Massive fossil fuels subsidies continue, in spite of it all

In theory, what we could use in this country is nationalization of Big Filthy Fossil Fuels. This would help in getting them phased out more rapidly, and in neutering them politically. Forced buyouts actually wouldn't cost us taxpayers much, if they're done in the manner of the sorts of leveraged buyouts beloved of "free marketers." "In theory" because something so sensible is highly unlikely to happen any time soon.

Imagine a bunch of people who are kidnapped and tortured by being put in a hot room, and their tormentors keep turning up the thermostat. So the prisoners stage a revolt and grab control of the thermostat. But they turn it up on themselves, making the room even hotter, and black out from heat stroke.

It isn’t a very satisfying thriller because the prisoners act in a bewildering way, joining in to torture themselves.

It is, however, the thriller we are living, however bizarre the characters’ actions.

The International Monetary Fund reports that the nations of the globe indirectly subsidized fossil fuels, the sources of dangerous greenhouse gases causing global heating, to the tune of $7 trillion in 2022. In other words, we’re acting like we are brain dead. So report Simon Black, Ian Parry, Nate Vernon at the IMF. - Informed Comment

Artificial intelligence and getting public benefits

I’m still an AI skeptic, at least of many of the claims that are out there. Remember how the internet itself was going to totally remake our lives, like “paperless offices,” the total end of traditional retailing, etc., etc? (Though certainly some people made a great deal of money from pronouncements like that being taken very seriously. Other people lost a great deal of money, too.) We will have to deal with AI, of sorts, in some ways, though.

One critical area that will almost certainly see dramatic changes in the years ahead is that of accessing public benefits programs — a realm already fraught with systemic barriers. While AI brings great potential to streamline burdensome processes and expand access to critical services, it also poses significant risks if deployed without care. As we stand at the precipice of an AI revolution, it’s critical that policymakers, tech companies and advocates work collectively to steer these technologies towards empowering people in need, rather than further isolating them. The promise is real, but far from guaranteed.

These developments come at a moment of growing recognition of how critical a robust, accessible safety net is to building and maintaining a prosperous society. Analysis on the expansion of the child tax credit during the Covid-19 pandemic found that increasing the benefit amount and making it available to more people lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty. In contrast, the addition of work requirements to enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), as proposed by Congressional Republicans early this year, would have reduced enrollment by an estimated 52% if it had been enacted, by making it more difficult for families in need to access the benefits. Given that SNAP is credited with keeping 3.3 million children out of poverty every year, this change would have drastically increased the number of children in poverty. These outcomes have major ramifications, not just for the families involved, but for society at large, as the long-term impact of child poverty has been calculated to cost more than $1 trillion every year. - In These Times

A (probably brief) respite of sorts for the Colorado River water crisis

"A respite of sorts" is far, far from "solved." The latter ain't happening.

The water shortage crisis on the Colorado River is improving, but it’s far from over.

That was the message from the Biden administration on Tuesday, as officials announced they would loosen water restrictions on the river in 2024. Thanks to robust winter snowpack that provided about 33 percent more moisture than the average year, the water levels in the riverʻs two main reservoirs have begun to stabilize after plummeting over three years. This has lessened the need for states in the Southwest to cut their water usage.

The total cuts will be about 20 percent lighter than they were last year, requiring three Southwest states and Mexico to save around 600,000 acre-feet of water — enough to supply roughly 1.2 million homes.

Even so, the administration left some mandatory restrictions in place to account for the fact that the reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are still emptier than they have been at almost any point in history. That’s due in large part to a millennium-scale drought that researchers believe was made much more likely by climate change. And even as federal officials eased up on mandatory restrictions, they were also preparing to dole out billions of dollars to the region’s farmers and cities in an effort to further reduce water usage on the river. - Grist

Yes, it's past time to start getting rid of the bosses

But making it happen is proving to be very challenging. That's no reason to give up, though.

Do our corporate CEOs deserve all those millions they annually pocket? Can a modern economy somehow survive without the “incentive” these mega millions provide? Do we, in effect, need our top corporate bosses pocketing more in a day than their workers can take home in a year?

We’ve been asking — as a society — questions like these ever since CEO paychecks started soaring in the late 1970s. Back in the 1960s, America’s CEOs averaged about 20 times what their workers were taking home. Today’s CEOs, analysts at the Economic Policy Institute detailed last October, routinely pocket 400 times and more what their workers are making...

