EDIT: Actually, I can't find any indication that curating links like this is allowed on Ko-fi, so to play it safe I'll stick to just posting here on Tumblr. BUT, you can still support me over on Ko-fi if you want to see my Good News compilations continue!

[idvoteforthatdaddy]

Zippy Duvall President of the American Farm Bureau Federation

[maturemenoftvandfilms]

Tom Vilsack (D) United States Secretary of Agriculture

Of course Sec. Vilsack is getting "the dick", but American Farm Bureau Federation President, Zippy Duvall definitely gets a courtesy tap.

[woolandcoffee]

Apparently some farmers have convinced themselves that EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers have ~*~secret~*~ documents on how they're interpreting WOTUS that they aren't making available for the public. Personally, I'm feeling "you are not serious people" about it.

Oh. And when I say "farmers" I mean the fucking American Farm Bureau Federation.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Pat Byrnes

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 21, 2024

I had hoped to write tonight about the farm bill, which Eric Hovde, running for the Senate from Wisconsin although it’s not clear he lives there, could not talk about in the debate between him and incumbent senator Tammy Baldwin on Friday. “I’m not an expert on the farm bill because I'm not in the U.S. Senate at this point in time,” Hovde said. “So I can’t opine specifically on all aspects of the farm bill.” 

The farm bill is one of our most important pieces of legislation. It establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government, covering price supports for farm products, especially corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, dairy, and sugar; crop insurance; conservation programs; and nutritional programs for 41 million low-income Americans, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as food stamps. It must pass every five years but has been held up by Republican extremists in the House and is now in limbo. One would think that anyone running for Senate should know it pretty well, especially in Wisconsin, where in 2022 farms produced $16.7 billion in agricultural products.

Perhaps this is why the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has endorsed Baldwin, the first Democrat in nearly twenty years to receive their support.

But I cannot take tonight to explain the really quite interesting history of the farm bill (and why it contains our nutrition programs) because the real story of today is that the Republican candidate for president is not mentally able to handle the job of the presidency, and Republican leaders are trying to cover up that reality. 

These two stories are related.

That same quest for power that appears to be driving Hovde to seek a Senate seat without knowing anything about a bill that is hugely important to the people he would be representing appears to be preventing Republican leaders from admitting that their 78-year-old candidate has lost the mental capacity necessary for managing the most powerful nation in the world, including its vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons. 

The United States has guardrails to prevent an incapacitated president from exercising power.

The question of what to do when a president was unable to do his job was not really a major question until the post–World War II years. While presidents before then had been weakened—notably, Woodrow Wilson had had a stroke—medical care was poor enough that those presidents who sustained life-threatening injuries tended to die from them fairly quickly. At the same time, the difficulties of the travel necessary for a national political career made politics a young man’s game, so there really weren’t rumblings of mental incapacity from age.

But Republican president Dwight Eisenhower had seen the grave damage military leaders could do when they were incapacitated and unaware of their inability to evaluate situations accurately, and knew that the commander-in-chief must have a system in place to be replaced if he were unable to fulfill the mental requirements of his position. 

Eisenhower took office in 1953, and two years later, he suffered a heart attack. Vice President Richard Nixon and members of the Cabinet agreed to a working plan to conduct business while the president recovered, but presidential assistant Sherman Adams noted that the crisis left everyone “uncomfortably aware of the Constitution's failure to provide for the direction of the government by an acting President when the President is temporarily disabled and unable to perform his functions.”

When Eisenhower went on to need an abdominal operation and then to have a minor stroke, concerns mounted. As Congress discussed a solution, Eisenhower took matters into his own hands. He drafted an informal agreement that he presented to Nixon. If the president became temporarily unable to do the duties of the office, the document gave to the vice president the power of “Acting President.”

The need to figure out what would happen if modern medicine could keep alive an incapacitated president became apparent after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Not only did the question of a president’s incapacity have to be addressed; so did the problem of succession. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was falsely rumored to have had a heart attack, and both the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate were old and doubted that they could adequately fulfill the duties of the presidency themselves.

Congress’s solution was the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, providing a system by which either the president or, if they were unable to realize their incapacity, members of the executive branch would transfer the powers of the president to the vice president. Eisenhower enthusiastically backed the idea that the nation should have coverage for a disabled president.

