Trump trade war farm bailout keeps favoring the fat cats

As is noted later in this article, substantial sums are even finding their way to city slickers who wouldn't know how to plant a petunia.

EWG today released new USDA data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that show that the biggest, richest farmers continue to get the most MFP money.

Updated information in EWG’s Farm Subsidy Database show that from Aug. 19 to Oct. 31, MFP payments were about $6 billion, bringing the total for 2018 and 2019 to $14.5 billion. Of the payments since August, the top 10 percent of recipients – the largest, most profitable industrial-scale farms in the country – got half.

Three of these farming fat cats got more than $1 million each. Forty-five got more than $500,000 each, and 514 got more than $250,000, which under the program’s rules is supposed to be the limit any single recipient can get.

The richest of the rich, the top 1 percent of recipients, received 13 percent of payments. That’s an average payment of more than $177,000. But the bottom 80 percent of recipients, including small farmers, got an average payment of $5,136. - Environmental Working Group

This article, from Mother Jones, gets into Democratic presidential candidates' positions on food and farms.

Minnesota will do its own Twin Metals review

From late last week:

Minnesota officials announced Friday that the state will conduct its own environmental review of a proposed copper-nickel mine, rather than join the federal government’s environmental assessment of the project that some say will pollute a pristine wilderness area.

The Department of Natural Resources said a separate process for preparing an environmental impact statement for the proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely will best ensure a credible and neutral review, an announcement that some project opponents said shows the state does not trust the federal government. - KTAR News

I don’t know if this is because those making the calls on this, here in Minnesota, really have serious issues with the whole Twin Metals thing. Or if they’re just looking for more cover, legal and political and whatever else. The answer to that should become apparent at some point.

Deal reached among solar players in Minnesota

Well, I suppose. Given the crap that other Big Energy interests are trying to pull, in Minnesota as elsewhere, I too should probably not be displeased. But my take is that Xcel should have been made to yield further. They can afford it.

Minnesota regulators will allow Xcel Energy to modify a calculation that would have doubled the amount the utility pays to subscribers of newly approved community solar gardens.

As a result of the change, community solar projects authorized in 2020 will likely receive credits nearly 4% higher than in 2019. The Public Utilities Commission recently approved the rate, along with a temporary fix to the “value of solar” calculation Xcel uses to pay subscribers...

The compromise drew praise.

“My impression was that it is a decent outcome for everyone,” said Isabel Ricker, senior policy associate with Fresh Energy, which publishes the Energy News Network. “The rate is going up a little bit for community solar subscribers after declining for several years, and it’s within the range of historical value of solar rates.” - Energy News Network

Trump Ag Sec tells exploited, desperate farmers to get a job

My first thought was that, even for a Trump Cabinet member, this guy really is something else. But that’s wrong. They all have this same mindset. Sec. Perdue is just more willing to be explicit about it.

Dykshorn is exactly the generation of farmer Armstrong asked Perdue about on the taxpayer-funded Sonnyside of the Street podcast: one who entered the business amid a “long, dark tunnel” of low prices. “What kind of words of encouragement do you offer?” Armstrong wondered.

“What we see happening is what farmers have done over the years—many of them have to have off-farm jobs in order to survive during this period of time,” Perdue advised. In other words: get a job. In early October, Perdue delivered a similar lecture to struggling dairy farmers at an industry expo: “In America, the big get bigger and the small go out…I don’t think in America we, for any small business, we have a guaranteed income or guaranteed profitability.” - Mother Jones

Someone gets slammed on Twitter for suggesting progressives need to cool it

I’m not a big Twitter person. But I do use it some. And if you follow, you will get a follow back as long as you’re not a spammer. And unless after you get that follow back you turn around and unfollow later. I do check.

Anyway, I dug this.

In turn, many who fit the description were not going to let the former president—especially a Democrat who swept to power in 2008 on the campaign promise of "hope and change"—get away with the comments without a characteristic retort. On Saturday, the hashtag #TooFarLeft was trending on Twitter.

