Idaho Slaughters More Wolves

Idaho continues to slaughter wolves and their pups in a relentless effort to eliminate the species from the state. Records from the state so-called wildlife management agency recently made public show hunters and government agencies have killed 256 wolves this year and the season is not over. About sixteen of these were pups, still nursing from their mothers. More wolves were cruelly maimed by traps before dying a slow death. Idaho allows a seventy=two hour period to elapse before killers must check their traps for prey.  Of course this time period allows plenty of time for a suffering animal to expire in pain.   This obscene record of wolf extermination continues a centuries old genocide against the wolf on this continent and demonstrates why wolves need to be protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. States like Idaho simply cannot be trusted to manage a wild predator because of an irrational bias that engenders persecution.  Idaho's so-called wolf management is funded by the state's agricultural association. Wildlife management must be based on ecological science, not emotion.

The species was delisted in Idaho by congressional decree in 2011 thanks to intensive lobbying by wolf haters. The US Fish & Wildlife Service is working feverishly toward delisting the wolf nationwide. The Heel has apparently made delisting a priority of his misbegotten term of office. About 400 wolves have been killed each year in Idaho since delisting, which is about forty percent of the states's estimated wolf population. This level of slaughter is not sustainable and results in destabilized populations that ultimately cause more livestock predation.  Wolves in Idaho are also killed because they take elk, a prey also prized by human hunters.   Wolves are killed because they are wolves.

'Toontime: The Long Con

credit: A. Zyglis, Buffalo News

Why the psychological hot mess that is the current 'prezid'nt should receive a nomination for the Nobel Prize is beyond US Person's explanatory powers. Cuban doctors, who have actually contributed to world peace in a large way, should be recognized before a self-serving, corrupt draft dodger and fake dictator gets an international prize for peacemaking. The Palestine crisis is not solved by a non-aggression pack between two client states of Imperial Amerika. Apparently the Nobel committee is also hopelessly corrupted by partisan politics.

credit: R. McKee 
BC Idonwanna sez: Save panic for 4 more years. 



US COVID DEATH TOLL (est.): 280,200

Here's Donny!........Be afraid, very afraid.

America's Economy In One Chart

Thanks to David Sirota for bringing this revealing graph to US Person's attention.  It neatly summarizes what has happened to the American worker in the years since WWII, and in an election year that is worth talking about, repeatedly.  Bernie is talking about it, but where is Joe?  This chart is from the Economic Policy Institute.  It shows how productivity has risen tremendously in the American economy while wages have remained relatively flat since 1970.  Concurrently here has been a steady decline in the number of workers represented by unions, which were successful in negotiating higher wages for their members through collective bargaining.

When unions were stronger than they are now, and worker membership was increasing, economy wide increases in productivity were compensated by increases in hourly wages.  The wage mechanism allowed workers to participate in the overall increase in post-war living standards.  This key wealth mechanism stopped working around 1973 ("downhill after Nixon").  Productivity was still increasing and steeply with automation and computerization. Net productivity increased 72.2% between 1973 and 2014, yet wages adjusted for inflation for the median worker only increased by 8.9%. In 1965, the C.E.O. of an average large public company earned about twenty times as much as a front-line worker. Today, that figure is two hundred and seventy-eight times. A Greenwich, CT consultant told an interviewer, “Every year that goes by, more and more of the added value in our society goes toward capital, and less and less toward labor.  What you end up with is a very unstable society.”  An interesting sidenote: Connecticut, one of the richest states, has some of the worse roads in the nation according to several crumbling infrastructure studies.

Where did all the surplus value created by labor go?  You should know the answer: over the entire period mentioned more than two-thirds of the divergence between hourly compensation and productivity growth created wealth inequality not seen since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. The figure is 80% for the period since 2000.  Authors of the study say, "productivity growth that did not accrue to typical workers’ pay concentrated at the very top of the pay scale in inflated CEO pay, for example, and boosted incomes accruing to owners of capital."

In short, our political economy has become horrendously skewed.  We are not making 'America great'. We are making a few billionaires at the top ever more separated from the economic reality the rest of endure.  The pandemic has only made the situation grave and more undeniable--digital retailers and health insurance companies rake in obscene profits off the misery of the masses.  It is time we took America back from the corporate robber barons, who are back after a long period of increased egalitarianism to plunder labor.

"Law and order", you cry?  Sure, but what kind of order, the plutocratic kind of which the hypocrite Trump is a member?  US Person replies, "People over profits."

I said that?....Fake News media!*

*This blog kills fascists.

Tool Culture Chimps Given Reprive

The western African nation of Cameroon, recently granted a logging permit for the intact Ebo forest.  Fortunately for the endangered animals that live there including the P. ellioti chimpanzees, the government reversed its decision.  However, the future of the forest still remains uncertain.  The government touted that the logging concession covering 169,000 acres of the 500,000 acre forest would bring jobs and prosperity to the region, but did not consult forty human communities bordering the forest in its decision-making process. Local Banen communities that depend on Ebo Forest to gather food and traditional medicines view the forest as their ancestral land. [photo]

credit: San Diego Zoo

Conservationists welcome the policy reversal for providing the opportunity to plan more sustainable use of the forests' resources, as well as protecting the habitat of the tool using Nigeria-Cameroon (Pan troglodytes ellioti) chimpanzees.  The forest is also home to critically endangered red colubus monkeys (Piliocolobus preussi), western lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), and endangered forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis), and drills (Mandrillus leucophaeus). Green Kudos to Cameroon for protecting Nature and giving forest creatures a chance.  Every acre of undeveloped forest land helps Earth combat climate change.

