week ending Dec 21

The Fed Will Buy 40% Of US Treasury Net Issuance In 2020 -  With the federal deficit running 22% higher during the first ten months of 2019 compared to the same period last year ($800bn vs. 655bn), student loans and other federal programs which increase the Treasury’s overall borrowing are running somewhat lower. Given the latest numbers, Deutsche Bank estimates Treasury’s total 2019 borrowing will come in at around the same level as 2018, at $1.1 trillion. Looking ahead to 2020, the bank projects the deficit will be $1.01 trillion, assuming similar levels of borrowing for federal loan programs as in 2019 and an unchanged Treasury cash balance. Given these figures, Treasury’s borrowing needs will be around $1.08 trillion in 2020. Looking ahead, Deutsche Bank's Steven Zeng writes that the current auction calendar is well set up to meet Treasury’s 2020 financing needs. Against unchanged coupon auction sizes, the Treasury will raise $830bn in coupon issuance. T-bills will be used to plug the roughly $250bn gap. Bills will represent 23% of next year’s net issuance, just below the 25-33% target the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee has recommended. So who will fund this third consecutive trillion dollar budget? Unlike the last three years during which the Fed was tightening financial conditions, keeping POMO, QE and debt monetization in check, and was engaging in Quantitative Tightening, in 2020, Deutsche Bank calculates that the Fed will buy an estimated $420bn Treasuries through open-market operations, or 40% of net issuance (which includes Bills) as it continues implementing its balance sheet policy of building higher level of reserve balances and returning to an all-Treasury portfolio. In coupon securities, DB estimates the Fed will buy $153bn or 18% of net issuance next year (MBS principal payments are assumed to average out to $15 billion per month and 85% of that amount will be reinvested into coupon Treasuries.)

Fed's Emergency Repo Operation Oversubscribed As Repo Rates Spike To December High -  Ahead of today's massive liquidity drain, which according to some calculations will be as much as $100 billion between $54BN in coupon settlements from last week's Treasury auctions and an additional $50 billion or so in corporate income tax payments to the Treasury...  ... which combined would be as large, if not bigger than the Sept 16 cash transfer to the Treasury which sparked the mid-September repo crisis, last Thursday the Fed announced a "kitchen sink" liquidity tsunami, throwing as much as $500 billion in liquidity backstops in the form of expanded and extended repo and term repo operations, while keeping the Fed's "Not QE" T-Bill monetization chugging along. The first of these emergency repo operations was scheduled for this morning, ahead of the liquidity drain, in the form of a $50 billion, 32-day repo, which took place shortly after 8am, and was once again oversubscribed as there was more demand for liquidity, or $54.25 billion, than there was total supply.Specifically, Dealers submitted $29.850BN in Treasury securities, and $24.4BN in MBS, at stop out rates of 1.56% and 1.58%, respectively, and which both came in more than fully subscribed relative to the $28.759BN in TSYs, and $21.241BN in MBS accepted. This offering, which matures on January17, 2020, was the fourth "turn" repo providing funding past the year-end period.The fact that the operation was oversubscribed was the first indication that banks are once again reserve-constrained and scrambling to procure as much year-end liquidity as they can get their hands on. Whether repo operations in the coming days are oversubscribed will indicate if the Fed's roughly $500 billion in repo ops scheduled for the next 4 weeks will be enough to keep the Fed from losing control over overnight rates, as Credit Suisse repo expert Zoltan Pozsar predicted last week in his now infamous "Countdown to QE4" report.One ominous sign: the overnight G/C repo rate spiked from 1.58% on Friday to 1.69% this morning, the highest print since the end of the November, and the clearest indication yet that despite throwing a kitchen sink of liquidity in the market, some dealers and banks are still having problems getting access to much needed liquidity.  Keep an eye on the repo rate over the next few hours for an indication if today's $100 billion liquidity drain will overpower the Fed's preemptive liquidity tsunami, in effect triggering Zoltan Pozsar's worst-case scenario.

 The Fed Fueled Today’s Liquidity Crisis with One Key Moral Hazard Action -  Pam Martens -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) made the astonishing announcement last Thursday that it will be pumping a cumulative $2.93 trillion into Wall Street trading houses (primary dealers) between December 16 and January 14. That’s on top of the $360 billion of liquidity it is pumping into the markets by buying back $60 billion a month in Treasury bills from its primary dealers. The Fed’s excuse for opening its self-created money spigots to the tune of trillions of dollars to Wall Street’s trading houses – a replay of what it did secretly during the financial crisis of 2007 to 2010 – is that this is simply a technical fix for allowing bank reserves at the Fed to shrink too far. But that is merely a symptom – not the actual disease afflicting the U.S. financial system. The facts on the ground strongly support the argument that the Fed itself created this mess by rubber-stamping bank mergers that allowed five banks (out of 5,000 in existence in the U.S.) to now constitute the core of the U.S. financial system. In a 2015 report, researchers at the federal Office of Financial Research found that the health of the entire U.S. financial system rested on the financial health of just five mega banks: Citigroup, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. Each one of those banks, with the exception of Bank of America, is “supervised” by the New York Fed. Bank of America is supervised by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. (See These Are the Banks that Own the New York Fed and Its Money Button.) According to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the bank holding companies of those same five mega banks, as of March 31, 2019, were sitting on obscene levels of derivative risk: in notional (face amount) of derivatives, JPMorgan Chase held $58.7 trillion; Citigroup had $51.5 trillion; Goldman Sachs Group reported $50.8 trillion; Bank of America held $37.9 trillion while Morgan Stanley sat on $35 trillion. At the time, these five banks represented 86 percent of all derivatives held by the more than 5,000 Federally-insured banks and savings associations in the U.S. Derivatives played a key role in the financial collapse of 2008 and yet neither the Fed nor Congress have reined in the risks. And there is growing awareness that nothing useful or productive in terms of the U.S. economy is being done with these hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives. There is instead substantive evidence that the derivatives are simply being used to provide questionable profits and to manipulate capital requirements at the behemoth banks. The key moral hazard act by the Federal Reserve that set the epic financial collapse of 2008 in motion, and lit the fuse for the Fed’s latest multi-trillion-dollar money spigot to Wall Street, was the Federal Reserve’s approval on September 23, 1998 of the merger of Travelers Group (a large insurance company that owned the investment bank Salomon Brothers and the retail brokerage firm Smith Barney) with Citicorp, the parent of the large, federally-insured commercial bank, Citibank, to form the mega Wall Street “universal” bank, Citigroup. The Federal Reserve approved that merger in stark violation of the Glass-Steagall Act that had prevented federally-insured, deposit-taking banks from merging with investment banks engaged in underwriting and trading in stocks and bonds.

 Fed President's Shocking Admission: "We Need To Be Pretty Focused On Asset Prices, Not Just Inflation" - There was an stunning admission by Boston Fed head Eric Rosengren on Tuesday, when during an audience Q&A after a speech to The Forecasters Club of New York, the voting FOMC member (and chronic dissenter - Rosengren has voted against all three rate cuts made by the Fed this year) the former dove warned that lower rates could encourage excessive risk taking and over-leveraging, which would create great risks during a downturn. More importantly, he confirmed that high asset prices are a direct function of low rates, and thus Fed policy, and it is the Fed that is responsible for not only all prior bubbles, but the biggest one them all: the one right now."I do have concerns about that financial stability. I would prefer probably a different level of rates," the Boston Fed President said, confirming that low rates will eventually result in a financial crisis, and that only higher rates can lead to a final outcome that is not apocalyptic.  Rosengren said that following three rate cuts this year and the launch of QE4, he remains worried that lower rates could encourage corporations to take on excessive risk and borrow too much. The policymaker said companies that are over-leveraged may have to lay off more workers in a downturn, which could amplify losses and cause more damage to the economy.Most importantly, the Boston Fed confirmed what we have been saying all along: the Fed should be worried not just about economic inflation - which remains muted - but also asset prices, which have been gripped by runaway inflation over the past decade."If you look at the last two recessions, they were not situations where inflation got out of control. They were situations where asset prices went way up and then came way down. So if your goal is to avoid recessions, I think we need to be pretty focused on asset prices not just inflation", Rosengren said in a moment of shocking candor and transparency. He was referring, of course, to the chart below which we have shown on many prior occasions, yet which most of Rosengren's peers refuse to admit even exists. Rosengren's conclusion, while spot on, to wit "If what you want to do is avoid recessions in the future, you have to be thinking about what is happening to asset prices as well", will be ignored by everyone, from investors to policy makers, because if the Fed admits that Rosengren is right and the Fed has to start "paying attention" to the hyperinflation it has created across asset prices, then the party is over. It's even worse when considering that the Fed has blown such an asset price bubble in equities and other assets, that the only possible outcome is either for the bubble to burst, or to keep growing exponentially, making the resulting crisis far worse.

Q3 GDP at 2.1% Annual Rate -- From the BEA: Gross Domestic Product, Third quarter 2019 (third estimate); Corporate Profits, Third quarter 2019 (revised estimate): Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the third quarter of 2019, according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.0 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was also 2.1 percent. With the third estimate for the third quarter, upward revisions to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment were offset by a downward revision to private inventory investment. PCE growth was revised up to 3.2% from 2.9% in the second estimate. Residential investment was revised down to 4.6% from 5.1%.   Here is a Comparison of Second and Advance Estimates.

Q3 GDP Third Estimate: Real GDP at 2.1% - The Third Estimate for Q3 GDP, to one decimal, came in at 2.1% (2.12% to two decimal places), an increase from 2.0% for the Q2 Third Estimate. Investing.com had a consensus of 2.1%.  Here is the slightly abbreviated opening text from the Bureau of Economic Analysis news release: Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the third quarter of 2019 (table 1), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the second quarter, real GDP increased 2.0 percent.The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was also 2.1 percent. With the third estimate for the third  quarter, upward revisions to personal consumption expenditures (PCE) and nonresidential fixed investment were offset by a downward revision to private inventory investment. [Full Release] Here is a look at Quarterly GDP since Q2 1947. Prior to 1947, GDP was an annual calculation. To be more precise, the chart shows is the annualized percentage change from the preceding quarter in Real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product. We've also included recessions, which are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Also illustrated are the 3.21% average (arithmetic mean) and the 10-year moving average, currently at 2.34%. Here is a log-scale chart of real GDP with an exponential regression, which helps us understand growth cycles since the 1947 inception of quarterly GDP. The latest number puts us 13.5% below trend. A particularly telling representation of slowing growth in the US economy is the year-over-year rate of change. The average rate at the start of recessions is 3.35%. Four of the eleven recessions over this timeframe have begun at a lower level of current real YoY GDP.

Third-quarter GDP left at 2.1% — stronger consumer spending offset by weaker business investment  - The pace of growth in the U.S. economy was left at 2.1% in the third quarter, as strong consumer spending was offset by weaker business investment in inventories, in the final estimate from the Commerce Department on Friday.  The data showed frothier consumer spending than previously reported in the period running from July to September, but the increase in inventories, or unsold goods, was also marked down to leave GDP unchanged. The increase in consumer spending, the main engine of U.S. economic growth, was raised to a 3.2% annual pace from 2.9%, which was not quite as strong as the second quarter’s heady 4.6% rate but still very robust.Americans spent more in the third quarter on services such as financial advice and personal care, revised figures show. Business investment didn’t decline quite as much as the earlier estimates revealed, but it was still negative. Investment in structures fell 2.3% vs. a prior 2.7%. The decline in spending on equipment was lowered to 9.9% from 12%.  More notably, the change in the value of inventories was to reduced to $69.4 billion from a previous $79.8 billion. That’s mainly why GDP wasn’t revised higher despite stronger consumer spending.Adjusted pretax corporate profits, meanwhile, were revised to show a 0.2% decline instead of a 0.2% increase. Profits have fallen 1.2% in the past year, suggesting that business investment is unlikely to accelerate much anytime soon. Most other figures in the report on government spending, trade and inflation were little changed.The economy has slowed this year after growth revved up in 2018 to a 13-year high. And it’s expected to soften some more next year, stunted by a weaker global economy and ongoing trade tensions with China that have hurt U.S. manufacturing and investment.  Economists polled by MarketWatch predict GDP will taper to 1.5% in 2020 from an estimated 2.3% in 2019 and 2.5% in 2018 (based on fourth quarter to fourth quarter changes). Other estimates put growth a bit higher next year. A far-reaching trade deal with China could goose the economy a bit more, but probably not my much.

Final Q3 GDP Revision Unchanged At 2.1%: All Growth Comes From US Consumer Spending - The final revision of Q3 GDP came in as expected, at 2.1%, and unchanged from the second revision, rising fractionally from the 2.0% in Q2.  While overall GDP growth was unrevised from the second estimate, upward revisions to consumer spending and business investment were offset by a downward revision to inventory investment. Some more details:

• Personal Consumption was came in at 3.2% annualized, above the 2.9% in the prior revision and above the 2.9% expected if below the 4.6% in Q2, and contributed 2.12% of the bottom line GDP print of 2.1%, indicating the consumer was once again the major driving force behind GDP.
• Fixed Investment was revised modestly lower, from -0.18% to a -0.14% detraction from GDP - the first consecutive drop in investment since 2009.
• Nonresidential fixed investment, or spending on equipment, structures and intellectual property fell 2.3% in 3Q after falling 1% prior quarter
• Private inventories were unexpectedly revised back into negative territory, subtracting -0.03% from GDP, after adding 0.17% in the prior revision.
• Net trade shrank modestly, from -0.11% to -0.15%.
• Government spending rose fractionally, up from 0.28% to 0.30%.

