'Toontime: Quotidian Trump

credit: Joe Heller
Wackydoodle sez: Cannuks want wall too!

US Person admits: it is fun to be fascist. Nothing like an easy ego boost by indulging in displays of self-righteousness. The Donald should know.  Whether he is signing a "Muslim ban" immigration rule, or selling a wall to keep out a much needed low-wage workforce from the south.  He has been there with "alternative facts" in his first month of office.  What he will find out is that being President is not like being a CEO.  Your staff cannot flog your daughter's clothing line and your tweet is not law, as the Ninth Circuit unanimously showed him.

More Western Landscape Protected

Repugnants began their assault on the public estate without waiting for the Trumpster to occupy the room-without-corners. Utah conservative Rob Bishop introduced a measure, which to the uninitiated seemed innocuous enough, but in reality it was a direct shot at making disposal of public land a lot easier. The bill provides that conveying federal land is not considered an increase in the federal deficit requiring a budget offset. In other words, it made the federal public land estate worthless for fiscal purposes. The bill passed the conservative House of Representatives and did not require Senate approval, being a fiscal measure. The bill is in conformity with the Repugnant pledge in its party platform to divest public lands to the states. Once considered a fringe notion of the goofy right-wing, since the Malheur NWR "occupation" by the Bundys, {29.01.16} it has received a lot more traction in the public mind--witness their exoneration by a Portland, OR federal jury. The Wilderness Society expressed great concern over Bishop's piece of legislative legerdemain. One officer of the conservation group co-founded by Aldo Leopold and Bob Marshall said, "The first thing out of the gate is to grease the skids", and noted no rational private landowner would treat their holdings as essentially worthless.  In response to the accusation he was paving the way for public land divestiture Rep. Bishop replied, "Bullshit."  No, Mr. Bishop, it is ideological fanaticism.

Two weeks after Bishop got his foot in the door, another conservative Utah Representative introduced a bill to sell 3.3 million acres of land in ten states. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was not to be outdone, suggesting that the recent Bear Ears Monument designation would be shortly overturned, adding that the Donald is "eager to work with me to address this". Obama designated 1.35 million acres in the Great Basin a monument just before he left office. {04.01.17} The designation was the culmination of a decade of effort by conservationists and Native Americans who consider parts of the landscape sacred.

It is somewhat ironic, if it were not dead, that the conservation movement at the beginning of the 20th Century was supported by a powerful Utah Senator, Reed Smoot. He supported the foundation of the National Forest Service (1905) and the National Park Service (1910). Now his state has become a hotbed of hotheaded public land divestiture. Most Westerners oppose divestiture. Much  federal revenue goes to those western states that have large areas of federal land within their borders. Robert Nelson, an economist at the Interior Department wrote that contrary to the popular image of "rugged individualism", the Intermountain West and Great Plains regions of the country are highly dependent on federal funds. The federal government owns an astonishing 86% of Nevada, and even 47% of urbanized California. Just one example of how the federal government subsidizes western development, which has a history going back to the Lewis and Clark expedition (1805), is its management of rangelands. The US government spends far more on management of these lands than the revenue it receives from ranchers who graze their livestock on public property. Disposal of federal lands effectively ended in 1934 with the passage of the Taylor Grazing Act.  This policy was made explicit in the Federal Land Policy Act of 1976 that formalized federal land management by the BLM.

Rebellions seeking divestiture have arisen sporadically for the last 150 years, the previous one, called the "Sagebrush Rebellion" sputtered out because there was grudging recognition of western economic dependence on federal land subsidies. The latest episode began in 2012 when a Utah state legislator demanded in a bill that the federal government "return" 31 million acres of public land in Utah land including Bryan, Arches, and Zion National Parks. Incredibly the bill passed the legislature, but without federal acquiescence it went nowhere. Arizona passed a similar bill in the same year, but the governor vetoed it.  Now, the divestiture movement has attracted the opposition of a powerful economic interest, the outdoor recreation industry.

Whether the 'ace' businessman in the White House will reach a similar conclusion regarding the latest divestiture moves remains to be seen. When economists look at the issue they conclude that it only makes sense if a state transfers mineral rich divested lands to mining and oil companies for exploitation. So, once again the capitalists are masquerading as down-home populists, seeking ways to bamboozle the witless public. House Bill 621 to sell the 3.3 million acres of public estate was withdrawn after a significant public protest, but with their twittering puppet installed into power, they are ahead of this game.

