Thursday Open Thread

13 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

1. Today is National Lobster Newberg Day 

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2. Is anyone surprised in the least?

   Only 0.1 percent of Trump administration’s covid farm relief went to Black farmers

   In an interview with The Washington Post, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said the previous administration’s response exacerbated disparities in the American farm economy. Black farmers received only $20.8 million of nearly $26 billion in the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

   “We saw 99 percent of the money going to White farmers and 1 percent going to socially disadvantaged farmers, and if you break that down to how much went to Black farmers, it’s 0.1 percent,” he said. “Look at it another way: The top 10 percent of farmers in the country received 60 percent of the value of the covid payments. And the bottom 10 percent received 0.26 percent.”

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   1. Nope. 

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   2. I am a little surprised.

      I mean, 0.1%?  You know they will now insist on 0.2% – 100% increase!.

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      1. This issue is pretty near and dear to me. A decade ago I used to do a lot of peer review for USDA Rural Development grants. In 2007 I was assigned one that was seeking funds to help black farmers who lost their livelihood in the tobacco buyout to develop new alternatives on their land (those who had managed to keep their small plots after decades of abuse by the system).  In the buyout the dollars went almost exclusively to the white plantation owners; they owned the ‘quotas’.  There were few options at the time, which affected almost 250,000 black farmers from Virginia to the Florida panhandle and as far west as Arkansas.  

         Their plight never once left my mind after that and, sadly, the application didn’t score high enough to receive any grant dollars under the protocol we were stuck with at the time. Since then we’ve seen over 100,000 more families lose their land. Our black farmers are on the edge of extinction.

         This is a moral stain on our country (including similar issues with the Native American and Asian farmers).

         Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 — 1.3 percent — are Black, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s down from 1 million a century ago, because of widespread land loss.

         Vilsack said the Biden administration would be focused on closing those inequalities. The USDA will battle three systemic problems concurrently, he said: a broken farm system, food insecurity and a health-care crisis.

         After months of national debate about systemic racism and reparations for slavery and segregation, Vilsack says he will make rooting out racism at the agency, and in agriculture, a priority. The American Rescue Plan will pay $5 billion to farmers of color, who have lost 90 percent of their land over the past century because of systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt.

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3. Help!  I am being held hostage by a republican/trump phone list!  Ive received calls the last two nights, first, from a deep male voice loudly ordering me to "Stop Joe Biden…" at which point i hung up and then last night they left a VM thanking me for voting for dt, which i immediately erased. Clearly they haven't checked my voting record and registration.

   Ive had this number for several years. Before that it belonged to Made in Nature, a Boulder company that sells snack foods and changes its phone number frequently. Perhaps they are that former guy's supporters.  Getting these calls after the election is beyond annoying. 

   PS. I wish i had stayed on the line to hear what Biden was doing that upsets them so much. He needs to do more of it whatever it is. 

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   1. My aunt in California, a life-long Republican (hasn’t voted Republican the last three POTUS cycles) is getting 2-3 calls/day from the same crowd.  She’s so upset about it (and the circus around the current state of the party) she unregistered from the party this week after almost 70 years as a member. Three of her close friends have done the same. 

      So much winning. 

      “The demographics race we’re losing badly, we’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

      ~Blanche, 2012 (although they made a helluva run 2016-2020)

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4. In today’s edition of one could drown in this irony, remember the days when Brophy was calling Ritter and Obama brothers over their shared vision for a green economy? When he profusely used the #Hicked hash tag after passage of SB252 (requiring a 20% renewable mix with rural utilities)? When Senator Brophy claimed Hickenlooper was going to cost the Wray School District $30k annually because of the mandate? (utter lie) 

   Turns out that all those policies managed to do is generate billions in investments in eastern Colorado, with billions more on the books; a massive transfer of wealth from the urban liburals that consume the Xcel Energy power to the very rural citizens who are conditioned on a daily basis to hate them. 

   A debt of gratitude is due to the Boulder liberals who forced the development of Colorado’s first wind farm, Ponnequin; to the activists who passed Colorado’s historic Amendment 37, to Governor Bill Ritter for his vision, The New Energy Economy, Governor Hickenlooper’s signature on SB-252, and now Governor Polis, who is leading us to a 100% renewable power mix. 

   Commissioners hear out proposed Xcel Energy’s transmission expansion

   The board then met with Greg Brophy and Lucas McConnell, representing Xcel Energy.  The two spoke about the transmission expansion proposed by Xcel to enable 80 percent renewable generation for Colorado.  They are proposing putting up 560 miles of 345 kilovolt lines and will include five new segments to connect the Front Range to areas in north central, eastern and southern Colorado.  They said they would speak and work with landowners and businesses.

   They said this will drive significant economic development, provide good paying jobs, tax revenues and investment in Colorado’s rural plains for many years to come.  These would be wind or solar transmission lines.

   In Xcel’s handout, they say, “Greater transmission capacity is needed to achieve Colorado’s ambitious carbon reduction goals.  Colorado’s power pathway will improve the grid’s resilience and reliability and help reduce the cost of renewable energy additions, while bringing the low-cost electricity to you.  This $1.7 billion proposed investment will provide an economic boost – including jobs, lease revenues and tax base – to rural communities.  The effort requires partnership, coordination and long-term planning with other companies, key customers and community stakeholders who are on a similar clean energy path.  We must plan now and build soon to meet our 80 percent by 2030 objectives in a timely and cost-effective way.”

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5. Sleepy Joe POTUS is done *ucking around, sending a shot across the bow of Senate Republicans warning he'd "go beyond" supporting filibuster reform and could back ending it entirely.

   Biden Just Signaled He's Open to Nuking the Filibuster

   In his first press conference as president, Biden warned that the filibuster was “being abused in a gigantic way” by Senate Republicans and reiterated his support for some minor reforms to the filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass almost any legislation. But he went a step further, suggesting that if Republicans don’t allow bipartisan work on crucial issues he’d “go beyond” his current support.

   pic.twitter.com/WnPD0BKt0A

   — Steve Marmel (@Marmel) July 24, 2020

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   1. His meaning was clear and I think he means it. McConnell is really in a bind here.

      I wonder if Biden can get Manchin , or a Republican, to go along with ending the filibuster. It seems to me he wouldn't threaten if he couldn't back it up.

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6. Big news from SCOTUS on a Fourth Amendment case. A Tenth Circuit decision was reversed and the police were told “NO”. 
   https://www.scotusblog.com/2021/03/divided-court-issues-bright-line-ruling-on-fourth-amendment-seizures/

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   1. I think that decision could have huge implications for police reform, cook.

      If grabbing a person who has not been arrested nor charged with a crime is "seizure", and beating said seized person with fists, batons, or bullets escalates the "seizure" and this violates the Constitution's 4th amendment, it  pretty much undermines "qualified immunity" for police.

      Needs a good test case to go to SCOTUS to validate. Watch out for the posse comitatus folks- they think that the local sheriff is the highest authority.

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7. Joe Manchin is looking to pull the ball away from Democrats again. 
    

   Now that it looks like the filibuster, at least in its current form, will be overturned soon, Joe is seeking to keep his inflated importance by saying what he will and won’t support in the “For the People voting rights bill. 

   But he’s pulled this crap before, on gun control. Without his interference, we might have had a Federal background check bill. He blamed Trump. Or Obama. Or both. But we still don’t have a Federal  background check. Thanks, Joe.

   

   Hick, do you really want Joe Manchin to be your BFF in Congress?

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