As has been the case in recent quarters, personal consumption has been the sole driver of US economic growth. While the economy grew just as expected, inflation remained subdued, with the GDP price index rising 1.8% in 3Q after rising 2.4% prior quarter, and in line with the 1.8% expected. Meanwhile, Core PCE rose 2.1% in 3Q, unchanged from the prior revision, after rising 1.9% prior quarter; Finally, corporate profit growth ground to a halt in Q3, declining at a 0.2% quarterly rate in the third quarter, revised from a 0.2% increase, after rising 3.8% in the second quarter:

1 Big Winner and 1 Big Loser From Congress’s Year-End Spending Deal - Christmas came early on Capitol Hill as lawmakers racing to finalize a nearly $1.4 trillion year-end deal to fund the government through September 30 loaded up their must-pass 2,300-plus-page package of spending bills with enough policy goodies to make sure almost everybody gets something to show off over the holidays. The House on Tuesday passed two packages comprising the 12 required annual spending bills, sending them to the Senate, which is expected to approve them before leaving for the holidays. “The number of issues handled in this bill is stunning. It contains major changes in health care policy, extends flood insurance, reauthorizes the Export-Import Bank for seven years, extends the terrorism insurance program and reauthorizes money to rebuild the Kennedy Center, and so much more,” Politico’s Playbook noted.   Republicans get to tout a $22 billion increase in defense spending, among other things, while Democrats can point to $25 million in federal funding for gun violence research, $425 million in election security grants and a $208 million increase for the Environmental Protection Agency.  As part of the whirlwind dealmaking, congressional leaders and White House officials reached a late-night agreement Monday to extend some tax breaks through 2020, with longer extensions for provisions covering biodiesel production and short-line railroad maintenance.“The deal would renew numerous tax provisions that either expired at the beginning of 2018 or this year, or were set to expire as of Jan. 1, 2020,” Roll Call reports. “They include deductions for mortgage insurance premiums, college costs and large medical expenses; excise tax breaks for craft brewers and distillers; credits for employer-paid family and medical leave, investors in low-income communities, and faster depreciation for racehorses and motor sports complexes, among others." Democrats failed to get some of what they had pushed for, though, including an expansion of tax breaks for renewable energy and electric vehicles and tax credits for low-income families.In all, the package passed by the House Tuesday would increase spending by $49 billion over fiscal 2019 and raise deficits by $391 billion over 10 years, while the agreement to extend some lapsed or expiring tax breaks and other provisions will cost about $54 billion more.  The repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance, medical device and “Cadillac” health plan taxes was a massive win for the health care industry. The industry also got at least a temporary reprieve on two other key issues as Congress failed to pass major legislation addressing surprise medical bills and prescription drug prices.  The relatively small group of lawmakers and budget watchdogs concerned about the rapid rise of the federal debt and deficit took it on the chin … again. Washington analysts had long forecast that deficit-financed increases in both defense and non-defense spending, as agreed to by Congress in July, was the surest path to a bipartisan budget deal for fiscal year 2020. But the burst of year-end dealmaking raised projected deficits significantly.The repeal of three taxes meant to help pay for the Affordable Care Act combined with Congress’s renewal of a bundle of tax extenders will add $500 billion to the federal budget gap over 10 years once added interest costs are factored in, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — and that’s on top of the effects of the 2017 tax cuts and the additional spending from the two-year budget deal passed this summer.  CRFB President Maya MacGuineas tweeted, “What a bucket of garbage this bill is.”

188 Democrats Vote for Trump’s Bloated Defense Budget - The Real News Network, transcript & video - Wednesday night, the United States Congress passed a $738 billion defense bill. That’s $20 billion more than last year, and $120 billion more than under Obama. Now, 180 Democrats voted for it, along with most of the Republicans. Now, that vote was interesting. 41 Democrats, 6 Republicans, and 1 Independent voted no. But this bill is a hugely comprehensive bill that gives Trump his Space Force, and gives the green light to more wars without end. To put this in perspective, Poor People’s Campaign leader, Liz Theoharis, said in The Nation that we give $34 billion in this bill to Lockheed Martin, which we’ll talk about during the course of this conversation, but nothing, in this Congress, for 140 million people living in poverty or the 40 million people facing food insecurity across the country, let alone what we need for our teachers, schools, and building a new green economy.  So how do we respond? What does this mean for the future? What are the next steps? What happens in the US Senate? And we are joined by Hassan El-Tayyab, who is legislative representative for Middle East policy for the Friends Congressional National Legislative Committee.

Senate sends $1.4 trillion spending package to Trump - The Senate on Thursday passed a $1.4 trillion spending package to fund the government through the rest of the fiscal year, averting a second government shutdown in 2019. Senators broke the package into two chunks, passing the first measure in a 71-23 vote before an 81-11 vote on the second bill that included funding for the Pentagon. The two bills now head to President Trump’s desk, where White House officials have indicated he would sign it before the end of the day Friday, when current funding expires. The Senate vote caps months of negotiating that blew past the beginning of the 2020 fiscal year on Oct. Congressional leaders said this week that the alternative to a massive spending deal would be another stopgap continuing resolution (CR) — which would extend fiscal 2019 funding levels. “A lot of hard work brought this appropriations process back from the brink,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “This legislation touches all 50 states. This is why full-year funding bills are better than chronic CRs.” The 12 appropriations bills were broken into two packages because of Trump's threat to not sign another omnibus, when all the bills are rolled into one piece of legislation. The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed the pair of bills, with the first passing on a 297-120 vote and the second passing 280-138. The eight-bill package passed earlier Thursday by the Senate will eliminate the 2010 Affordable Care Act's "Cadillac tax," as well as an annual fee on health insurance providers and the medical device tax. And in a major victory for Democrats, the package will also provide $25 million to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health for gun violence research. The second part of the package includes funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); Department of Defense, Commerce, Science and Justice; and Financial Services and General Government. The DHS bill includes $1.375 billion for physical barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, the same amount that was included in the fiscal 2019 bill. It also leaves the number of detention beds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement flat; in a win for the White House, the measure imposes no restrictions on Trump’s use of emergency powers to reprogram defense funds toward his border wall. The wall has become a perennial sticking point in government funding negotiations during Trump's presidency. A protracted fight led to a record 35-day partial shutdown that started in December 2018 and ended with Trump declaring a national emergency to win more money. Fiscal conservatives railed against the massive spending package before its passage.

Senate Sends Mammoth $738BN Defense Bill To Trump's Desk, Creating Space Force - The U.S. Senate has joined the House of Representatives in passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020, and it will now go to the White House where President Trump is expected to sign it into law. The Senate passed the massive $738 billion defense spending bill on Tuesday, which as we previously noted when it cleared the House last week, also officially establishes the president's much sought after 'Space Force' as a sixth branch of the military.A second package of bills is expected to also go speedily through both bodies of Congress before the Senate leaves for the holiday, with the White House indicating Trump will sign them both into law. The Senate vote was 86-8 in favor of the mammoth NDAA, which passed after a significant compromise, as The Hill summarizes:  The $738 billion bill — which authorizes spending and lays out policy guidelines for the Pentagon — includes a high-profile deal that grants federal employees 12 weeks of paid parental leave in exchange for creating Trump’s "Space Force." The bloated budget did receive backlash from senate fiscal conservatives, however. The Hill continues:  But the trade off for paid parental leave — and the large tab — earned the defense policy bill backlash from fiscal conservatives in the Senate.  Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) argued that the bill included “bad compromises” that had “nothing to do with the national defense.” Though the DoD initially requested $72 million for the Space Force in 2020, and the NDAA authorized that, the spending bill actually only allocates $40 million.The administration previously said it expects the newly established Space Force to cost $8 billion over the next 5 years, so clearly the NDAA funding appears severely "limited" in that regard.

Trump signs bills to avoid shutdown, scrap Obamacare taxes and raise tobacco buying age - President Donald Trump signed bills Friday to prevent a government shutdown and make major changes to U.S. health policy. The president approved the $1.4 trillion appropriations package with only hours to spare before funding lapsed Saturday. The legislation, which boosts funding for both domestic programs and the military, keeps the government running through Sept. 30. In a statement from the White House press office, Trump said, “The government funding bills I just signed into law contain big victories for my Administration and the American people. They enable us to continue to advance our pro-growth, pro-worker, pro-family, America First agenda.” The sprawling bills go beyond just preventing a shutdown. They scrap some taxes used to fund the Affordable Care Act, including the “Cadillac tax” on high-cost plans. They also hike the age for tobacco purchases to 21. The package came together after Congress had to pass two short-term plans to keep money flowing to federal departments earlier this year. Lawmakers passed legislation to suspend the U.S. debt limit and set budget levels for two years, but they struggled to decide where to appropriate the money.

The Space Force has gone from joke to reality - When the Trump administration first proposed the Space Force as the sixth branch of the United States military in June 2018, many people were undecided whether the idea was an atrocity or a joke. On the atrocity side, some analysts believed that the Space Force constituted a dangerous plan to militarize space. On the joke side, social media became littered with images from Star Wars and Star Trek. Netflix even greenlit a “workplace comedy” called “Space Force.” The United States Space Force transitioned from joke to reality recently when the House authorized its establishment as part of a defense authorization bill. Remarkably, a considerable number of Democrats voted for the bill that contained the Space Force. They did so in return for a provision that allowed for a 12-week family leave for federal workers. Thus, a space-faring, war-fighting military service was born, thanks to good, old-fashioned backroom wheeling and dealing. More importantly, the Space Force became a reality with the help of Democrats who at the same time were hell bent in impeaching the president who proposed and championed it in the first place. The United States Space Force is starting out modestly. Personnel to fill out its organization will have to be recruited. The Space Force will have to develop what it needs to accomplish its main mission of keeping the peace in space. Its goal is to not just become a force that can wage war beyond the Earth but to deter war, to demonstrate to enemies of the United States that attacking its space assets would be folly. A space war with both sides attacking the satellites of the other would be catastrophic for both parties. The Space Force will be an expression of peace through strength. It will develop ways to defend against attacks on America’s space infrastructure while placing that of an enemy at risk of destruction.

Opinion: What Amazon is really accusing Trump of doing in JEDI deal  - Much of the coverage of Amazon.com Inc.’s appeal of the $10 billion-a-year JEDI contract focused on President Donald Trump’s antagonistic tweets and statements about Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, but as is typical in this administration, the actions taking place in secret amid the tweets are much more important. As impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill debate whether Trump abused his power as president to investigate a political opponent, Amazon’s complaint argues that Trump’s public bias against Bezos led him to compromise a major government contract for the Department of Defense. The timeline Amazon laid out includes the firing of a defense secretary, shifting requirements for the contract to specifically target Amazon Web Services, and a sham recusal at the last minute by the official Trump put in charge amid his demands for the contract to go to anyone but Amazon. The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI, contract has been full of controversies from the outset, with Oracle Corp. and International Business Machines Corp. alleging last year that it was tailored specifically for Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest provider of public cloud services. AWS did not end up winning the contract despite its perceived and actual advantages, however, and filed a sealed complaint with the Court of Federal Claims last Thursday to protest the Pentagon’s October decision to award the contract to Microsoft.    A redacted version of the complaint was unsealed on Monday and outlines a scenario in which former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis was fired by Trump after the president directed Mattis to “screw Amazon,”  While searching for a replacement, Trump’s public statements showed that he expected the new cabinet member to do what Mattis would not, Amazon says.  President Trump directed his newly appointed Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper (who replaced Secretary Mattis after President Trump claimed to have ‘essentially fired’ Mattis following repeated clashes with the president’s leadership), to conduct an ‘independent’ examination.” A week after being sworn in, Esper officially ordered a re-review of the JEDI contract process, which Amazon says was already changing.

U.S.-led pressure fractures as China, Russia push for North Korea sanctions relief - (Reuters) - A proposal by China and Russia to ease U.N. sanctions on North Korea increases pressure on the United States and signals what is the likely end of unified efforts to persuade Pyongyang to give up its growing nuclear and missile arsenal. On Monday China and Russia proposed that the United Nations Security Council lift a ban on North Korea exporting statues, seafood and textiles, and ease restrictions on infrastructure projects and North Koreans working overseas, according to a draft resolution seen by Reuters. The plan comes at a crucial moment - just weeks before the deadline set by North Korea for Washington to offer more concessions - and highlights deepening divisions over how to engage with North Korea. Russia and China, which both wield veto power on the Security Council, were key votes in imposing the sanctions in recent years under the “maximum pressure” campaign championed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration. The United States says it would be premature for the U.N. to consider lifting sanctions right now and has called for North Korea to return to the negotiating table. Since North Korea and the United States established a detente in 2018, however, both Moscow and Beijing have increasingly voiced support for easing sanctions. Now, the official proposal represents a new level of public pressure on the United States, analysts said. Last week, China’s ambassador to the U.N. said a major cause of the deadlock and rising tensions was a failure to respond to “positive steps” taken by North Korea toward denuclearisation. “The Russia-China initiative at UNSC is likely coordinated with Pyongyang as the proposal reflects North Korea’s demands to be rewarded for the concessions it has already taken,” said Artyom Lukin, a professor at Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok. “Pyongyang’s recent threats of escalatory action are now backed by the Sino-Russian diplomatic offensive.”