To anyone paying attention, it is clear that Trump is not in any shape to manage the government of the United States of America. He is canceling interviews and botching the ones he does sit for, while falling asleep at events where he is not actually speaking. He lies incessantly even when hosts point out that his claims have been debunked, and cannot answer a question or follow a train of thought. And his comments of the weekend—calling the vice president a “sh*t vice president,” telling a woman to get “your fat husband off the couch” to vote for him, and musing about a famous golfer’s penis—indicate that he has no mental guardrails left.

Today, in what apparently was designed to show Trump as relatable and to compete with the story that Vice President Harris worked at a McDonalds when she was in college, Trump did a photo op at a McDonalds in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he took prepared fries out of the fryolator. It was an odd moment, for Trump has never portrayed himself as a man of the people so much as a man to lead the people, and the picture of him in a McDonald’s apron undercuts his image as a dominant leader. 

But in any case, it was all staged: the restaurant was closed, the five “customers” were loyalists who had practiced their roles, and when Trump handed food through the drive-through window, he did not take money or make change.

"Now I have worked at McDonald's," he said afterward. "I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala."

The fact that someone on Trump’s campaign leaked to Politico that he is “exhausted” is almost certainly a sign that people down the ranks are deeply concerned about his ability to finish the campaign, let alone run the country. But party leaders continue to stand behind him, raising echoes of their staunch support during Trump’s two impeachment trials.

In 2019 the House of Representatives impeached Trump for his attempt to coerce Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and pervert the security of the United States to steal an election. The evidence was so overwhelming that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted: “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” But Republican senators—except Mitt Romney (R-UT), who voted to convict on one count—nonetheless acquitted Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

Trump’s second impeachment by the House in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection ended similarly. In the Senate, McConnell refused to change the schedule to enable the Senate to vote before a new president was inaugurated, thus giving himself, as well as other Republican senators, an out to vote against conviction on the grounds that Trump was no longer the president. Seven Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, but forty-three continued to back Trump. In a speech after the vote, McConnell said he believed Trump was responsible for the January 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election but that he would have to answer for that behavior in court. 

But nearly four years later, Trump has not had to answer in court because the Supreme Court, stacked with his appointees thanks to Republican senators, has said that he cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties. While the courts sort out what counts as official duties, he is, once again, the Republican nominee for president. Leaders are standing behind him despite the fact he is demonstrating deeply concerning behavior.

When President Joe Biden decided not to accept the Democratic presidential nomination after his poor performance in his June debate with Trump, Republicans demanded that Vice President Harris and the Cabinet invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, despite the fact that Biden’s job performance continued to be exemplary. We learned later that during the time of the debate, he was negotiating a historic prisoner swap involving multiple countries to free twenty-four prisoners, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.

Nonetheless, that one poor debate performance was enough for Republicans to condemn Biden’s ability to govern the nation. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told the Fox News Channel that “Joe Biden has decided he isn’t capable of being a candidate; in so doing his admission also means he cannot serve as President.” 

But Trump has been lying that immigrants are eating pets; calling voters fat pigs; basing his economic policy on a backward idea of how tariffs work; calling for prosecuting his enemies and making the civil service, military, and judiciary loyal to him; and praising a famous golfer’s “manhood”—hardly indications of a man able to take on the presidency of the United States. 

And yet with regard to his mental acuity, Republican leaders offer only crickets.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[misfitwashere]

October 20, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

OCT 21

I had hoped to write tonight about the farm bill, which Eric Hovde, running for the Senate from Wisconsin although it’s not clear he lives there, could not talk about in the debate between him and incumbent senator Tammy Baldwin on Friday. “I’m not an expert on the farm bill because I'm not in the U.S. Senate at this point in time,” Hovde said. “So I can’t opine specifically on all aspects of the farm bill.” 

The farm bill is one of our most important pieces of legislation. It establishes the main agricultural and food policies of the government, covering price supports for farm products, especially corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, rice, peanuts, dairy, and sugar; crop insurance; conservation programs; and nutritional programs for 41 million low-income Americans, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) formerly known as food stamps. It must pass every five years but has been held up by Republican extremists in the House and is now in limbo. One would think that anyone running for Senate should know it pretty well, especially in Wisconsin, where in 2022 farms produced $16.7 billion in agricultural products.

Perhaps this is why the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation has endorsed Baldwin, the first Democrat in nearly twenty years to receive their support.

But I cannot take tonight to explain the really quite interesting history of the farm bill (and why it contains our nutrition programs) because the real story of today is that the Republican candidate for president is not mentally able to handle the job of the presidency, and Republican leaders are trying to cover up that reality. 

These two stories are related.