But that executive greed — despite the spotlight on it — seems as entrenched as ever. And that reality has some analysts going beyond attacking how much our corporate chiefs execs make. These critics are increasingly wondering whether we need these chiefs at all. - CounterPunch

White people are a lot more likely to get murdered in conservative rural areas

This is handy for when you see scaremongering from right-wing media about the crime-ridden Minnesota metro. Though from their perspective I get why right-wing media here does what it does. What else do they have?

The dirty rural secret shown in the latest Centers for Disease Control death tabulations for 2022-23: White people in small towns are 1.3 times more likely to be murdered, 1.3 times more likely to commit suicide, and 1.2 times more likely to die by violent causes than White people living in a big metro like Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, New York, or Houston.

It gets worse. Deadly dangers to White people soar still more if they live in a solid Republican rural area compared to Whites in a solidly Democratic urban one. (Republican and Democrat areas are defined as ones in which one party dominates the governorship and both houses of the legislature and by how counties voted in 2020; “White” refers to non-Hispanic White.)

...Rural White people in Red counties in Red states (no blaming liberals allowed; Republicans run everything) are 1.9 times more likely to be murdered, 2.4 times more likely to be killed by law enforcement (why aren’t rural Whites banding with Black Lives Matter against trigger-happy cops?), and 2.6 times more likely to die by guns than White people living in big-city Blue counties in Blue states run by Democrats at all levels. - Daily Kos

Congress needs to deal with food insecurity in the military

It's no secret that I'm anti-militarist, and that I support massive cuts to the complex, starting with going after waste, fraud, and profiteering. But that doesn't mean servicemembers should get screwed like this.

The military reduced grocery prices at military bases last fall, to an average of 22 percent less than in civilian grocery stores. Bill Moore, director and CEO at DeCA, said the savings for military families should exceed 25 percent for the current fiscal year.

Despite the cuts, many active-duty service members struggle to feed their families. A recent RAND Corporation report found that more than 15 percent of all active-duty military personnel are food insecure...

(Basic Allowance for Subsistence) has risen by 28 percent in the last decade, but accessing healthy and affordable food is still difficult for soldiers, both financially and socially. And while the House and Senate have been debating the limitations of BAS and other military quality-of-life concerns recently, they have yet to make any significant changes. In the meantime, philanthropic charities have been stepping up to respond to the daily needs of military families. - Civil Eats

Death to for-profit health care

This is from the lead article in The American Prospect's current issue, which is devoted to this country's profits way, way before people health care system.

The problem is, because the country essentially lacks any institutions designed to broadly improve public health, our medical advances are funneled through a veritable gauntlet of gatekeepers, distributors, middlemen, subcontractors, loophole-exploiters, conglomerates, and monopolies, all under the watchful eye of Wall Street investors. Managing a hospital or clinic today requires hiring an ever-mushrooming cadre of lobbyists, consultants, and contractors to navigate this confusing new world. The science of health care points to a bright future; the business of health care points directly backwards...

Where is the money for the most expensive health care system in the world going? The cut of gross national health care expenditures commanded by administrative overhead and waste has ballooned to an estimated 30 percent; the portion that pays doctors and nurses has fallen. Experts estimate that fraud comprises at least $10 of every $100 the U.S. government spends each year on health care. And how much does the government spend policing that fraud? In 2021, that figure was two cents, according to the HHS inspector general. Wealth extraction has become so normalized in American health care, it can barely be considered illegal. - The American Prospect

Hospice needs to get back to what it was

This is one of the best examples of how contemptible the for-profit privatizers are.

From the beginning, hospice was as much an ethos as a health care job. The earliest providers were uniformly nonprofit endeavors. With the 1982 advent of full Medicare reimbursement, hospice came to provide exceptional and humane end-of-life ministration, with nurses and counselors prepared for everything from palliative care to bereavement support to spiritual advice for families.

Yet in the last two decades, at first slowly and then in an onslaught, the field of hospice has been transformed. An influx of for-profit operations, drawn to potentially vast profit margins, dominates the field. Now, in some corners, cost-cutting and profiteering are the order of the day, with direct consequences for patients. And of course, Medicare, the public dollar, is underwriting their extraordinary returns.

There are well-operated, humane for-profit hospices, to be sure. But for the more cynical operators — and there are many — compassion, and a peaceful and dignified death, are no longer the care standards; the aim is profit alone. - Truthout