North Korean-US tensions rise as end-of-year deadline approaches - Efforts by the US Special Representative for North Korea Stephen Biegun to meet with senior North Korean officials failed this week, opening up the danger that tensions on the Korean Peninsula could rapidly escalate. North Korea has set a deadline of the end of the year for the US to engage in meaningful negotiations that would see an easing of crippling American and international sanctions on Pyongyang, in return for its steps towards denuclearisation. The Trump administration has effectively ignored the deadline since it was announced in April. Biegun, who arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a three-day visit, had been pressing to meet North Korea’s First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui at Panmunjeom in the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. However, Pyongyang did not respond to the request, even though Biegun intended to hand over personal messages from Trump to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a senior South Korean intelligence official told the Korea Times. The US diplomat had made a public appeal on Monday for talks. . Biegun declared it was “regrettable” that recent North Korean statements towards the US were “so hostile and negative” and that its weapons tests were “most unhelpful.”   In reality, the US has the most to gain by stringing out negotiations that began with the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore in June 2018 where they agreed in general terms to denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. All of the punitive sanctions remain in place that severely limit North Korea’s imports and exports, while the US has simply suspended major joint military exercises with South Korea. Despite Biegun’s claims that the US is offering to be flexible, it has not dropped its insistence that North Korea must dismantle its nuclear arsenal and production facilities before any easing of sanctions takes place. Washington has also rejected Pyongyang’s proposal that the two countries begin negotiations to formally end the 1950–53 Korean War that concluded with an armistice, but not a peace treaty. Washington’s refusal to grant any economic relief effectively ensured that the second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi in February broke down. A brief meeting between Trump and Kim in the demilitarised zone in June and talks in Sweden in October between Biegun and North Korean diplomat Kim Myong-gil failed to break the deadlock.

Last-ditch attempt to stop Nord Stream 2: US Senate passes Pentagon budget that includes Russian pipeline sanctions -The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act just approved by the US Senate includes a bill sanctioning companies involved in building the almost-finished Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.The “Protecting Europe's Energy Security Act of 2019” embedded in the 3,500 page NDAA was proposed by Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), who argued the pipeline would “vastly strengthen President Vladimir Putin at the expense of the rest of the free world.”Penalizing the companies involved in installing the pipeline will “have protected Europe's energy security and prevented Putin from leveraging billions of dollars that could be used to fuel Russian aggression,” Cruz argued last week, when it was clear the bill would be included in the compromise version of the bill negotiated with the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.The final vote was 86 in favor and 8 opposed, with six senators not voting. The massive NDAA allocates almost $740 billion to US “defense” programs, ranging from the construction of the wall on the US-Mexico border to the establishment of US Space Force as a new branch of the military. It now goes to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature.Cruz and Shaheen’s sanctions target the specialty ships laying the pipeline on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, but it is unlikely they will manage to stop the completion of Nord Stream 2. The pipeline is down to one last stretch near the Danish island of Bornholm. Once finished, it will double the capacity for Russian natural gas deliveries to Germany and allow Moscow to bypass Ukraine and Poland in delivering gas to Europe – if it so wished. Moscow has already said it would not halt gas transit through Ukraine, however.

Erdogan Threatens Recognition Of 'Genocide' Of Native Americans In Tit-For-Tat - Is this how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to "get back" at Washington for the recent US bill that recognizes the 1915 Armenian Genocide? Last month he had warned Trump directly of dire consequences if the term "genocide" is formalized in US law. And now, according to The Independent, Erdogan says Turkey could in turn give legal recognition to the mass killing of native Americans by European settlers and American colonists in the latest tit-for-tat move against the Congressional resolution. “Can we speak about America without mentioning [Native Americans]? It is a shameful moment in US history,” Erdogan said in a televised interview this week, raising the threat of a reciprocal measure. Theoretically such Turkish legislation would mean the Turkish government could not associate itself with any event or institution which involved denial of the 'genocide' of native Americans.

How Biden Kept Screwing Up Iraq—Over and Over and Over Again  - In September, former Vice President Joe Biden attempted to portray himself as an opponent of the Iraq war he voted for 17 years ago.   Sure, as a U.S. senator, he voted to authorize the war, Biden told an NPR interviewer who asked about his foreign policy judgment. But that was only after Biden got a “commitment” from George W. Bush, the war’s architect, that the former president “needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program.” Alas, he continued, “before we know it, we had a shock and awe”—the opening aerial bombardment of the March 2003 invasion—and then “immediately, the moment it started,” Biden opposed the war. His mistake, he said, was trusting Bush.  Much like Donald Trump’s own flexible history on Iraq, it was bald revisionism that a wag might call malarkey. Journalists and fact-checkers quickly calledattention to the persistence of Biden’s support for the war. Biden soon conceded he misspoke and at a Democratic debate, called his vote a mistake. But all that had the effect of obscuring Biden’s distinct and—now that he’s running for president again—relevant history with Iraq. Reviewing Biden’s record on Iraq is like rewinding footage of a car crash to identify the fateful decisions that arrayed people at the bloody intersection. He was not just another Democratic hawk navigating the trauma of 9/11 in a misguided way. He didn’t merely call his vote for a disastrous war part of “a march to peace and security.” Biden got the Iraq war wrong before and throughout invasion, occupation, and withdrawal. Convenient as it is to blame Bush—who, to be clear, bears primary and eternal responsibility for the disaster—Biden embraced the Iraq war for what he portrayed as the result of his foreign policy principles and persisted, most often in error, for the same reasons.

 Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Held Secret Meetings With Maduro Government - As if recent Washington regime change efforts in Venezuela weren't already shady and murky enough, enter the prince of off-the-books black ops and covert dirty tricks himself:  Erik Prince, a private security mogul with ties to the Trump administration, held secret talks in Caracas last month with Venezuela’s vice president after briefing at least one senior U.S. official on his plans, according to people familiar with the situation.  Even though Prince was earlier publicly on record (as recently as April) pushing a plan to use thousands of mercenaries to back coup efforts in favor of US-recognize 'interim president' Juan Guaido, this latest effort revealed in the Bloomberg report appears an unconventional change in tactic by the Trump administration — a possible private back-channel opening of sorts via Prince — perhaps realizing Maduro is here to stay as Washington loses confidence in Guaido's prospects. In Caracas Prince had "proposed a business deal and urged freedom for six imprisoned Citgo executives in the meeting with Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, according to one of the people." It's possible the efforts made headway, given those employees were released to house arrest from prison last week. Rodriguez is an outspoken close ally of Maduro and is under US sanctions. Details of just what the ultimate goal is of Prince's personal intervention remain unclear, but Maduro was reportedly briefed on the matter. The meeting was held on either Nov. 20 or 21, according to a separate report in Reuters.  Among proposals discussed included, according to the report, Prince's suggestion of "sending personnel to train the nation’s police force as well as protecting judges and political candidates to help pave the way for new presidential elections." So it's perhaps part of a new 'unofficial' US administration effort to begin slowly dealing with Caracas, in hopes of influencing a political outcome? The other interesting context to the revelation is that VP Delcy Rodríguez is a sanctioned individual, meaning discussion of any business arrangement with her without authorization is against US law (not that Prince was ever overly concerned with that).

Where Trump and the Deep State are in Lockstep: Torture - It’s a paradox of impeachment politics. As President Trump faces charges of high crimes and misdemeanors in Congress, he denounces the alleged “deep state” cabal out to get him. His campaign is running a powerful online ad about the supposed conspiracy. It features footage of former CIA director John Brennan and former acting director John McLaughlin at a recent event in Washington. I had a memorable encounter with Brennan at the event, so I know what he’s talking about. No one has demonized the CIA leadership more effectively than Trump.Yet on the CIA’s most controversial policy—torture—the president backed the agency’s leadership (including Brennan and McLaughlin) to the hilt. In October 2017, Trump caved to CIA demands on a more symbolic question—JFK assassination files. Trump approved continuing JFK secrecy. On two issues where the CIA was vulnerable, Trump actually protected the deep state agency that he supposedly scorns. Trump and CIA Director Gina Haspel share at least one belief: torture is a policy option that any commander in chief should consider without undue moralism. I don’t believe in Trump’s concept of a “deep state.” It’s simplistic and riddled with factual falsehoods. I do think the CIA is a political factionthat wants to defeat the president for reasons of its own. Trump may approve of torture. The agency hands want to get rid of him anyway. Scott Roehm, director of the Center for Victims of Torture’s D.C. office, points out that Don McGahn, Trump’s White House counsel, was so disturbed by Gina Haspel’s torture resume that he wanted the president to withdraw her nomination: “Trump not only disagreed but ‘actually liked this aspect of Haspel’s resume.’ He thought her support for torture ‘was an asset, not a liability.’ In fact, Trump apparently asked Haspel whether waterboarding ‘works,’ and she replied she was ‘100 percent sure’ that it did.  The story of the CIA’s torture regime is well told in the new movie “The Report,” starring Adam Driver.  In reality, Trump’s approval of the torture program (like his deal on JFK secrecy) suggests his demonization of the so-called “deep state” is opportunistic. The president, based on past performance, will reach tacit understandings with the secret agencies when it suits their mutual needs. And, as he struggles to save his presidency, he may do so again.

China to buy additional $32 billion in U.S. farm goods over two years, sign deal in January: USTR - (Reuters) - China has agreed to buy $32 billion of additional U.S. farm products over two years as part of a phase one trade pact, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told reporters on Friday, adding the deal would be signed the first week of January. As part of the agreement, Beijing agreed to buy roughly $16 billion more in American agricultural products in each of those years, adding to the 2017 baseline of $24 billion, Lighthizer added, but Beijing agreed to strive for some $5 billion in additional purchases each year. That would add up to the $40 billion to $50 billion in added Chinese agriculture purchases that President Donald Trump had promised when he first announced the agreement on Oct. 11. Overall, China had committed to important structural changes and to buying $200 billion more in U.S. goods and services over two years, focused on four areas - manufacturing, energy, agriculture and services, Lighthizer said. The agreement, hammered out in detailed negotiations between the two sides over the past two months, ends 17 months of tit-for-tat tariffs that have roiled financial markets and dragged global growth lower.

Mixed reviews for US-China partial trade deal - A US-China “first phase” trade deal has been hailed as a significant breakthrough and welcomed by global financial markets, but questions remain over the deal’s enforcement and whether subsequent phases on more substantial issues can be agreed in the foreseeable future. US President Donald Trump hailed the hard-fought agreement, which will gradually rollback American tariffs on certain Chinese imports just days before a new raft of now-suspended 15% levies were set to come into effect on about $160 billion worth of Chinese goods, as “an amazing deal for all.” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi echoed Trump’s assessment, saying on Saturday that the deal is “good news for all” and will “provide stability in global trade.” But weighed against the high economic costs already wrought by the trade war, witnessed in slowing global economic growth, critics have already panned the agreement for delivering little structural change to Chinese economic and trade practices Trump has persistently deemed as unfair. The Trump administration initiated its trade war against China in 2018 with the stated aim of closing America’s massive trade deficit with Beijing, which hit $419 billion that year. That deficit actually widened in the first nine months of 2019, to nearly $500 billion. The bilateral deal announced on December 13 appears to bring Trump’s White House closer to that goal, with new Chinese purchasing commitments reportedly expected to reduce the deficit by $419 billion. China has committed to boost purchases of US agriculture products by $32 billion over two years under the deal, politically important sales for Trump as he bids to shore up rural electorate votes ahead of next year’s presidential election. The agreement envisions Chinese purchases of US farm goods of averaging around $40 billion total per year, compared to a baseline of $24 billion in 2017 before the trade war, which falls short of Trump’s past demands that Beijing buy $50 billion worth of US farm goods annually. According to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, China has agreed to make further efforts to increase its agriculture purchases by $5 billion annually to bring the total closer to $50 billion. China has also agreed to boost its purchases of American manufactured goods, energy and services worth at least $200 billion over the next two years.

Is The Trump Trade War Over? - The basic problem is that Trump has long wanted to beat up on other nations in a trade war; but now he is getting impeached, he needs positive news, and the stock markets like words of his making trade deals. So we get his trade deals, but it is all sort of a mess.  So there are two matters here. One involves China, discussed in a new post here by pgl, which I shall comment on later. But my quick take on it is his having made essentially similar proclamations in May, April, and even Dec. 2018. Sure, China will buy lots of US ag products and will respect intellectual property rights.  The number of times the latter has been promised, I have lost count of.  As for the former, well, Trump is still trying to pay off his farmer losers of his trade deals with US taxpayer money.  So, the item not mentioned by pgl, although I know he is knowledgeable on this, is the USMCA, or NAFTA++ whatever number.  The situation with this has become completely absurd. So on the day the House Judiciary committee called for impeachment of Trump, House Speaker Pelosi came out for a modified version of Trump’s USMCA.  Several changes were made, including putting a limit on pharma price protections and a demand for Mexicans to allow union organizing. There were nine other minor changes from the earlier versions. Anyway, it was enough for Pelosi to get the AFL-CIO to support it. She supported it.  So now McConnell and GOPs in the Senate do not support it. They do not like anything the AFL-CIO supports?  Given that Trump wants this, I am really quite mystified.  I do not know what is going on here on this weird Senate opposition to this deal. Just to review, this deal is mostly just the old NAFTA.  Some of it is an improvement and it needed updating.  Most of the changes in it were simply TPP items that both Canada and Mexico had previolusly agreed to.  This included most of the environmental and labor changes in the deal, which is not a problem for Can and Mex.  Curiously one of the recently revised views by House Dems undoes part of the TPP deal, which involved major protection for US pharma, with this being undone by the Pelosi/House Dems revision.  I am not sure if this is the item that has McConnell upset or the matter of demanding that Mexico allow more union organizing. As for the China matter, well, the new statement does not look all that much different from the May, April, and Dec. 18 statements. Wow. We shall have China respecting US intellectual property rights and will buy lots of US ag products. Some tariffs will be reduced, but not many. Not much here, and the stock market yesterday barely moved.

Unpacking The No Deal Not a Trade War Trade War Deal  - Having been subjected to such a barrage of horrendous trade war analysis that seems more like literary therapy for the politically frustrated than actual deal analysis, I have opted to write my own analysis of the deal.  I will as studiously as possible try to avoid or limit any political opinionating, and stick strictly to the analyzing the deal points within the USTR Fact Sheet and providing what are the likely trade offs, risks, and perspective about each points. Let’s get started.

