Trump finds another way to hurt renewables and foment climate change

I'm primarily looking to draw attention to the retroactive rent part. The whole article, though, is a well-documented summary of just how criminally awful the Trumpers are on all things environmental.

“Don’t waste a crisis.” This somewhat cynical political axiom has been attributed to many different people, but arguably none have exemplified it quite like President Trump and his allies. Taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, they’ve ramped up efforts to dismantle environmental rules, giving away natural resources and undercut the tools of government that ordinarily allow the public to have some say in what happens to the land, water and air around them...

The Department of the Interior is making it easier for oil and gas companies to avoid making royalty payments when they drill on public lands. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), in particular, has moved to effectively give away publicly held oil by helping companies pause their leases and avoid royalty payments. 

Meanwhile, the BLM is charging retroactive rent to wind and solar energy producers, which have been decimated by the recent economic slump. Trump has a long record of antagonism toward renewable energy. - The Wilderness Society

Unconscionable Trump plans for National Guard deployments

As of this writing there appears to be a decent likelihood that Trumpers will yield to pressure from multiple places, and extend the assignments so personnel get their benefits. But the fact that this was even being considered, as the saying goes, "speaks volumes."

The more than 40,000 National Guard members deployed to states to help in coronavirus relief may end up one day short of qualifying for federal benefits under the Post-9/11 GI bill once President Trump’s executive order deploying them expires on June 24.

An official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said in an interagency call on May 12 reported on by Politico that the guardsmen will face a “hard stop” on June 24 to prevent them from reaching the 90 days of duty credit needed to qualify for early retirement and education benefits. - The Hill

A pending spike in small farm bankruptcies

I'm not saying this is absolutely bound to happen. Neither, actually, are the authors of this. But their rational deduction from the evidence seems to me to have a great deal of validity.

But Barber has only to look a few weeks down the road to see bad news coming. The current model won’t survive the peak summer harvest, says Barber, who for 16 years has run the farm and restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns, about 30 miles northeast of New York City, in addition to the 20-year-old Blue Hill, in Manhattan. Unfortunately, he has numbers to back him up. ResourcED, a project he and his colleagues created to sell market boxes at both restaurants, has launched a survey of small farmers, concentrated at first in the Northeast but expanding coast to coast. Between 30 and 40 percent of them predict that they won’t be able to keep up with increasing volume. They will lose the extra, essential revenue that always comes with a bountiful seasonal harvest. And while most of the farmers grow produce, the same dark predictions hold true for respondents who grow grain and raise animals. The current boom is a sweet illusion; the bust is coming fast.

Where do they expect this to end? Bankruptcy, from which many will not recover. - The Counter

Of course the Trumpers are screwing up farms to food banks

Yes. Whenever and wherever right-wingers get in charge, they do nothing but fuck up everything they touch. That’s a fundamental fact of contemporary life that everyone should understand.

Buying food from farmers who might otherwise be forced to dump it and sending it to people who need food sounds like a win-win. Trust the Trump administration to find a way to insert some lose into it. A program to distribute fresh food boxes to people in need is facing sharp criticism from produce companies after the Trump administration gave big contracts to a number of companies with no real food distribution experience while leaving out many companies that do have the relevant experience.

A Texas event-marketing company named CRE8AD8 (“create a date”) got the seventh-largest contract in the program for $39.1 million. A California “business finance solutions” company got a $16.6 million contract. A company that sells hand sanitizers and lotions in airports got a $12 million contract. Meanwhile, many of the top produce distributors didn’t get contracts. “This deal is destined to crash before it takes off,” a Houston produce distributor who didn’t get a contract told Politico. - Daily Kos

Farmers can try for SBA loans, now, but it won't be enough

It is something, though, and that is a positive.

Last week the federal Small Business Administration (SBA) opened an online portal exclusively for “agricultural enterprises” (read: farmers) to apply for a Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL). For decades prior, farmers had been barred from accessing this low-interest, long-term loan program...

PPP also quickly ran out of funding (since replenished), and many expect the same fate for EIDL given the backlog of requests and the scale of need. Chastang said, “The SBA cannot speculate on when those funds will be exhausted.”

“It’s helpful but it’s not enough,” said NFFC’s Treakle. “This program is going to run out of money and there aren’t enough resources in this particular program to help farmers in need.”

He also expressed concern that farmers who don’t fit the commodity mold—independent, diversified, or organic producers, who sell directly into local and regional markets—will be left out. - The Counter

Gates education "reform" has been a wretched, miserable failure

This article goes on to discuss just what a scam billionaire "philanthropy" is in general.

One of the myriad problems with billionaires like Bill Gates pouring tons of money into reshaping our education system is that people like Bill Gates are not educators. They rarely have even a small amount of education in what education is and should be. The way people like Gates have gone about financing and promoting “education reform” is a good example of their rudimentary misunderstanding of what public education should be. The billionaire philanthropist has used his “charity” to force legislation to filter taxpayer money away from traditional public schools and into the privately funded and run charter school systems that promise better education.

The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports that a new report, studying a partly Gates-funded initiative to use student test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness, is out. That report says what almost every single education expert without a MBA predicted: you can’t, because test scores are not a good way to evaluate educators. The “project” cost municipalities participating in the educational dead end around $360 million. - Daily Kos

Trump threatens Social Security

For some reason we have not really been able to get through to people, seniors in particular, with the realities of this, even as the greedheads have been looking to destroy earned benefits for decades. There has to be a way.

Grassroots advocacy groups representing millions of retirees and seniors across the United States are speaking out against and urging Congress to oppose President Donald Trump's threat to block desperately needed Covid-19 relief legislation if it does not slash the payroll tax, which funds Social Security and Medicare...

"We're not doing anything unless we get a payroll tax cut," Trump said Sunday, just days after vowing to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, said in a statement Monday that Trump's remarks "set off alarm bells for America's seniors and their advocates."

"Make no mistake: by pushing to cut off the program's funding stream, President Trump is taking the first step toward dismantling Social Security," said Richtman. "The president's campaign to eliminate payroll taxes is a violation of his patently false promises to seniors 'not to touch' Social Security. This proposal goes way beyond 'touching.' Choking off Social Security's funding stream is an existential threat to seniors' earned benefits." - Common Dreams

Update: The U.S. Senate isn't into this. The GOP caucus there has terrible ideas of their own.

Small farms are last in line for help, again

Given the Trump/Perdue track record - actually, that of our "governing elites" in general, going back decades - of course they are.

Now, with the global pandemic closing factories and restaurants and disrupting supply chains, already stressed farms are grappling with lower demand and fewer markets to sell in, as well as a presidential administration that favors relief for big businesses over small. Small farmers in particular — those who sell directly to farmers markets, schools, and other local food hubs — are facing an existential crisis, as they face slim odds of accessing competitive federal stimulus money...

“Bailout money always goes to the big farmers, the people who produce soy and crops and sell into commodity markets,” said John Peck, executive director of Family Farm Defenders, a national organization that supports sustainable agriculture. “This is all part of our country’s cheap food policy where we basically subsidize capital-intensive, large-scale industrial farming.”

Farmers who sell directly to consumers or participate in regional food hubs typically don’t rely on federal subsidies.

“Small diversified farmers are pretty effective at doing what they do, which is finding markets and filling them, and haven’t required a lot of support,” said Deeble. “But the flip side is if you’re usually good in normal times and don’t rely much on the government, it can be harder to get government help when you need it.” - The Intercept