The Wall Will Fall

Not because wild-eyed communist anarchists have attacked it, but because it was shoddily built. That is what an engineering report will say about a portion of the 'Wall of Shame' built with private funds.[photo credit: The Texas Tribune] The three mile stretch of wall along the Rio Grande is in danger of falling due to erosion. The report will be filed in a federal lawsuit against a North Dakota firm, Fisher Sand & Gravel, which has political ties to the regime. The non-profit at the heart of the mess is We Build the Wall that raised $25 million to build a wall Mexico was supposed to fund. Former political wizard for the Heel, Steve Bannon, has been indicted for embezzling money from the nonprofit to pay personal expenses, along with Brian Kolfage, founder, and two others.

CEO Tommy Fischer called his portion of the wall the "Lamborghini" of border walls. Professor of engineering at University of Texas, El Paso, Alex Mayer, said, “It seems like they are cutting corners everywhere. It’s not a Lamborghini, it’s a $500 used car” The regime has awarded Fisher Sand & Gravel about $2 billion in federal contracts to build segments of the border wall. Environmental experts have testified that the wall segment near the river will not withstand flooding due to extensive erosion, much of it caused by Hurricane Hanna. The wall segment will face repeated erosion problems due to the sandy soil close to the river's banks. Iin some areas there are gaps up to three feet wide and waist deep, concrete cracking, and construction flaws that one consultant concluded was likely substandard construction material below the fence’s foundation.


The consultant's conclusion: “The geography at the wall’s construction location in comparison to the river bend is not at a favorable location for long-term performance.” In other words, the "beautiful wall" is in danger of falling down. When asked about the negative evaluations, Fischer replied, "It's a hit piece."
Fischer appears frequently on Fox News, where he caught Orange Julius' attention. His political donations to North Dakota's Repugnant senator Kevin Cramer also helped his company obtain a lucrative contract ($400 million) to build portions of the border wall. That contract is being audited for undue political influence. Previous government construction in the area has been atop levees in an attempt to avoid the problems encountered by Fischer's company.  In some places the proposed federal border has left isolated patches of farm land in a kind of no-man's land between the barrier and the actual, geopolitical borderline--an imaginary line in the middle of the river. [map above]  When the government builds border fencing, it must meet a long list of requirements, including public meetings and stewardship plans; in contrast, Fisher's folly went up in weeks, and it shows.

Not only is the engineering and planned maintenance inadequate from an engineering standpoint, Fischer's wall may violate an international treaty with Mexico. The two countries manage the Rio Grande floodplain jointly under the agreement through the IBWC, the International Boundary and Water Commission. Mexican members of the commission have said the private wall along the riverbank could obstruct the river’s flow or be knocked down by the force of water and alter the river's course in violation of the treaty. A former Army Corps of Engineer hydrologist told reporters, “You are putting in an obstruction, a barrier, in the middle of the floodplain of a major river that has a levee back away from it. It’s important they get it right, and they clearly did not get it right.” The graft never stops under Der Heel.

 What's in it for me?

'Toontime: Bullshit!

credit: Barry Blitt
BC Idonwanna sez, "If you're brown, turnaround...."

The "three foot putt" flubber, "mini-stroke" sufferer, haunted by "dark shadows", "Orange Julius" was hard at it again this week in a non-stop propaganda effort to scare white 'Merica into a reactionary backlash at the polls against civil rights demonstrators. Bellowing "LAW AND ORDER" is not going to cut it when the Heel has been exposed as a serial tax cheat, bribe solicitor, and chauvinist pig who enjoys perverted sex acts. The hypocrite-in-chief will have to look beyond his role model, 'Tricky Dick' Nixon because as the song says, "We won't be fooled again". We know Joe and his corporatist record--mark it another election of much lesser evil.

Property rights have heretofore trumped human rights in 'Merica, partly due to the tragic legacy of slavery and the largely successful insurgency of the South after the Civil War. The Vietnam War protestors (Can it be fifty years ago?) who were viciously vilified as communistic America-haters by Nixon and his supporters were on the correct side of history, as are the BLM protestors today. US Person encourages peaceful free speech and assembly, but equally condemns police violence and armed vigilantism.

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US COVID DEATHS (est.): 270,000

Back From the Edge: Burmese Roofed Turtle

Conservation success stories are becoming fewer as Earth stumbles towards environmental collapse on a global scale.  One small, Southeast Asia river turtle is lucky because man decided to help the species survive extinction.  The Burmese roofed turtle (Batagur trivittata) was considered extinct, but an ambitious conservation program began after it was rediscovered in the wild. A shell was found in a village on the Dokhtawady River in Myanmar.  Shortly thereafter an American turtle collector found a living roofed turtle in a Chinese market, presumably on sale for consumption.  Motivated by these traces of existence, researchers conducted surveys to find wild populations. Guided by locals' descriptions of "duck sized eggs" they found living specimens in two rivers.

A captive population now approaches one thousand individuals in a breeding program begun in 2007. [photo credit: M. Min Win]  Only five or six adult females and two adult males are known to exist in the wild today.  Scientists recently revealed background of the conservation effort in the journal Zootaxa, in which they describe the species and their hatchlings.  The roofed turtle is the second most endangered turtle in the world, despite being abundant at one time.  Hunting and over-exploitation of eggs drove the species to near extinction.  More than half of the world's turtle and tortoise species are threatened with extinction.  They face threats of habitat loss, illegal wildlife trading, pollution, and over consumption.

The conservation goal is to release captive turtles in the Chindwin River, the location of a known wild population, now that they are in little danger of extinction.  Controlled releases began in 2015.  River turtles in the wild can be difficult to monitor, since they can swim several hundred miles from their point of departure.  The captive program has produced about 170 turtles a year for the past two years. Lead researcher Steven Platt told Mongabay.com that with that level of reproduction, these turtles have a renewed future in the wild.