1. This deal is about a lot more than agriculture.  The USTR specifically lists IP protection, tech transfer, agriculture, financial services, currency, expanding trade, and dispute resolution as the major areas. One report in the news quoted a source as saying there were 9 chapters which would come close to matching these general areas. Even within the broader trade purchase aspect, agriculture is not even the main area.
2. Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer.  The two paragraphs on IP and tech transfer in the USTR statement provide scant detail but use relatively ambitious language with regards to Chinese commitments.  In IP, China will “address long standing concerns”.  In tech transfer, the language is even more ambitious saying China “agreed to end its long-standing practice of forcing or pressuring foreign companies to transfer their technology to Chinese companies as a condition for obtaining market access, administrative approvals, or receiving advantages from the government” and “commits to provide transparency, fairness, and due process in administrative proceedings and to have technology transfer and licensing take place on market terms” and “commits to refrain from directing or supporting outbound investments aimed at acquiring foreign technology pursuant to industrial plans that create distortion.”
3. Agriculture and Expanding Trade.   The language in the USTR Fact Sheet says China will “import various U.S. goods and services over the next two years in a total amount that exceeds China’s annual level of imports for those goods and services in 2017 by no less than $200 billion.” For simplicity sake, in 2018 Chinese imports of US goods and services totaled $180 billion according to the USTR.
4. Financial Services and Currency. China also agreed to open its financial services industry and not manipulate its currency specifically “refrain from competitive devaluations.” Couple of points worth noting. First, many will rush to point out China has already started opening up its financial services sector. Reading between the lines, it is not conspiracy level thinking to say that China engaged in those reforms in anticipation or in cooperation with the US side so that it would be sold as a domestic political reform rather than a concession.  Second, currency management is a tricky issue because there are so many ways to view the same exact issue.
5. Dispute Resolution. There is a short paragraph on dispute resolution and creating regular bilateral consultations.  The detail is too scant to make any real declarations or analysis of this, but it is interesting to note and will be interesting to see if this becomes a more regular forum to manage disputes.

Donald Trump’s ‘soybean solution’ to the US-China trade war is much ado about nothing - US President Donald Trump’s chief trade negotiator Robert Lighthizer told the US House Ways and Means Committee on February 27 that any final agreement between the United States and China would be specific, measurable and enforceable at all levels of the Chinese government and that he had no interest in a “soybean solution”. But it appears that the so-called phase one deal was exactly that. At the onset of the trade war, I had dinner with the US representative of a major Chinese state-owned company. He casually remarked: “Don’t worry, Trump and Xi [Jinping] will strike a private deal between the two to support their respective domestic political agenda. It will be largely a show.” And what a show it has been. Cynics in the US and China have always argued that Trump would end the trade war whenever he felt he could declare victory to his voters. If this is the case, it is hard to imagine that the Trump administration would rock the boat by headlining the more difficult “phase two” negotiations in an election year. Graham T. Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?, said he spoke to Chinese officials during a trip to Beijing soon after Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 summit in Argentina, and learned that, after carefully studying the negotiation of the US-Mexico-Canada New Trade Agreement (USMCA), the Chinese concluded that there was only a 10 to 15 per cent difference between the old North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement and the new deal. Given this, the Chinese would not be likely to satisfy more than 15 per cent of the “hundreds” of US trade representative’s demands of China. US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat cheerleader of Trump’s hardline approach to China, was not impressed by the recent US-China accord. He tweeted: “President Trump has sold out for a temporary and unreliable promise from China to purchase some soybeans. Once again, President Trump cannot be relied upon to the do the right thing for American workers and businesses.” Lighthizer said China has agreed to raise its annual purchases of US agricultural goods to between US$40 billion and US$50 billion annually over the next two years. But US Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said China was reluctant to put the promise into writing. Apart from the uncertainty surrounding the agreed terms of the deal, the other deliverables also fail to excite trade observers: China has already announced it will further open up its financial services sector and its new foreign investment law will come into effect on January 1, 2020.

COLUMN-Tough for China to buy enough U.S. crude, coal, LNG and soybeans: Russell - (Reuters) - The big, unresolved question from the initial trade agreement between the United States and China is what happens if Beijing cannot meet the massive jump in required commodity purchases. While the agreement is a welcome development in de-escalating tensions between the world’s two biggest economies, it apparently makes commitments that China will find almost impossible to fulfil. Beijing has agreed to increase purchases from the United States by $200 billion over the next two years over and above the level of imports in 2017, according to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. China imported about $130 billion in U.S. goods and $56 billion in services in 2017, prior to the start of President Donald Trump’s tariff dispute in 2018. While there is scope to boost China’s imports of U.S. manufactured goods and services, it’s clear that the heavy lifting will have to be in commodities, namely agricultural items such as soybeans and hogs, and energy such as crude oil, coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG). It’s here that the maths becomes really tricky for the proposed initial trade deal, and it becomes apparent that even with the best will in the world, Beijing will struggle to meet the additional $200 billion target. One of the best hopes of boosting China’s imports is crude oil, given the shale boom has made the United States the world’s top producer and given a readily available stream of crude available to ship from the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, China’s imports of U.S. crude were steadily rising prior to the start of the trade dispute, only to plummet as the tit-for-tat tariff war escalated. The best month for Chinese imports of U.S. crude was June 2018, the month before the tariff war started, when 466,000 barrels per day (bpd) arrived at Chinese ports. The average for the first six months of 2018 was 344,000 bpd, according to Refinitiv vessel-tracking and port data. Assume a near tripling in China’s imports to around 1 million bpd, and this delivers an annual revenue of about $21.9 billion, assuming an oil price of $60 a barrel, which is in line with the current West Texas Intermediate futures price of $59.85. LNG was another promising growth area of U.S. exports to China prior to the trade dispute, with 25 cargoes carrying a total 1.73 million tonnes of the super-chilled fuel arriving in the first six months of 2018. Assume a tripling of this rate, annual imports would be 10.4 million tonnes, which would represent about 20% of China’s total current level of LNG imports. At current Asian spot prices LNG-AS of around $5.65 per million British thermal units, this would equate to about $302 per tonne of LNG, meaning 10.4 million tonnes would be worth about $3.14 billion.

China Plans to Buy Ethanol, Count Hong Kong Trade in U.S. Pledge - Further details are emerging on how China would increase imports from the U.S. by as much as $200 billion over the next two years in order to meet its commitments under the phase one trade deal announced last week. That accord, yet to be officially signed, includes reaching purchases of $40 billion to $50 billion per year in agricultural commodities, a level some analysts have doubted is feasible. To help attain that figure, Beijing plans to restart purchases of ethanol by lifting or waiving trade war tariffs on the fuel, said people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing the plans. In addition, China is considering re-routing trade that currently passes through Hong Kong to mainland ports, the people said. That could enable around $10 billion a year in goods transshipped there from the U.S. to be directly booked in the mainland, boosting the tally. The U.S. does not count shipments that go through Hong Kong as part of its trade with China. Leaders are carefully weighing how to approach addressing the so-called entrepot trade via Hong Kong, as it would be a further blow to the city’s embattled economy and risks worsening political tensions there, one of the people said. China’s Ministry of Commerce did not immediately respond to a fax seeking comment. China will also grant more regular waivers on retaliatory tariffs to local buyers of U.S. farm products including soybeans and pork, the people said. In November, China lifted its ban on U.S. poultry shipments as part of trade negotiations, with the U.S. estimating exports would top $1 billion a year.

Column: Can China actually buy $40 billion or more worth of U.S. farm products? - (Reuters) - One of the main features of last week’s “Phase One” trade deal between the United States and China was China’s alleged commitment to purchase a sky-high amount of U.S. agricultural goods, though market participants are highly skeptical, and with good reason. U.S. officials said China’s annual purchase of U.S. farm products would jump to between $40 billion and $50 billion over the next two years, as much as double the pre-trade war values. Such an anomalous increase is already extremely suspect, but unfortunately for hopeful market-watchers, Beijing has been unwilling to confirm it plans to purchase any specified amount of American agriculture. Moreover, China has recently emphasized its desire to purchase U.S. farm goods based on market conditions, which is how agriculture trade generally works in the global marketplace. China does not want to hurt its domestic market by dumping an unnecessary supply of American goods on its consumers. Chinese officials did mention in a press conference on Friday that a notable increase in U.S. agricultural purchases was planned, but what would it take to reach or surpass $40 billion, and is that even feasible? China’s vice minister of agriculture said in Friday’s news conference that the country’s 2018 agricultural imports from all suppliers totaled $137.1 billion. Some $16.23 billion of that was from the United States. Between 2015 and 2017, China’s U.S. farm imports were closer to $24.2 billion per year, according to the vice minister. U.S. records show the maximum annual export value of agricultural products to China was just under $26 billion in 2012.  Ethanol is considered a related product, for example, and the maximum U.S. export value to all destinations was $3.3 billion in 2011. The maximum to China was $313 million in 2016, though many market-watchers believe U.S. ethanol is a great candidate for additional Chinese purchases. But soybeans are the big-ticket item in terms of U.S. ag exports to China, and nothing else even comes close. In the 10 years prior to the trade war, about 60% of the total exported value of U.S. farm products to China came from soybeans. U.S. soybean exports to all destinations were valued at $21.5 billion in 2017. Without a substantial increase in soybean exports, it is hard to imagine that all other exports could make up enough ground to come within firing distance of the $40 billion target. Not only is Chinese soybean demand softer than in years past due to the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in its hog herd, but it already has a reliable soybean supplier in Brazil.

China Won't Rush Into Buying US Farm Products Under Phase One Deal, Warns US Trade Advisor - Tom Kehoe, an adviser to the US Department of Agriculture and US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, said the Chinese aren't going to rush into agriculture purchases under the phase one deal, reported the Shanghai Morning Post.   "These are businesspeople," Kehoe said. "They are going to have to be in a competitive situation. Otherwise, they are not going to buy it." Kehoe said the Chinese had been more frequently sourcing farm products from Brazil and Argentina, where currencies have been weakened thanks to the global slowdown. Shown below, there's an abundance of vessels carrying farm products from South America to China versus a relatively quiet North America.  Spot prices for US farm products have been elevated this month, due to the prospects of a trade deal.   A stronger dollar, hovering above the 97-handle, has also made US farm products more expensive than the rest of the world.  Chinese importers are businesspeople - they need to make a spread, and will certainly not overpay for US farm products while they can buy the same products in South America for a discounted price.  China stressed last week that its agriculture buys will be based on market conditions and will source agriculture products from the US and other countries.  ".. while the Ministry of Commerce (Mofcom) statement outlined 'six priorities, plus one', including 'properly dealing with China-US trade disputes', there was not a single mention of the deal, nor did the ministry expand on that aim." https://t.co/1jigDmV5mu  Beijing has promised to purchase $16 billion annually in commodities on top of the pre-trade war level of $24 billion and could buy as much as $50 billion annually, Lighthizer said last week. There's just one problem: as explained by former USDA Chief Economist and USTR ag negotiator, Joe Glauber, Beijing's promise to quadruple US agricultural purchases to $50 billion is impossible (a detailed explanation can be found on the thread below).

The Big Hole In The China Trade Agreement - There's something missing from the "Phase One" trade agreement with China, announced Friday. And it's something critically important. Yet, Larry Kudlow, President Trump's director of the National Economic Council, appeared not to know about it afterwards."We will see," said Kudlow in response to Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures," her Fox News Channel show, as she asked him about Beijing's new "cybersecurity" rules. "There's a large IP chapter in this deal and there's also a large forced technology transfer chapter in this deal. I don't think we know enough about these new Chinese rules and we'll have to look at that and by the way if they do violate them of course we will take action." Bartiromo was referring to two sets of Chinese rules.

• On December 1, Beijing implemented the Multi-Level Protection Scheme 2.0, issued pursuant to the 2016 Cybersecurity Law.
• On January 1, China's Cryptography Law becomes effective.

These measures prohibit foreign companies from encrypting data so that it cannot be read by the Chinese central government and the Communist Party of China. Businesses will be required to turn over encryption keys. Companies will not be able to employ virtual private networks to keep data secret, and some believe they will no longer be allowed to use private servers. Together, these measures allow Beijing to take all the data and communications of foreign companies. Beijing's complete visibility into the networks of foreign companies will have extremely disadvantagious consequences. For instance, Chinese officials will be permitted, under Chinese law, to share seized information with state enterprises. This sharing means the enterprises will weaponize the information against their foreign competitors.Moreover, China's officials, once they have encryption keys and access to the China network of a foreign firm, will be in a good position to penetrate the networks of that firm outside China. Therefore, Beijing will soon steal data stored on foreign networks and put companies, like Nortel Networks, out of business or ruin them to the point where Chinese entities can buy them up at reduced prices. Do we really want the Fortune 500 to be owned by China? Judging from Kudlow's nonspecific response to Bartiromo and his admission of not knowing much about "these new Chinese rules," the administration apparently has not considered the linkages between them and the trade deal. If that is indeed the case, the Phase One deal will be pointless. Anything — information, data, communications, trade secrets, or technology — protected under its terms will nonetheless be available to Chinese authorities pursuant to the December 1 and January 1 rules.