That same quest for power that appears to be driving Hovde to seek a Senate seat without knowing anything about a bill that is hugely important to the people he would be representing appears to be preventing Republican leaders from admitting that their 78-year-old candidate has lost the mental capacity necessary for managing the most powerful nation in the world, including its vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons. 

The United States has guardrails to prevent an incapacitated president from exercising power.

The question of what to do when a president was unable to do his job was not really a major question until the post–World War II years. While presidents before then had been weakened—notably, Woodrow Wilson had had a stroke—medical care was poor enough that those presidents who sustained life-threatening injuries tended to die from them fairly quickly. At the same time, the difficulties of the travel necessary for a national political career made politics a young man’s game, so there really weren’t rumblings of mental incapacity from age.

But Republican president Dwight Eisenhower had seen the grave damage military leaders could do when they were incapacitated and unaware of their inability to evaluate situations accurately, and knew that the commander-in-chief must have a system in place to be replaced if he were unable to fulfill the mental requirements of his position. 

Eisenhower took office in 1953, and two years later, he suffered a heart attack. Vice President Richard Nixon and members of the Cabinet agreed to a working plan to conduct business while the president recovered, but presidential assistant Sherman Adams noted that the crisis left everyone “uncomfortably aware of the Constitution's failure to provide for the direction of the government by an acting President when the President is temporarily disabled and unable to perform his functions.”

When Eisenhower went on to need an abdominal operation and then to have a minor stroke, concerns mounted. As Congress discussed a solution, Eisenhower took matters into his own hands. He drafted an informal agreement that he presented to Nixon. If the president became temporarily unable to do the duties of the office, the document gave to the vice president the power of “Acting President.”

The need to figure out what would happen if modern medicine could keep alive an incapacitated president became apparent after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Not only did the question of a president’s incapacity have to be addressed; so did the problem of succession. Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson was falsely rumored to have had a heart attack, and both the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate were old and doubted that they could adequately fulfill the duties of the presidency themselves.

Congress’s solution was the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution, providing a system by which either the president or, if they were unable to realize their incapacity, members of the executive branch would transfer the powers of the president to the vice president. Eisenhower enthusiastically backed the idea that the nation should have coverage for a disabled president.

To anyone paying attention, it is clear that Trump is not in any shape to manage the government of the United States of America. He is canceling interviews and botching the ones he does sit for, while falling asleep at events where he is not actually speaking. He lies incessantly even when hosts point out that his claims have been debunked, and cannot answer a question or follow a train of thought. And his comments of the weekend—calling the vice president a “sh*t vice president,” telling a woman to get “your fat husband off the couch” to vote for him, and musing about a famous golfer’s penis—indicate that he has no mental guardrails left.

Today, in what apparently was designed to show Trump as relatable and to compete with the story that Vice President Harris worked at a McDonalds when she was in college, Trump did a photo op at a McDonalds in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he took prepared fries out of the fryolator. It was an odd moment, for Trump has never portrayed himself as a man of the people so much as a man to lead the people, and the picture of him in a McDonald’s apron undercuts his image as a dominant leader. 

But in any case, it was all staged: the restaurant was closed, the five “customers” were loyalists who had practiced their roles, and when Trump handed food through the drive-through window, he did not take money or make change.

"Now I have worked at McDonald's," he said afterward. "I've now worked for 15 minutes more than Kamala."

The fact that someone on Trump’s campaign leaked to Politico that he is “exhausted” is almost certainly a sign that people down the ranks are deeply concerned about his ability to finish the campaign, let alone run the country. But party leaders continue to stand behind him, raising echoes of their staunch support during Trump’s two impeachment trials.

In 2019 the House of Representatives impeached Trump for his attempt to coerce Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and pervert the security of the United States to steal an election. The evidence was so overwhelming that Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) noted: “Out of one hundred senators, you have zero who believe you that there was no quid pro quo. None. There’s not a single one.” But Republican senators—except Mitt Romney (R-UT), who voted to convict on one count—nonetheless acquitted Trump. “This is not about this president. It’s not about anything he’s been accused of doing,” Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told his colleagues. “It has always been about November 3, 2020. It’s about flipping the Senate.”

Trump’s second impeachment by the House in January 2021 for incitement of insurrection ended similarly. In the Senate, McConnell refused to change the schedule to enable the Senate to vote before a new president was inaugurated, thus giving himself, as well as other Republican senators, an out to vote against conviction on the grounds that Trump was no longer the president. Seven Republican senators joined the Democrats to convict, but forty-three continued to back Trump. In a speech after the vote, McConnell said he believed Trump was responsible for the January 6, 2021, attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election but that he would have to answer for that behavior in court. 