COTW: Shoreline Losses in Louisiana

A study by the USGS using airborne remote sensing has determined that the
Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest in US history, has caused significant erosion of the shoreline in the Mississippi Delta region. The study looked at the shore of northern Barataria Bay a year before the spill until 2.5 years after the disaster in April to September, 2010.  The researchers compared the wetlands loss after the spill to loss of wetlands after Hurricane Issac in 2012.  They found widespread loss of shore due to crude oil coating whereas the hurricane caused only isolated losses of wetland. [see chart] Being able to compare the two events and their effect was key to correlating causation for marshland erosion. Scientists say the losses will further impact natural defenses against flooding since river levees prevent the depositing of sediments needed to reform fragmented barrier islands and eroded marshes.  The study is presented in the journal "Geophysical Research Letters"

Electric Leaf Goes to Cuba

The ingenuity Cubans use to keep their vintage American hulks of steel on the road is famous world-wide.  During the half-century of economic embargo parts for the dirty classics are hard to find at any price.  Often Soviet-era Russian parts have to be adapted to fit.  They still run on leaded gasoline, which pollutes the atmosphere [photo below]. Now that relations have thawed somewhat thanks to former Pope John Paul, Cubans may be driving newer, cleaner American-made vehicles.  The news is:  they are electric.  Nissan's successful, electric Leaf {08.11.10}, made in the USA, will be exported to the island nation under a US Treasury trade license granted to Premier Automotive Export of Miami and the Caymans.  [photo above, credit: G. Meyers]


The cold war "Catch 22" is the electric vehicles cannot be sold to Cuba's communist government, but they can be used by American businesses and embassies based in Cuba.  Owner of the export company is optimistic the car will be popular with the Cuban people despite the trade restrictions still in place. Cars cannot be resold without permission from the US government, but they can be sold to self-employed Cubans and non-state businesses.  There is no limit on the number of electric cars that can be imported. They will be delivered to the island by a twice weekly container ship from Port Everglades, Florida.  This is a business that make sense for the planet.

'Toontime: Buyers' Remorse

credit: Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News

BC Idonwanna sez: Now enough to buy one more aircraft carrier!

Nothing new here. The Repugnants never met a  military build-up they could not embrace because it is a form of corporate welfare with which they are very comfortable. It is all guns, no butter, all the time, and blame the crude, brown immigrants! Don't believe unpatriotic US Person? Just read what the finance capitalists did to Detroit, our own smaller version of Greece!

COTW: Why 'Mericans Voted Against Obamacare

This chart sums it all up:

credit: Forbes

The Affordable Care Act is not affordable, as both healthcare costs and insurance premiums continue to rise. Insurance companies predictably blame the universal mandate for the premiums going up since it costs more to insure the previously uninsured, and the Act requires ten basic benefits so there is less room to manipulate product options. The real reason, which advocates of a single-payer system know and tried to convince the public of, is that health in the United States is still a profit-based industry cornered by the insurance companies. Only a government entitlement to health care will solve the problem as all other advanced countries realized decades ago.  The ACA is a giant kluge instituted at the insistence of the insurance industry in order to stave-off socialized medicine in the United States.  It's time will come.

Hunters Auction Animal Lives to Lobby Trump

African Safaris International, a powerful hunting lobby, will auction 280 South African animals to fund its Washington lobby efforts to change laws that protect endangered animals.  Nimrods who have more money than compassion for animals whose lives are increasingly difficult because of man will be sold the chance to kill giraffe, hippo, zebra, baboon, wildebeest, sable antelope, impala, kudu, springbok, caracal, biesbok, and 119 other species for "upgrades" costing more.  The auction is expected to raise about one million dollars.

The group undoubtedly will have great political influence in return for its blood money since the Interior Department is now led by conservative appointees unsympathetic to conservation values. One hundred and forty-seven pro-hunting politicians have been elected to Congress. The Tucson group recently filed a lawsuit against the Fish &Wildlife Service defending the practice of aerial hunting of predators in Alaska's natural wildlife refuges.  The President's sons, Donald Jr. and Eric are both trophy hunters.  This group has significant influence on African governments too.  In 2010 Nambia was influenced by Safari International to reverse its ban on cheetah and leopard hunting.  It was also successful in altering the same policy in neighboring Zambia.  The press and public was banned from Safari International's meetings with South Africa's Department of Environmental Affairs.

Hunting for trophies is often bizarre in its cruelty to wild animals.  For example,  South African safari companies offer to hunt trophies with dogs similar to a fox hunt in which the animal is chased to exhaustion, trapped, and then shot at close range  Nothing like an unfair fight, but then these populist profiteers have already told us they are not interest in fairness, just winning.  It is as one European leader put it, "a return to the dark days of the 1930's."