Exclusive: U.S. finalizing rules to limit sensitive tech exports to China, others - (Reuters) - The Trump administration is finalizing a set of narrow rules to limit exports of sophisticated technology to adversaries like China, a document seen by Reuters shows, in a boon to U.S. industry that feared a much tougher crackdown on sales abroad. The Commerce Department is putting the finishing touches on five rules covering products like quantum computing and 3-D printing technologies that were mandated by a 2018 law to keep sensitive technologies out of the hands of rival powers. Before drafting the rules, Commerce sought industry comment last year on a raft of high-tech sectors that it could cover under the law, from artificial intelligence technology to robotics. That fueled concerns among U.S. businesses the department would craft broad, tough regulations that would stymy a host of exports to key customers. But the internal status update seen by Reuters shows for the first time that Commerce is finishing a first batch of rules that touch on just a few technologies that will be proposed to international bodies before taking effect, a reprieve for U.S. companies. “Based on their titles, the rules appear to be narrowly tailored to address specific national security issues, which should go a long way to calming the nerves of those in industry concerned that the administration would impose controls over broad categories of widely available technologies,” said Kevin Wolf, former assistant secretary of commerce for export administration.

 House approves Trump's USMCA trade deal amid shadow of impeachment - The House on Thursday passed a bill to implement President Trump’s overhaul of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), advancing a crucial piece of his economic agenda with strong bipartisan support. The bill to enact Trump’s United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) passed 385 to 41, with 38 Democrats, two Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) voting against the deal. The measure now moves to the Senate, where it is expected to pass after the chamber concludes Trump’s impeachment trial. The USMCA’s passage in the House marks one of the most significant bipartisan breakthroughs in a bitterly divided Congress. The resounding bipartisan vote comes less than 24 hours after the House voted almost exclusively along partisan lines to impeach Trump, who is unlikely to be convicted and removed from office by the GOP-held Senate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) announcement last week that Democrats had reached a deal with Trump to pass USMCA was just an hour after telling the country her caucus would introduce articles of impeachment against the president. Despite the shadow of the House’s indictment, Trump and lawmakers in both parties hailed USMCA as a boon for U.S. workers, manufacturers and farmers. "Due to Democrats' misguided obsession with impeachment, they neglected moving forward on this pro-worker and pro-growth trade agreement for far too long," said Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), ranking Republican on the House Ways and Committee. "Nonetheless, today I am so encouraged that we're here finally moving forward."

I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it - Fifteen years ago, as the American Jewish Committee’s antisemitism expert, I was the lead drafter of what was then called the “working definition of antisemitism”. It was created primarily so that European data collectors could know what to include and exclude. That way antisemitism could be monitored better over time and across borders. It was never intended to be a campus hate speech code, but that’s what Donald Trump’s executive order accomplished this week. This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself. The problem isn’t that the executive order affords protection to Jewish students under title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Department of Education made clear in 2010 that Jews, Sikhs and Muslims (as ethnicities) could complain about intimidation, harassment and discrimination under this provision. I supported this clarification and filed a successful complaint for Jewish high school students when they were bullied, even kicked (there was a “Kick a Jew Day”). But starting in 2010, rightwing Jewish groups took the “working definition”, which had some examples about Israel (such as holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel, and denying Jews the right to self-determination), and decided to weaponize it with title VI cases. While some allegations were about acts, mostly they complained about speakers, assigned texts and protests they said violated the definition. All these cases lost, so then these same groups asked the University of California to adopt the definition and apply it to its campuses. When that failed, they asked Congress, and when those efforts stalled, the president.Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and special adviser, wrote in the New York Times that the definition “makes clear [that] Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. I’m a Zionist. But on a college campus, where the purpose is to explore ideas, anti-Zionists have a right to free expression. I suspect that if Kushner or I had been born into a Palestinian family displaced in 1948, we might have a different view of Zionism, and that need not be because we vilify Jews or think they conspire to harm humanity. Further, there’s a debate inside the Jewish community whether being Jewish requires one to be a Zionist. I don’t know if this question can be resolved, but it should frighten all Jews that the government is essentially defining the answer for us.

Southern Poverty Law Center report highlights abusive conditions in US immigration detention centers - The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released a report on Monday titled “Prison By Any Other Name: A Report on South Florida Detention Facilities" detailing the enormous growth in the detention of immigrants, the rise of the private detention center industry, and the abusive conditions immigrants face when detained in these facilities. SLPC Report The report was based on a comprehensive study of four adult immigrant detention facilities in southern Florida, one operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), two by county governments, and one by the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison companies in the US, which is also headquartered in south Florida. There are approximately 2,000 immigrants detained in Florida on any given day, and over 55,000 in the US as a whole. That figure is up from 30,000 people per day five years ago. The SPLC report makes clear that conditions for immigrants in ICE custody, many of whom have not been convicted of a criminal offense, are no better than for an average American prison inmate. The SPLC interviewed five percent of the inmates at the prisons they studied. One inmate who contracted hepatitis—according to the inmate, from eating unwashed food—was not seen by a doctor until four months after arriving at ICE’s Krome Service Processing Center. At Monroe County Detention Center, an inmate discovered a friend who had a history of strokes dead one day in his cell, after he was denied a request to go the sick bay. After a female inmate at Glades County Detention Center was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she recounted that ICE did not schedule a follow-up appointment with a doctor for almost a month. A gay inmate at GEO Group’s Broward Transitional Center was harassed for his sexuality to the point that he attempted suicide. “I don’t know what’s worse, this or death,” he said. Such are the most egregious stories of the fraction of the inmates the SPLC spoke to. That such stories could be found at every facility the SPLC examined testifies to the prevalence of these conditions and the fact that they are the outcome of deliberate polices pursued by the Trump administration. The report also reveals that preventative medical and dental care is near non-existent, and that in practice inmates rarely received anything more than ibuprofen or Tylenol to treat pain, and then only in cases of intense pain. Inmates with broken bones and cavities reported those painkillers being the full extent of their treatment. Solitary confinement, acknowledged by the UN to be a form of torture, is a common practice used by ICE as a cure-all for inmates deemed to be problematic or uncooperative. Of those the SPLC spoke to, about one in five was or had previously been in solitary.

BlueCross BlueShield, Cigna, Optum file reverse public records suits to stop release of price information - Three large health care companies who contract with the state to administer the state’s employee health care plan have filed lawsuits to prevent the Department of Finance and Administration from releasing payment information. They claim the release would reveal confidential price information that they have negotiated with health care providers for certain medical and health procedures — information that they say is proprietary though the state pays the bills through its self-funded plan. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and Cigna filed separate actions in federal court on Friday (BlueCross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Inc. v. Lee et al, Cigna Health and Life Insurance Co. v. Lee et al), claiming that the release of state payment information would violate federal antitrust laws (the Sherman Act) and the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Optum, which provides an employee assistance program and behavioral health organization services for the state’s health care plan, filed a lawsuit in state court, claiming violation of the state trade secret laws, among other claims. The suits are known in public records circles as “reverse public records” lawsuits because they are suits by third parties against a governmental entity to preemptively prevent the release of government information to public records requesters. In some cases, the third party also files suit against the requester. They can be particularly pernicious because oftentimes there is no one representing the public’s interest in protecting access to public records and open government in these The state attorney general’s office, represented by Deputy Attorney General Janet Kleinfelter, did not oppose the companies’ requests for temporary restraining orders to prevent information release. Two TROs were issued by judges on Friday, the same day the suits were filed. District Judge Eli Richardson granted a temporary restraining order in the BCBST case. Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle granted a temporary restraining order on Friday in the case filed by Optum in state court.

Appeals Court Strikes ObamaCare Mandate, Sends Case Back To Lower Court -A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that ObamaCare's individual mandate is unconstitutional but punted on the larger question of what it means for the rest of the health law.The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans remanded the case back to a federal judge in Texas to decide just how much of the rest of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), if any, is also unconstitutional."The rule of law demands a careful, precise explanation of whether the provisions of the ACA are affected by the unconstitutionality of the individual mandate as it exists today," the judges wrote for the majority.The 2-1 ruling is a victory for the coalition of 18 conservative attorneys general as well as the Trump administration, which endorsed the challenge and declined to defend the law in court.The ruling keeps the legal threat to ObamaCare alive and could push the ultimate decision on the case past 2020. However, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D), who is among those defending the health care law, vowed to challenge the ruling to the Supreme Court, meaning it could still decide to hear an appeal before the 2020 election.  "California will move swiftly to challenge this decision because this could mean the difference between life and death for so many Americans and their families," Becerra said in a statement.  It takes only four votes at the Supreme Court to hear the case, but legal experts aren't sure if the court would take up a case that isn't final. The ruling is not the complete victory the Trump administration had been hoping for, and it keeps Republican lawmakers in the hot seat. The lawsuit has proved to be a headache for congressional Republicans seeking to turn the page on their efforts to repeal ObamaCare after the issue helped Democrats win back the House in 2018's midterm elections.  President Trump on Wednesday, though, cheered the ruling. "Today’s decision in Texas v. Azar is a win for all Americans and confirms what I have said all along: that the individual mandate, by far the worst element of Obamacare, is unconstitutional," Trump said in a statement.

The Writing Is on the Wall for Obamacare - That’s the headline of an article that just went live at The Atlantic. Here’s a taste: In an opinion blending arrogance and cowardice in equal measure, a Texas appeals court ruled yesterday that the Affordable Care Act contains a constitutional flaw—and that most or all of the law may have to be scrapped. But the court was coy about just how much of the law has to go, and punted that decision back to the same judge who, last December, declared the entire law invalid.What happens next is uncertain. The Supreme Court might choose to hear the case, Texas v. United States, right away, setting up a constitutional showdown that could become the centerpiece of the 2020 presidential election. Or the justices could wait until the lower court rules, leaving the fate of Obamacare in limbo for years.Neither outcome is good. And it’s all completely unnecessary. The case is a partisan stunt that’s been roundly condemned by lawyers on both sides of the aisle. It should’ve been laughed out of contention long ago. The opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is an embarrassment, both to the Republican-appointed judges who put their names to it and to the federal judiciary as a whole. Read it here!

A National Disgrace’: Trump Proposes Social Security Change That Could End Disability Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands --Yves here. I am posting this because the public comments period on the proposed rule change to make it more difficult to remain eligible for Social Security disability benefits is open till January 31, 2020. Please weigh in! Link here. Activists are working to raise public awareness and outrage over a little-noticed Trump administration proposal that could strip life-saving disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people by further complicating the way the Social Security Administration determines who is eligible for payments.The proposed rule change was first published in the Federal Register last month but has received scarce attention in the national media. Last week, the Social Security Administration extendedthe public comment period on the proposal until January 31, 2020.Alex Lawson, executive director of the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works, toldCommon Dreams that the rule change “is the Trump administration’s most brazen attack on Social Security yet.”“When Ronald Reagan implemented a similar benefit cut, it ripped away the earned benefits of 200,000 people,” Lawson said. “Ultimately, Reagan was forced to reverse his attack on Social Security after massive public outcry—but not before people suffered and died.”Patient advocate Peter Morley, who lobbies Congress on healthcare issues, called the proposal “a national disgrace.”“This is not over,” said Morley. “We will all need to mobilize.”The process for receiving Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is already notoriously complicated, and the Trump administration is attempting to add yet another layer of complexity that critics say is aimed at slashing people’s benefits.As The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week, “those already receiving disability benefits are subject to so-called continuing disability reviews, which determine whether they are still deserving of compensation for an injury, illness, or other incapacitating problem as their lives progress.”Currently, beneficiaries are placed in three separate categories based on the severity of their disability: “Medical Improvement Not Expected,” “Medical Improvement Expected,” and “Medical Improvement Possible.” People with more severe medical conditions face less frequent disability reviews. The Trump administration’s proposed rule would another category called “Medical Improvement Likely,” which would subject beneficiaries to disability reviews every two years.

Trump’s Food Stamp Cuts Will Be Devastating to Trump Country - Earlier this month, the US Department of Agriculture finalized new restrictions on eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, which provided food assistance to 40 million people in 2018. Millions of low-income families, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities access this vital benefit. Under the new rule, which goes into effect in April 2020, work requirements for the 700,000 SNAP users who are labeled as “able-bodied” adults without any dependents (ABAWD) will be tightened, potentially leaving them without access to the program and pushed deeper into poverty. But an unintended consequence of this measure is the damage that it will do to rural communities and the grocery stores they rely on. “SNAP is one of the best government programs out there,” Kip Yoss, who owns and operates two  grocery stores in rural Missouri, told the Daily Yonder, a news source for rural America. “It really helps us pay our utilities, our workers, and keep the doors open.” The USDA is estimating that small grocers will lose $177 a month on average, which is a lot for grocery stores operating on razor-thin margins. “SNAP users help grocery stores’ bottom line,” says David Procter, director of Kansas State University’s Rural Grocery Initiative. According to a report fromCivil Eats, a news organization that reports on America’s food system, SNAP cuts will mean that places as different as Detroit and rural Alaska could suffer. In Detroit, two different grocers told researchers that SNAP makes up 80 percent of their business. In rural Alaska, according to Eater, a food news site, for some village grocers, SNAP benefits make up 40 percent of their profits. Oregon Food Bank CEO Susannah Morgan estimated that the state stands to lose $18 million in revenue at grocery stores and agricultural production.

