Elements of the Inflation Reduction Act are working

Not to reduce overall inflation, of course, because there is nothing in there sanctioning the corporate greedheads that are causing that. But there is some moderately good news on the climate change front.

The report, the ninth edition of Rhodium’s annual emissions assessment, found that the IRA and state-level climate bills that have been signed into law by governors across the country in recent years will drive emissions down between 29 and 42 percent in 2030, compared to 2005 levels. By 2035, greenhouse gas emissions will decrease between 32 and 51 percent. Prior to the IRA’s passage, the nation was on track to cut emissions by 26 to 41 percent by 2035, according to Rhodium’s estimate from 2022. Rhodium called the overall reductions “a meaningful departure from previous years’ expectations for the U.S. emissions trajectory.”

Thanks to the IRA’s subsidies, solar and wind energy are already becoming a lot cheaper: solar by nearly 40 percent and wind by 55 percent. The legislation will also influence the speed with which electric vehicles replace gas-powered cars. In 2035, electric vehicles will comprise between one-third and two-thirds of all passenger car sales, the report said. That’s meaningful progress, but the emissions reductions aren’t steep enough to get the U.S. fully on track to meet its pledge to reduce emissions 50 to 52 percent by 2030 under the Paris Agreement, the 2015 international treaty on climate change that aims to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). - Grist

Ongoing shortages of essential, basic medications

This article nails it, if you ask me.

Patients and their providers increasingly face limited or nonexistent supplies of drugs, many of which treat essential conditions such as cancer, heart disease and bacterial infections. The American Society of Health System Pharmacists now lists over 300 active shortages, primarily of decades-old generic drugs no longer protected by patents.

While this is not a new problem, the number of drugs in short supply has increased in recent years, and the average shortage is lasting longer, with more than 15 critical drug products in short supply for over a decade. Current shortages include widely known drugs such as the antibiotic amoxicillin; the heart medicine digoxin; the anesthetic lidocaine; and the medicine albuterol, which is critical for treating asthma and other diseases affecting the lungs and airways.

What’s going on?

I’m a health economist who has studied the pharmaceutical industry for the past 15 years. I believe the drug shortage problem illustrates a major shortcoming of capitalism. While costly brand-name drugs often yield high profits to manufacturers, there’s relatively little money to be made in supplying the market with low-cost generics, no matter how vital they may be to patients’ health. - The Conversation

Corporate media's flagrant right-wing propaganda on the economy

This could in part be an indicator of how nervous the greedheads are getting, about the GOP's, and even corporate Dems', electoral prospects in coming cycles. With crap like this their mouthpieces are basically sacrificing any chance of gaining younger, more knowledgeable audiences for the long haul.

If you were a casual consumer of the news over the last couple years, you may not have heard much about these success stories. You may, in fact, think that everything has suddenly gone wrong all at once.

And it would be hard to blame you. In the wake of a historically progressive response to an economic downturn, corporate media have been intently focused on the negative...

In this environment, any discussion of Biden’s poor approval ratings on economic policy has to include consideration of the media’s role in manufacturing those ratings. In the wake of the Covid recession, in May 2020, Trump’s disapproval on this measure hit 51%. Biden’s most recent rating is a full 16 points worse, at 67% disapproval. This despite a much stronger economy than in May of 2020—the unemployment rate, for one, is nearly 10 percentage points lower now.

If we want to understand how progressive policy is undermined by a media owned by the wealthy, the experience of the last several years offers a case study. In the wake of robust government intervention in 2020 and 2021 that cut inequality and boosted incomes, especially for those at the bottom, inflation-mania has taken over in the media. - FAIR

Kicking people off Medicaid for big bucks

All health insurers have people whose job it is to find reasons to deny coverage. That's bad enough, but this seems even worse as most of their victims will have no other realistic options.

As more than seventeen million people stand to lose health insurance in the unfolding Medicaid eligibility review disaster, there’s one company licking its lips: Maximus, a little-known federal contractor that is one of the biggest players in privatizing essential government services previously done by civil servants — in particular, taking over states’ capacity to determine who is eligible for Medicaid and who isn’t.

In a February earnings call for shareholders and Wall Street analysts, Maximus’s CEO Bruce Caswell announced that the current nationwide eligibility review of ninety million people on Medicaid and other government health insurance programs “is unprecedented in its scope,” and will allow Maximus “to gain traction in the market.” As a result of the deluge in Medicaid “redeterminations,” Caswell said, “we expect improvement to operating margin.”

The company has accordingly boosted its earnings estimate by $100 million. Maximus’s share price is closing on its all-time high, up nearly 50 percent since October. Caswell earned $6.3 million in 2022.

Outsourcing Medicaid eligibility reviews to Maximus has major implications beyond the company’s expanding bottom line. It also removes essential government services from the realm of public accountability, while draining resources from governments. - Jacobin

Many colleges weren't making much effort at inclusion and diversity, before

Yes, the decision by the ultra-corrupt, extremist Trump SCOTUS is disgraceful. But here's something of a reality check regarding the status quo.

If there is any hope following the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action and overturn more than 40 years of precedent last week, it might be this: Selective colleges and universities are suddenly pledging “unwavering commitment” to access and inclusion.

If only many of them had really made that effort in the first place.

I’m still reading through heartfelt statements from college presidents touting the importance of race-conscious admissions and having people from different backgrounds represented on their campuses.

Yet our years of reporting and collecting data on this issue at The Hechinger Report show little evidence they’ve actually done much to diversify their student bodies, even before the affirmative action ruling. Black student enrollment in colleges and universities has been dropping steadily, while many flagship universities lag way behind when it comes to enrolling their state’s Black and Hispanic high school graduates.

And nearly 700 schools have been raising prices paid by their lowest-income students – who are disproportionately Black and Hispanic – more than the prices paid by their highest-income ones. - The Hechinger Report

Fossil fuel investments cost pension funds billions

Information like this needs to be much more widely publicized. Certainly didn't lead the news for any Minnesota corporate media, that I saw.

For U.S. public pension funds, divesting from oil, coal, and gas would result in overall higher financial value.

That is the key takeaway from a new study examining the past decade’s portfolio performance for several of the largest public pension funds in the country. The analysis by researchers at the University of Waterloo, published (June 27) in partnership with the organization Stand.earth, has found that the total cumulative value of six major U.S. public pension funds would have been about 13 percent higher had they divested from fossil fuel holdings ten years ago – equivalent to around $21 (billion) in earnings. - DeSmog

Deep-sea mining is a horrifying idea

And with other battery designs and far better recycling practices (by law if necessary), we won't need the ores anyway. Of course some people may not get as rich as they intend to be, if it doesn't happen, but so be it.

Rising demand for metals like nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese to make batteries used in smartphones and electric vehicles, along with depleting land-based deposits, has led to increased interest in deep-sea mining. But research suggests that the process of extracting mineral deposits from the ocean floor could destroy habitats and decimate species.

According to a new report from British nonprofit financial think tank Planet Tracker, mining the ocean’s depths could cause as much as 25 times more biodiversity loss than terrestrial mining, reported Reuters. And the financial cost of repairing that damage would be twice as much as extracting it. - EcoWatch