But nearly four years later, Trump has not had to answer in court because the Supreme Court, stacked with his appointees thanks to Republican senators, has said that he cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties. While the courts sort out what counts as official duties, he is, once again, the Republican nominee for president. Leaders are standing behind him despite the fact he is demonstrating deeply concerning behavior.

When President Joe Biden decided not to accept the Democratic presidential nomination after his poor performance in his June debate with Trump, Republicans demanded that Vice President Harris and the Cabinet invoke the Twenty-fifth Amendment, despite the fact that Biden’s job performance continued to be exemplary. We learned later that during the time of the debate, he was negotiating a historic prisoner swap involving multiple countries to free twenty-four prisoners, including Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.

Nonetheless, that one poor debate performance was enough for Republicans to condemn Biden’s ability to govern the nation. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) told the Fox News Channel that “Joe Biden has decided he isn’t capable of being a candidate; in so doing his admission also means he cannot serve as President.” 

But Trump has been lying that immigrants are eating pets; calling voters fat pigs; basing his economic policy on a backward idea of how tariffs work; calling for prosecuting his enemies and making the civil service, military, and judiciary loyal to him; and praising a famous golfer’s “manhood”—hardly indications of a man able to take on the presidency of the United States. 

And yet with regard to his mental acuity, Republican leaders offer only crickets.

—

[plethoraworldatlas]

A beef industry group is running a campaign to influence science teachers and other educators in the US. Over the past eight years, the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture (AFBFA) has produced industry-backed lesson plans, learning resources, in-person events, and webinars as part of a program to boost the cattle industry’s reputation.

Beef has one of the highest carbon footprints of any food, but AFBFA funding documents reveal that the industry fears that science teachers are exposed to “misinformation,” “propaganda,” and “one-sided or inaccurate” information. The campaign from the AFBFA—a farming-industry-backed group that "educates" Americans about agriculture—is an attempt to fight back and leave school teachers with a “more positive perception” of the beef industry, the funding documents reveal.

According to survey data included in these documents, educators who attended at least one of the AFBFA’s programs were 8 percent more likely to trust positive statements about the beef industry. Some 82 percent of educators who participated in a program had a positive perception of how cattle are raised, and 85 percent believed that the beef industry is “very important” to society.

The beef industry “knows it has a trust issue,” says Jennifer Jacquet, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Miami. The industry is attempting to influence public opinion by starting with children, says Jan Dutkiewicz at the Pratt Institute’s Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies. Dutkiewicz points out that one of the AFBFA’s objectives outlined in its most recent funding document is to run events that “engage educators and students … to increase their understanding and positive perceptions of the beef industry.”

...

The AFBFA is a contractor to Beef Checkoff, a US-wide program in which beef producers and importers pay a per-animal fee that funds programs to boost beef demand in the US and abroad. In 2024, Beef Checkoff has approximately $42 million to disperse across its initiatives, and a funding request reveals that the AFBFA’s campaign for 2024 is projected to cost $800,000. The allocation of Beef Checkoff funding to programs like this is approved by members of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the Federation of State Beef Councils, two groups that represent the cattle industry in the US.

One lesson plan provided as part of the program directs students to beef industry resources to help devise a school menu. In another lesson plan students are directed to create a presentation for a conservation agency regarding the introduction of cattle into their ecological preserve. A worksheet aimed at younger students has them practice their sums by adding up the acreage of cow pastures. Another worksheet based around a bingo game aimed at 8- to 11-year-olds asks teachers to “remind students that lean beef is a nutritions source of protein that can be incorporated in daily meals.”

Science teachers in many states are currently updating their lessons to incorporate the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)—a set of teaching guidelines that encourage educators to place more emphasis on how science is used in the real world. AFBFA funding documents show that the foundation intends to use the adoption of the NGSS as an opportunity to provide teachers with learning materials that relate to the beef industry.

“Furthermore, NGSS requires teachers to approach challenging topics such as climate change and sustainability,” reads an AFBFA funding authorization request for its education program. It continues: “Teachers and students are receiving information from educationally trusted sources that do not represent agriculture accurately or in a balanced way, and beef production is often the target of "misinformation". To achieve balance and to ensure the accuracy of information, a concerted effort must be made to engage teachers in the conversation around these topics.”

Dutkiewicz says that food production should be taught in US schools but that industry-funded material is unlikely to provide objective information about the impact of beef production. “I worry that clearly partial resources that are strategically designed to achieve a corporate messaging are being provided by a Checkoff program,” he says.