 Three Republican-appointed white men are now deciding whether you have rights on the job --Yesterday marked the end of Democratic National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Member Lauren McFerran’s term. McFerran ended her term offering the lone dissenting voice in the Trump board’s efforts to slow down union elections to give employers more time to campaign against the union, give employers the ability to make unilateral changes without bargaining with their workers’ union, weaken remedies when employers break the law, and more.McFerran is the former Chief Labor Counsel for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP Committee) and is widely respected by both labor and management. Her departure leaves a second open seat on the board that the Trump administration is tasked with filling. However, the Trump administration has not yet acted to nominate McFerran for a second term, nor has it nominated a Democrat to fill the other vacant Democratic seat that has been open since August 2018. The failure of the Trump administration to act is not for lack of a qualified nominee with widespread support. Former deputy general counsel and longtime NLRB career attorney Jennifer Abruzzo has reportedly been under consideration.As a result, the NLRB has only Republican appointees for the first time in its 85-year history, and the three Republicans are all white men—two lawyers who represented corporations before coming to the NLRB, and one former Republican congressional staffer. There is no Democratic appointee to offer alternative views on workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), or to issue dissenting opinions when the Trump board goes off track. And there are no women or people of color participating in these decisions, even though women and people of color make up the majority of workers. EPI previously reported on the unprecedented rollback of workers’ rights happening at the hands of these three NLRB appointees. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the nation’s largest business lobby—is 10 for 10 in winning action on its top 10 “wish list” for the Trump board. Unfortunately, things are likely to get worse, not better. With no Democratic appointee there to provide an alternative or dissenting viewpoint on the Trump board’s actions, we are likely to see a continued rollback of workers’ rights under this bedrock statute that, after all, is supposed to protect workers’ rights.

The progressive prosecutor movement is great — but without funding public defenders it won’t work -- America is in the middle of a justice reform revolution. From California to Texas to Massachusetts to Florida voters are electing reform-minded prosecutors to reverse failed tough-on-crime policies. In the few weeks alone, voters in San Francisco elected a new DA and three prosecutors across Virginia were all elected under the banner of reform. Yet, to fully realize these reforms, public defenders must be part of the solution. But after decades of neglect and inadequate funding, many public defender offices are a shadow of what they should be. The Supreme Court ruled 56 years ago that those charged with certain crimes who cannot afford to hire a lawyer are entitled to counsel provided by the government. But what may seem obvious — that if people are entitled to free lawyers, the government must fund such lawyers — has not had obvious results.  Instead, we have allowed an indigent defense funding crisis of massive proportions to develop across our country. In multiple states, studies show that the typical public defender has at least two to three times the workload they should in order to provide an adequate defense. A 2013 study showed that defenders in New Orleans had only 7 minutes to prepare for each new case. Up to 90% of people charged in our criminal system are indigent, yet public defenders across the country are devastatingly overburdened and under-funded. The situations in Missouri and in New Orleans have made recent headlines, illustrating just how deep we have allowed this problem to go.  This crisis has gained growing attention, as pundits and politicians, including the Democratic candidates for president, ascribe the situation crisis status. An isolated item on nearly every platform for criminal justice reform — and at the center of legislation proposed earlier this year by Kamala Harris — is indigent defense funding.  Advocating for fully funded public defenders falls squarely into the prosecutors’ duty to uphold justice. This is because our criminal system disproportionately impacts Black and Brown people and it is thus a straightforward matter of racial justice; because public defenders are taking on caseloads in staggering amounts, leaving little to no time or resources for investigation, mitigation or the quality of assistance that our courts have already decided is required; because real people are pleading guilty or being wrongfully convicted because of this overburdening; because lawyers who want to serve their communities through public defense often cannot remain in their jobs because of the combination of crushing educational debt and low salaries and minimal benefits; and because community trust is eroded when public defenders are not able to fully serve their clients.  Public defenders are on the front lines of the devastation wrought by our system of mass criminalization and they are guided by an unwavering dedication to the very people being devastated. The failure to fund them is part and parcel of the very same culture that allows excessive fines and fees  to beimposed on the poor and money bail systems to flourish in courthouses around our country. It’s time that the people claiming to want reform — including a new wave of prosecutors and hopeful prosecutors around the country — advocate for the resources that are essential to making real change happen.

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case On Ban Against Homeless Sleeping In Public Spaces - The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in a case originating from Boise, Idaho, that would have made it a crime to camp and sleep in public spaces. The decision to let a ruling from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stand is a setback for states and local governments in much of the West that are grappling with widespread homelessness by designing laws to regulate makeshift encampments on sidewalks and parks. The case stems from a lawsuit filed nearly a decade ago. A handful of people sued the city of Boise for repeatedly ticketing them for violating an ordinance against sleeping outside. While Boise officials later amended it to prohibit citations when shelters are full, the 9th Circuit eventually determined the local law was unconstitutional. In a decision last year, the court said it was "cruel and unusual punishment" to enforce rules that stop homeless people from camping in public places when they have no place else to go. That means states across the 9th Circuit can no longer enforce similar statutes if they don't have enough shelter beds for homeless people sleeping outside. Los Angeles attorney Theane Evangelis, who is representing Boise in the case, argued the decision ultimately harms the people it purports to protect because cities need the ability to control encampments that threaten public health and safety. "Cities' hands are tied now by the 9th Circuit Decision because it effectively creates a Constitutional right to camp," Evangelis told NPR in an emailed statement. Major West Coast cities and counties with soaring homeless populations had backed Boise in its petition, including Los Angeles County, where the number of people without a permanent place to live has jumped by 16% in the past year.  The homeless and their advocates say ticketing homeless people does nothing to solve the bigger housing crisis."Paying lawyers six figures to write briefs is not really going to build any more housing," said Howard Belodoff, a Boise civil rights attorney.

 Senate confirms 13 Trump judicial nominees in end-of-year sprint - The Senate confirmed more than a dozen Trump judicial picks this week as the chamber raced to wrap up its work for the year. The Senate confirmed one of the judicial nominees on Wednesday and additional 12 on Thursday as part of an hours-long vote series. "I'm proud that the Senate came together today to confirm more well-qualified nominees and to pass major legislation for the American people," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said after the massive voting streak, which also saw the chamber passing funding legislation. The back-to-back days of nomination votes brings the total number of Trump court picks confirmed by the Senate to 187, including two Supreme Court nominees. Republicans have put a premium on confirming Trump's judicial nominees, including setting a record for the number of appeals judges confirmed during an administration's first two years. They confirmed Trump's 50th circuit court nominee last week. But McConnell has dedicated increasing floor time to the district court picks, as circuit court vacancies have been shored up. In addition to the 13 confirmed this week, the Senate also confirmed eight district court picks in three days earlier this month. The quick succession of confirmation votes hasn't gone unnoticed by progressive outside groups, who worry McConnell is using the chamber to stack the courts with young, conservative judges. Republicans changed the rules earlier this year so that district court judges only require two additional hours of debate after overcoming a procedural hurdle. Before the rules change they faced up to an additional 30 hours of debate. "While all eyes were understandably on impeachment, Mitch McConnell's conveyor belt churned out a shocking number of judges this week in what remains the most underrated story of the Trump era," Demand Justice chief counsel Christopher Kang said in a statement.

Comey admits ‘I was wrong’ on FISA conduct, remains defiant on dossier in tense interview - Former FBI Director James Comey admitted on "Fox News Sunday" that the recently released Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the launch of the FBI’s Russia investigation and their use of the surveillance process showed that he was "overconfident" when he defended his former agency's use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This comes days after Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report and testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee detailed concerns that included 17 “significant errors and omissions” by the FBI’s investigative team when applying for a FISA warrant to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Horowitz referred “the entire chain of command” to the FBI and DOJ for “how to assess and address their performance failures” during the probe, which was conducted while Comey was in charge. "He's right, I was wrong," Comey said about how the FBI used the FISA process, adding, "I was overconfident as director in our procedures," and that what happened "was not acceptable."Horowitz did make it clear that he believes the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference and possible connections with the Trump campaign was properly initiated, but he did note that this is based on a “low threshold.” He also concluded that there was no testimonial or documentary evidence to show that the investigation started due to any political bias, but said the issue of bias “gets murkier” when it comes to the various issues with the FISA process.That process included the reliance on information gathered by former British spy Christopher Steele as part of opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS for the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign. Horowitz’s report stated that government attorneys were hesitant to approve a FISA warrant application until they relied on unverified information from Steele. That information also was used in subsequent renewals for the FISA warrant.Comey downplayed the role of Steele's information in obtaining the FISA warrant against Page, claiming Sunday that it was "not a huge part of the presentation to the court," just part of the information included in the warrant application. He insisted that he and Horowitz "weren't saying different things" about Steele's significance, but host Chris Wallace then read Horowitz's words, which said Steele's information "played a central and essential role" in establishing probable cause.

Trump threatens Comey with 'years in jail' over FBI Russia report --James Comey, the former director of the FBI who has become a prime nemesis of Donald Trump, admitted on Sunday to being responsible for “real sloppiness” over the handling of surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser.  He also fiercely defended himself and the bureau against any suggestion of political bias, prompting a new threat, of “years in jail”, from Trump.Comey, who was fired by Trump as America’s top law enforcement official in May 2017, came under intense questioning on Fox News Sunday, sparring with anchor Chris Wallace over the findings of the inspector general’s report into the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.Comey seized on one of Michael Horowitz’s main conclusions, that there was no evidence of political bias in the investigation, to launch an impassioned critique of how he and his FBI colleagues had been treated by Trump.“The FBI was accused of treason, of illegal spying, of tapping Mr Trump’s wires illegally, of opening an investigation without justification, of being a criminal conspiracy to unseat a president. All that was nonsense.”He also had pointed words for Fox News: “Remember, I was going to jail, lots of other people were going to jail. People on this network said it over and over again … The American people, especially your viewers, need to realise they were given false information about the FBI.”That Comey was given the opportunity by Fox News to welcome the absence of any bias finding in the report clearly riled Trump, who intervened with a characteristically breathless tweet. Paradoxically, the president accused Horowitz himself – an independent watchdog with no known political animus – of bias. Pointing out that the inspector general was appointed by Barack Obama, Trump claimed: “There was tremendous bias and guilt exposed, so obvious, but Horowitz couldn’t get himself to say it. Big credibility loss.” The president followed up by attacking Comey himself, in loose and intemperate terms. “So now Comey’s admitting he was wrong,” he tweeted. “Wow, but he’s only doing so because he got caught red handed. He was actually caught a long time ago. So what are the consequences for his unlawful conduct. Could it be years in jail? Where are the apologies to me and others, Jim?”

I Headed the F.B.I. and C.I.A. There’s a Dire Threat to the Country I Love. - William Webster, NYT - The privilege of being the only American in our history to serve as the director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. gives me a unique perspective and a responsibility to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them. The rule of law is the bedrock of American democracy, the principle that protects every American from the abuse of monarchs, despots and tyrants. Every American should demand that our leaders put the rule of law above politics. I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our “current director” — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency. The 10-year term given to all directors following J. Edgar Hoover’s 48-year tenure was created to provide independence for the director and for the bureau. The president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly. The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government. Over my nine-plus years as F.B.I. director, I reported to four honorable attorneys general. Each clearly understood the importance of the rule of law in our democracy and the critical role the F.B.I. plays in the enforcement of our laws. They fought to protect both, knowing how important it was that our F.B.I. remain independent of political influence of any kind.  The country can ill afford to have a chief law enforcement officer dispute the Justice Department’s own independent inspector general’s report and claim that an F.B.I. investigation was based on“a completely bogus narrative.” In fact, the report conclusively found that the evidence to initiate the Russia investigation was unassailable. There were more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to undermine our democracy continue to this day. I’m glad the F.B.I. took the threat seriously. It is important, Mr. Wray said last week, that the inspector general found that “the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.”

 IG Report On FBI Spying Exposes Scandal Of Historic Magnitude For US Media --  Glenn Greenwald - Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday’s issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds.  Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI’s gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims. If you don’t consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that’s what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.  Just a few excerpts from the report should suffice to end any debate for rational persons about how damning it is. The focus of the first part of the IG Report was on the warrants obtained by the DOJ, at the behest of the FBI, to spy on Carter Page on the grounds that there was probable cause to believe he was an agent of the Russian government. That Page was a Kremlin agent was a widely disseminated media claim – typically asserted as fact even though it had no evidence. As a result of this media narrative, the Mueller investigation examined these widespread accusations yet concluded that “the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.”  The IG Report went much further, documenting a multitude of lies and misrepresentations by the FBI to deceive the FISA court into believing that probable cause existed to believe Page was a Kremlin agent. The first FISA warrant to spy on Page was obtained during the 2016 election, after Page had left the Trump campaign but weeks before the election was to be held.  About the warrant application submitted regarding Page, the IG Report, in its own words, “found that FBI personnel fell far short of the requirement in FBI policy that they ensure that all factual statements in a FISA application are ‘scrupulously accurate.'” Specifically, “we identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.” It’s vital to reiterate this because of its gravity: we identified multiple instances in which factual assertions relied upon in the first FISA application were inaccurate, incomplete, or unsupported by appropriate documentation, based upon information the FBI had in its possession at the time the application was filed.

Judge blasts FBI over misleading info for surveillance of Trump campaign adviser -  The secretive federal court that approved the surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Tuesday accused FBI agents of creating a misleading impression about their basis for requesting a warrant and ordered the bureau to overhaul its process.In a blistering order, a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) accused the bureau of providing false information and withholding materials that would have undercut its four surveillance applications."The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the heightened duty of candor described above," Rosemary Collyer, presiding judge with the FISC, wrote in the order released by the court.The judge gave the FBI until Jan. 10 to provide the court a sworn statement detailing how it plans to overhaul its approach to future surveillance applications.The order comes after the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report earlier this month on its investigation into the Trump campaign and the 2016 election, with Inspector General Michael Horowitz detailing a series of missteps taken during the investigation.The FBI said it would take more than 40 "corrective steps" in response to the watchdog report.The surveillance court judge said Tuesday that the inspector general report documented “troubling instances in which FBI personnel provided information to NSD [the National Security Division of the Justice Department] which was unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession."The judge also noted the report cited “several instances” in which the FBI sought to persuade the court that probable cause existed to believe Page was a Russian agent, but nonetheless withheld “information in their possession which was detrimental to their case.""The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," Collyer wrote. "The FISC expects the government to provide complete and accurate information in every filing with the Court. Without it, the FISC cannot properly ensure that the government conducts electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes only when there is a sufficient factual basis."