Political operative Peter Daou, who took credit for launching the hashtag, said: "I launched the #TooFarLeft tag because I've had it with Republicans, media elites, and corporate Dems enabling fascists while denigrating those who seek economic and social justice as 'too far left.'  I'd like to ONCE hear them complain America is too far right." - Common Dreams

Minnesotans vote for school spending at near-record rates

I don’t know how much of this might have to do with a Trump backlash. Trump himself, after all, wasn’t on ballots, and except for an occasional school board race neither were candidates associated with him. But, certainly, one way of assessing the whole Trump thing is as a perverse glorification of ignorance and stupidity, happily pandered to by corporate media.

A full 88 percent of school operating levies on Minnesota ballots passed on (November 5). That’s an approval rate surpassed only in 2015, when Minnesota saw 90 percent approval.

School bond questions — in the form of property tax increases to pay for repairs or new schools — also fared well. More than 7 in 10 passed, which is the third highest rate since the MSBA began tracking school referendums in 1980. - MPR

Vultures target failing Big Coal

One apt term for this situation is "fraught." Scenarios in which, for example, asshole parasites send minimum-wage temp workers down into dangerous mines are by no means inconceivable. On the contrary, they'll do it in an attosecond, if they think they can get away with it.

For years, the coal companies operating on the high plains here were among the best known in the world: Peabody Energy Corp., Rio Tinto, Arch Coal Inc. But as the coal industry contracts, the former giants are being replaced by a different brand of mining firm: virtual unknowns...

Local mine suppliers, already burned by previous bankruptcies, are wary of extending credit to firms they do not know. State and local tax collectors face the prospect of declining tax revenues. Looming over it all is the question of whether the new companies will be able to afford hundreds of millions in reclamation costs needed to clean up some of the largest coal mines in America.

          "It tells you a lot about the coal industry right now," said Robert Godby, an economics professor who studies the industry at the University of Wyoming. "These large mining conglomerates have been replaced by what some people call vulture capitalists. They have less experience; they have less transparency. It used to be what was in minerals' interest was in Wyoming's interest. Now, given where the coal industry is, Wyoming has to be careful about protecting itself."- E & E News

Good luck dealing with the latest Keystone oil spill

You've probably seen some mention of this. This article has key details which have generally not been noted in other, namely corporate media, coverage I've seen.

When the Keystone Pipeline burst last week, half of an Olympic-sized swimming pool’s worth of a particularly dirty fossil fuel spilled into wetlands in North Dakota. And the thick liquid, known as tar sands oil, will be nearly impossible to clean up.

The pipeline project started pumping back in 2010, despite opposition from farmers, indigenous groups, and environmental organizations. It carries oily sludge from the enormous tar sands fields in Alberta, Canada, across more than 2,000 miles of pristine wetlands in the Dakotas, through Nebraska to Patoka, Illinois. And now with this latest spill, some of the worst fears about it have been realized.

The company, TC Energy, formerly TransCanada, projected that the pipeline would spill just 11 times over the course of 50 years, or about once every seven years. Since it started pumping, it’s already spilled large amounts of oil four times. - Vice

Farm bankruptcies jump, thanks to Trump

I say, that title rhymes, did you notice? But this is in fact nothing to be lighthearted and clever about.

A tit-for-tat tariff dispute between the Trump administration and China has piled on pressure in an already strained Farm Belt, leaving an increasing number of growers unable to stay afloat. 

Farmers filed 580 Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings between January and September, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the largest farm advocacy group in the country. That was a 24% increase from the previous year and the highest level since 2011, when there were 676 filings. 

China placed steep tariffs on US farm products last year to retaliate against punitive moves by the Trump administration, adding to challenges for farmers already faced with harsh weather conditions and low commodity prices. Those have sent exports sharply lower and made it difficult for growers to plan the next harvest. - Business Insider