In Stunning Public Rebuke, FISA Court Slams FBI, Says Worried About 'Other Warrants' -- The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court slammed the FBI on Tuesday in a rare public statement over the agency's handling of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page's warrant application and subsequent renewals, according to the Wall Street Journal. "In order to appreciate the seriousness of that misconduct and its implications, it is useful to understand certain procedural and substantive requirements that apply to the government's conduct of electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes," reads the statement. The punchline: "The FBI's handling of the Carter Page applications, as portrayed in the OIG report, was antithetical to the hieghtned duty of candor" required by federal investigators, adding "The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable," wrote the court, which called the recent watchdog report from the DOJ's Inspector General "troubling."

No Individuals Have Been Held Accountable - WSJ Editorial Board Slams FISA Circus -Following the release of the DOJ Inspector General's report revealing that the FBI deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in order to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, presiding FISC Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a rare public rebuke - while ordering the agency to clean up its act, and fast.Collyer noted despite the FBI's "heightened duty of candor," officials fabricated evidence and concealed information from the court which harmed their argument that Page was an "agent of a foreign power," fabricated evidence.Because of this, the court is now concerned about "whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable."  Those involved in the operation to take Trump down, meanwhile, are scrambling to downplay the IG report while taking as little responsibility as possible. After the FBI first tried to pass the buck - insisting that the Page applications were legit since the FISA court approved them, former FBI Director James Comey's feet were finally held to the fire by Fox News host Chris Wallace last weekend: Watch @comey try to squirm out of Wallace’s question. Comey is a total snake and a liar. Just watch him try to lie with the cold, hard facts placed right in front of him: pic.twitter.com/zeA54eQ1ip — The former FBI Director went into full boyscout mode when he chalked up the 17 'serious errors' found by the IG to "real sloppy" work, adding "..I was overconfident in the procedures that the FBI and Justice had built over 20 years. I thought they were robust enough."Meanwhile, former CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged on Tuesday that "there were mistakes made" during the application process. And former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, has been using the old 'we were just following orders' line after it was revealed he and the other Obama-era IC heads were under investigation by US Attorney John Durham, telling CNN in October that he was just investigating what "the then commander-in-chief, President Obama, told us to do."

MSNBC public editor: What if Rachel Maddow is right? - Columbia Journalism Review - THE BLOODSPORT of Red vs. Blue party politics drives the US media. But the polarization of Blue vs. Bluer is just as striking. And there’s no better symbol of the schism than MSNBC’s most popular anchor, the pen-tapping, eyebrow-waggling, Russia-obsessed lightning rod, Rachel Maddow.  According to Adweek, The Rachel Maddow Show averaged 3.2 million viewers in November—a month that saw record “total viewer highs” for the network; Maddow goes toe to toe with Sean Hannity of Fox each night, not infrequently surpassing his numbers. MSNBC’s Twitter mentions are still thick with praise, and the New York Times ran a largely admiring profile in October.   Maddow has pursued every maddening twist and turn of the Trump Russia story with zeal: Tillerson, Cohen, Manafort,straight through to Tuesday, when a grinning Donald J. Trump appeared in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, somehow, on the same day when House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against him.Her journalistic instincts seem to me to have been pretty sound all along; her goal is to investigate and record the details of a complex history in the making, as truthfully as she can. But for years, stories in left-leaning publications (The Intercept,In These Times, The Nation, and Slate among them) have joined the right in lobbing brickbats in Maddow’s direction. They argue that Maddow’s obsessive coverage of Trump and Russia is irresponsibly sensationalist. That it panders to a crowd of disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters , who are eager to blame the Russians for her loss in 2016. Maddow’s most ferocious critic is perhaps Glenn Greenwald ofThe Intercept, who wrote in March: “Rachel Maddow is the Judy Miller of the Trump/Russia story… way off the deep end, in another universe totally devoid of basically rationality [sic].” The Russia story is “this generation’s WMD,” according to Matt Taibbi, who compared Maddow’s coverage to “McCarthyism and fearmongering.” Willa Paskin mocked Maddow in Slate for having “conspiracy brain” and looking like she’s “on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” She openly accused her of deliberately misleading her audience.

Trump: Pelosi's teeth were 'falling out of her mouth' during press conference -  President Trump on Sunday tweeted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Calif.) teeth were "falling out of her mouth" during a press conference days earlier in which she was discussing the impeachment inquiry. The comment came as part of a retweet of Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), who had quote-tweeted a clip of Pelosi explaining why bribery was not one of the articles of impeachment filed by House Democrats against the president last week. "Because Nancy’s teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn’t have time to think!" Trump tweeted, apparently responding to the reporter's question in the clip. Because Nancy’s teeth were falling out of her mouth, and she didn’t have time to think! https://t.co/rx3pcyofip Pelosi's office did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill. The president's remark is just the latest in a series of increasingly personal attacks he has aimed at the Speaker in recent weeks amid a number of public confrontations between the rival politicians. Earlier this month, the president accused Pelosi of having a "nervous fit" during another press conference in which she rebuked a reporter for suggesting that she hates Trump and countered that she prays for the president frequently. “Nancy Pelosi just had a nervous fit. She hates that we will soon have 182 great new judges and sooo much more. Stock Market and employment records,” Trump tweeted at the time. “She says she ‘prays for the President,’” he added. “I don’t believe her, not even close. Help the homeless in your district Nancy. USMCA?”

Five aides to Van Drew resign ahead of his formal switch to GOP - Five top staffers to freshman Rep. Jefferson Van Drew (D-N.J.) resigned Sunday, citing the lawmaker’s decision to join the Republican Party after a meeting with President Trump. In a letter to Allison Murphy, Van Drew’s chief of staff, the senior aides wrote that Van Drew’s pending jump to the GOP “does not align with the values we brought to this job when we joined his office,” adding that they were “deeply saddened and disappointed by his decision.” The resigning staffers included deputy chiefs of staff Justin O’Leary and Edward Kaczmarski, legislative director Javier Gamboa, communications director Mackenzie Lucas and legislative staff assistant Caroline Wood. Politico first reported the resignation of the five senior Van Drew staffers. The mass departure of Van Drew’s top aides comes one day after the congressman informed his staff that he will leave the Democratic Party. Drew, one of two Democrats to vote against the opening of an impeachment probe into Trump, had met with the president at the White House on Friday. The former Van Drew aides wrote that they could "no longer in good conscience continue our service in in the Congressman's employ" after his decision to join the Republican Party. "Trump Republicans have sided with special interest over the needs of working people. Worse, they continue to aid and abet Trump as he shreds the Constitution and tears the country apart," the resigning staffers wrote. "They have refused to grapple with how the President of the United States has jeopardized our national security for his own political advantage," they added.

Schumer asks McConnell for Mulvaney, Bolton to testify in impeachment trial -  Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) outlining his preferences for the structure of an impeachment trial in the upper chamber and calling for testimony from former national security adviser John Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. In the letter, the Senate's top Democrat wrote that other witnesses should be called as well should they be identified by the Trump administration or members of the House who have been designated as impeachment managers. Other requested witnesses include Robert Blair, Mulvaney's senior adviser, and Michael Duffey, associate director for national security at the Office of Management and Budget."Senate Democrats believe strongly, and I think that Senate Republicans agree, that this trial be one that is fair, that considers all of the relevant facts, and that exercises the Senate's 'sole Power of Impeachment' under the Constitution with dignity and integrity," Schumer wrote.Schumer also called for the Senate to subpoena documents from the White House, State Department and OMB regarding the delay of military assistance to Ukraine. Democrats have argued that the president sought to improperly tie the aid to his efforts to convince Ukraine's president to open criminal investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.That action, they argue, constituted an effort by the president to solicit foreign assistance in the 2020 election, as Biden remains a top contender for the Democratic Party's nomination for president. "I also propose that the Senate issue subpoenas for a limited set of documents that we believe will shed additional light on the Administration’s decision-making regarding the delay in security assistance funding to Ukraine and its requests for certain investigations to be announced by the government of Ukraine," Schumer wrote.

The lies have it: Republicans abandon truth in Trump impeachment defence -A bewildering array of fake news, warped facts and conspiracy theories have been propagated in the past week by conservative media, Republican politicians, White House officials and the president in his own defence. It is, commentators say, a concerted disinformation war, intended to crowd out damaging revelations as the House of Representatives prepares its ultimate sanction.“The more facts come out, the more desperate they get,” said Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman and senior adviser on the House oversight committee. “They know in a debate centred on facts, truth and reality, they lose. Their only mechanism to survive is to muddy the waters, distort, distract and hope if they repeat lies often enough, they become real.”Trump this week became the only fourth US president to face articles of impeachment. The two against him charge him with abuse of power by pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations that would boost his 2020 re-election campaign, and obstruction of Congress by ordering witnesses to defy subpoenas.  At public hearings and in countless media interviews,Republicans sought to argue that Trump was, in fact, justified in seeking the two investigations: one into whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 the presidential election, the other into a Ukrainian gas company with ties to Hunter Biden, the son of potential 2020 rival Joe Biden.  The entire US intelligence community has found no evidence to support the claim of Ukrainian interference in 2016. Fiona Hill, formerly top Russia expert at the White House, has warned that to spread “the fictional narrative” is to spread Russian propaganda and do the bidding of Vladimir Putin. Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, said this week there was “no indication” that Ukraine interfered. Yet several Republican senators continue to peddle this counter-narrative.

Is a trap being set for Trump in the Senate trial? | TheHill - Can 20 U.S. senators withstand the potentially irresistible temptation to reverse the results of the 2016 election and remove a president a number of them openly or privately dislike?   Since Donald Trump announced his intention to run for the White House on June 16, 2015, many of the entrenched elites across the various power centers of Washington and beyond have spent many of their waking hours trying to stop or unseat him. The political charade of an impeachment “investigation” is but the latest example. But that impeachment charade could harbor the greatest threat to Trump’s presidency. Over the past week, I have heard from three seasoned Republicans who fear that President Trump and the West Wing are seriously underestimating the potential danger of a Senate trial. Human nature and common sense dictate that, despite the well-meaning resolution circulated by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemning the House impeachment process, it's important for the White House to understand that the weight of history is settling upon the shoulders of these senators — some of them quite weak — and because of that pressure, private conversations are taking place and a trap may be sprung for the president in that trial. A potential trap set by seemingly loyal Republican senators.Those I spoke with, like others, worry that the impeachment process, especially a potential conviction in the Senate, will forever poison the integrity of our constitutional and congressional processes and put every future president at risk of having his or her election reversed for partisan and ideological reasons.But such is the lingering animosity about Trump by many in the GOP establishment, and there very well may be enough Republican senators willing to topple the first domino and set in motion a chain reaction — no matter the consequences.  In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute in October, former governor and U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley put her finger on the greater issue, saying in part, “President Trump is a disruptor. That makes some people very happy, and it makes some people very mad. ... When I was in the administration, I served alongside colleagues who believed the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president. Some wrote about it anonymously in The New York Times. Others just did it. They sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. I sincerely believed they weren’t. ... No policy disagreement with him ... justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution.” What’s at stake, Haley said, “is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution.”

Impeachment Inquiry Offers Chance to Derail Trump’s Political Heirs - Alexis Goldstein - Republicans have made it clear throughout the impeachment investigation that they’ve decided to circle the wagons around Trump. This united opposition combined with the defensive posturing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell shows it’s almost certain the Senate will not vote to remove Trump. But despite warnings by Republicans to the contrary, impeachment has already hurt Trump. And impeachment will continue to hurt Republicans, from pausing McConnell’s stuffing of the courts, to providing yet more airtime to Trump’s crimes, to creating the legacy of impeachment that will tarnish Trump’s political legacy. Republicans have always been desperate to convince the media that impeachment would make Trump stronger. Polling shows the opposite has been true. Most Americans actually opposed impeachment prior to the Ukraine scandal snowballing. But since September 28, shortly after the Ukraine scandal snowballed, more Americans supported impeachment than opposed it. As of December 12, 47.5 percent of Americans support impeaching Trump, with 45.8 percent opposed, according to an aggregation of polls by FiveThirtyEight. Trump’s approval rating has also taken a hit since the impeachment investigation began. On September 24, the day House Speaker Pelosi announced the impeachment investigation, FiveThirtyEight listed Trump’s aggregate approval rating at 43.1 percent. It’s been below that number ever since, and as of December 13, sits at 41.9 percent. Trump’s disapproval rating is double digits higher than former president Bill Clinton’s was during the height of the 1998 impeachment investigation. After the 1998 Starr report accused Clinton of lying under oath, 36 percent disapproved of Clinton. Trump’s disapproval ratings at a similar point are 17.5 points higher: Six days after the Dec 9th release of the House Intelligence Trump-Ukraine impeachment report,Trump’s disapproval sat at 53.5 percent. Forcing the Senate to hold a trial over Trump’s removal will temporarily obstruct Mitch McConnell’s singular obsession: stuffing our courts with young, radically conservative ideologues. As David Dayen noted in The American Prospect, the likely month-long Senate removal trial will “last six hours a day, six days a week, leaving far less room for judicial confirmations.” McConnell has been driving the Senate to confirm judges at a breakneck pace. Politico reporter Burgess Everett noted that President Barack Obama confirmed 55 Circuit judges in 8 years; Trump has confirmed 50 in just three. McConnell is trying to get even more done before the end of next year, with 18 judicial nominations planned for this week. McConnell has been so successful in part because he reduced the Senate debate time on judges from thirty hours per nominee to just two. Many of the nominations were vacant in the first place because the prior Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, honored a tradition known as “blue slips,” which allowed a Senator from the same state as the nominated judge to shut down the process if they wished. The Republicans have extended the Democrats no such courtesy, and now Trump has confirmed over 170 judges.

Rand Paul Warns, Impeachment Charade Could "Destroy The Country" --  Senator Rand Paul warned Sunday that the Democrats’ vendetta against the President, and their obsession with impeachment could end up destroying the country.“You know, we’ve seen the evidence. We’re going to hear the evidence repeated, but we won’t see any new evidence so I think all of America has seen this. We’ve found this is a very partisan exercise.” Paul said, appearing on CNN’s State of the Union. “There is not any Republicans in the House, in fact, a handful of Democrats that will vote against impeachment in the House. In the Senate, I think all Republicans will vote against the House, and I think two Democrats have a good chance of voting against impeachment also.” Paul continued.“So I think what we’ve seen is it is just a very partisan thing. This is a disagreement. The people on the Democrats side they don’t like Trump and his demeanor, so they have decided to criminalize politics.” Paul declared.“I don’t think it’s a good day for the country. I think it’s a sad day because I hope it doesn’t devolve into that every president like in different parts of Latin America where we either impeach or throw presidents in jail because we don’t like their politics. I think that will really dumb down and destroy the country.” Paul asserted.Elsewhere during the interview, host Jake Tapper was triggered into attack mode when Paul argued that President Trump’s phone call to the Ukraine was part of his duty to uphold a mandate from Congress to ensure foreign aid is being used correctly.“This isn’t about the Constitution or the president breaking the Constitution. Foreign aid is always contingent upon behavior. In fact, the money we gave them to give to Ukraine, it says specifically in the law he has to certify that they are less prone to corruption. I mean, he was instructed by Congress to do exactly what he asked to be done.” Paul argued.“So you’re saying that you think that President Trump was actually doing this because he was combatting corruption?” Tapper asked, before continually interrupting the Senator with “examples” of Trump not caring about corruption. “I think it’s based on opinion,” Paul responded, to Tapper’s ‘facts’.

A Party-Line Impeachment Reveals a Deeper Problem - The big impeachment news over the past few days has been that almost all of the potential swing voters in the House have lined up with their parties. We’re now likely to see even stricter party-line voting than was the case for President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, which has always been thought of as very partisan. In fact, while there are still several undeclared lawmakers, it’s quite possible that we’ll only have one defection in the final vote — Minnesota’s Collin Peterson, a Democrat who has said he’s leaning toward voting “no.” That’s not counting two party switchers: New Jersey Democrat-about-to-be-Republican Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, who will vote with his new party on impeachment, and Republican-turned-independent Justin Amash, who will vote “yes.” (Amash became an independent in July, before the Ukraine scandal broke, but his switch was certainly in large part because of his opposition to President Donald Trump.) Why the straight party voting? On the Democratic side, it’s partly a function of polarization, which has become even more pronounced since 1998. Yet even these days, there are still potential fault lines in both parties. There’s where leadership can make a difference. As Dave Hopkins argues, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done a very good job of keeping the Democratic caucus united. It’s also partly an indication of how strong the case against Trump is. As for the Republicans, there’s less to explain. Because Democrats won big in the 2018 midterm elections, there just aren’t that many Republicans in competitive districts. So if we expect district opinion to be a major factor in how members vote, especially on a high-profile measure such as impeachment, we’d expect the bulk of potential defections to be on the Democratic side. There might also be one other factor: Lawmakers may have accepted the idea that what matters most to their re-elections is the president’s popularity, rather than district opinion of their own actions. In other words, they may be betting that House elections have become so nationalized that it doesn’t really matter what they do. If that’s the case, then party-line votes may be designed to prop up (for Republicans) or bring down (for Democrats) the president’s approval ratings.

Demonstrators take to the streets in New York to rally for Trump impeachment - (Reuters) - Demonstrators rallied in New York on Tuesday night to call for U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office on the eve of the House of Representatives’ expected vote to impeach him. Organizers said they were expecting thousands at a rally and march through midtown Manhattan, one of more than 600 events calling for Trump’s impeachment that were scheduled to take place across the country. “I’m here today because I see this as a chance for a pivotal point, a turning point in our future,” said 19-year-old student Serena Hertzog. “My main issue that I’m most passionate about is environmental justice and I see our president as posing a huge threat to our environment.” Demonstrators who were gathered in Times Square chanted slogans like “Impeach Trump” and held signs that read: “Trump is not above the law” and “Rise and resist.” Trump faces one charge of abuse of power for asking Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic contender to oppose him in the 2020 presidential election. The Republican president also faces a charge of obstructing the congressional investigation into the matter. “This is a really crucial moment for citizens to come out and engage,” said Shannon Stagman of Empire State Indivisible, one of the rally’s lead organizers. “We think it’s really important just to come out and say we recognize that crimes were committed here, that this president has abused his power and we’re not OK with letting that slide.”

Federal Criminal Offenses and the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump  -  This collection of leading legal experts discusses a range of federal crimes that apply to the conduct of President Donald Trump, based on the evidence produced by the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry. These crimes include all of the federal offences listed in the Chapter headings, except for Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. In that Chapter, the author concludes that the impeachment inquiry did not examine the relevant evidence for one of the elements of the crime, although a lot of that evidence has arisen in investigative reports by journalists. The final Chapter includes an important federal law that does not trigger criminal liability, but does implicate the President’s constitutional obligation to ensure the laws are faithfully executed. Close readers will also notice some nuances in the authors’ analyses. Compare for example Barbara McQuade’s and Randall Eliason’s discussion of whether a White House visit for a head of state counts as an “official act” for the purposes of bribery and honest services fraud. Finally, a point worth underscoring: as Andrew Weissmann explains in the Introduction, impeachable offenses need not be criminal in nature, and not all crimes are impeachable offences. Members of Congress certainly do not need to conclude that the President committed a crime for impeachment, conviction, and removal. Nevertheless, the fact that these leading experts reach the conclusion that several federal crimes apply to President Trump’s conduct involving Ukraine is an important consideration for the annals of history and for the historic decision Congress now faces. Table of Contents

1. Introduction: The Problem of Missing Witnesses and Documents for the Conviction of Donald J. Trump -Andrew Weissmann
2. Campaign Finance Law - Paul Ryan
3. Bribery - Randall Eliason
4. Honest Services Fraud -Barbara McQuade
5. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act -Susan Simpson
6. Hatch Act - Gary Stein
7. Contempt of Congress - Michael Stern
8. Impoundment Act (non-criminal law) - Sam Berger

 Supreme Court ruling pulls rug out from under article of impeachment -- Alan Dershowitz - The decision by the Supreme Court to review the lower court rulings involving congressional and prosecution subpoenas directed toward President Trump undercuts the second article of impeachment that passed the House Judiciary Committee along party lines last week. That second article of impeachment charges President Trump with obstruction of Congress for refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas in the absence of a final court order. In so charging him, the House Judiciary Committee has arrogated to itself the power to decide the validity of its subpoenas, as well as the power to determine whether claims of executive privilege must be recognized, both powers that properly belong with the judicial branch of our government, not the legislative branch. The House of Representatives will do likewise, if it votes to approve the articles, as is expected to occur on Wednesday. President Trump has asserted that the executive branch, of which he is the head, need not comply with congressional subpoenas requiring the production of privileged executive material, unless there is a final court order compelling such production. He has argued, appropriately, that the judicial branch is the ultimate arbiter of conflicts between the legislative and executive branches. Therefore, the Supreme Court decision to review these three cases, in which lower courts ruled against President Trump, provides support for his constitutional arguments in the investigation. The cases that are being reviewed are not identical to the challenged subpoenas that form the basis for the second article of impeachment. But they are close enough. Even if the high court were eventually to rule against the claims by President Trump, the fact that the justices decided to hear them, in effect, supports his constitutional contention that he had the right to challenge congressional subpoenas in court, or to demand that those issuing the subpoenas seek to enforce them through court. It undercuts the contention by House Democrats that President Trump committed an impeachable offense by insisting on a court order before sending possibly privileged material to Congress. Even before the justices granted review of these cases, the two articles of impeachment had no basis in the Constitution. They were a reflection of the comparative voting power of the two parties, precisely what one of the founders, Alexander Hamilton, warned would be the “greatest danger” of an impeachment.

Rudy Giuliani Can Barely Contain Himself Over His Ukraine Findings - For the past several weeks, the personal attorney to President Trump has been in Ukraine, interviewing witnesses and gathering evidence to shed light on what the Bidens were up to during the Obama years, and get to the bottom of claims that Kiev interfered in the 2016 US election in favor of Hillary Clinton. He has enlisted the help of former Ukrainian diplomat, Andriy Telizhenko, to gather information from politicians and ask them to participate in a documentary series in partnership with One America News Network (OANN) - which will make the case for investigating the Bidens as well as Burisma Holdings - the natural gas firm which employed the son of a sitting US Vice President in a case which reeks of textbook corruption. According to the Journal, Giuliani will present findings from his self-described "secret assignment" in a 20-page report. Trump and Giuliani say then-Vice President Biden engaged in corruption when he called for the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor who had investigated a Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden served on the board. The Bidens deny wrongdoing, and ousting the prosecutor was a goal at the time of the U.S. and several European countries. -Wall Street Journal (Note the Wall Street Journal's use of a straw man when they write: "The allegations of Ukrainian election interference are at odds with findings by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was behind the election interference."  Apparently the three journalists who collaborated on the article didn't get the memo that two countries can meddle at the same time, nor did any of them read the January, 2017 Politico article: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire - which outlines how Ukrainian government officials conspired with a DNC operative to hurt the Trump campaign during the 2016 election - a move which led to the disruptive ouster of campaign chairman Paul Manafort).   Upon his return to New York on Saturday, Giuliani says he took a call from President Trump while his plane was still taxiing down the runway, according to the Wall Street Journal. "What did you get?" Trump asked. "More than you can imagine," answered the former New York mayor who gained notoriety in the 1980s for taking down the mob as a then-federal prosecutor.

Giuliani Invited To Spill Beans On The Bidens In Senate Testimony - Rudy Giuliani has been invited to share his Ukraine findings with the Senate Judiciary Committee - after President Trump's impeachment trial, according to the panel's chairman, Lindsey Graham (R-SC). In other words, potentially devastating evidence against the Bidens which is integral to the genesis of the entire impeachment effort won't be aired until after Graham's 'witness-less' trial, in order for the impeachment to "die quickly," as Graham put it last week.Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, Graham said that Giuliani could appear before the senate panel 'separately' of the impeachment trial. "Well, I don't know what he found, but if he wants to come the Judiciary Committee — Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found, I'll be glad to talk to you. When it comes to impeachment, I want to base my decision on the record assembled in the House," said Graham.It's clear Graham is giving as much cover to Biden as possible.The South Carolina Republican began by saying that Joe Biden "is a friend," and "one of the most decent people I've ever met in my life," before laying out that it would be hard to go back and tell his constituents "to ignore the fact that Hunter Biden received $50,000 a month from a gas company in Ukraine, run by the most corrupt person in Ukraine, and two months after the gas company was investigated, the prosecutor got fired." "I don't know if there's anything to this. I hope not. I hope I can look at the transcripts of the phone call between Biden and the Ukraine."

Top Senate Republican opposes demand for witnesses in Trump impeachment trial - (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday brushed aside a Democratic request to call four current and former White House officials as witnesses in a Senate impeachment trial expected next month, sending another clear signal that he expects senators not to remove U.S. President Donald Trump from office. On the day before the Democratic-led House is expected to pass two articles of impeachment charging the Republican president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for his dealings with Ukraine, two senior senators clashed over how to conduct the subsequent Senate trial that decides whether Trump remains in power. In dueling speeches on the Senate floor, McConnell said he would not allow a “fishing expedition” after a “slapdash” House impeachment process, while Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said a trial without witnesses would be a “sham” and suggested Trump’s fellow Republicans favored a cover-up. Members of the House Rules Committee met on Tuesday over the rules for the debate before a historic vote set for Wednesday in the chamber in which Trump is likely to become the third U.S. president to be impeached. If the House approves articles of impeachment - formal charges - as expected, it would set the stage for a trial in the Senate, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans - on whether to convict him and remove him from office. No president has ever been removed from office via the impeachment process set out in the U.S. Constitution, and Republican senators have given little indication of changing that. Schumer has said he wants the trial to consider documents and hear testimony from four witnesses: former national security adviser John Bolton, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Mulvaney aide Robert Blair and budget official Michael Duffey. Schumer has argued that such testimony could sway Republicans in favor of removing Trump. Trump has refused to cooperate with the House impeachment process and ordered current and former officials like those mentioned by Schumer not to testify or provide documents.

GOP rep rails against Democrats for rejecting Republican impeachment amendment - GOP Rep. Bradley Byrne (Ala.), who offered the sole amendment to articles of impeachment in the House Rules Committee, on Wednesday railed on the House floor against Democrats for rejecting the change ahead of the impeachment vote. The amendment would have struck language alleging President Trump consistently attempted to undermine investigations and replace it with language stating the president acted consistently with the previous administration's behavior during congressional probes. “These actions were strikingly similar to the conduct of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder when they defied a lawful subpoena issued by the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform of the House of Representatives related to the Fast and Furious investigation and it is the sense of Congress that based upon the standard contained in this article, articles of impeachment should have been brought against both of those individuals,” the amendment read. Byrne, who is currently running for Senate in Alabama, has been a vocal opponent of impeachment and adamant defender of the president since Democrats launched the inquiry earlier this year. The Alabama Republican has repeatedly blasted the probe into the president’s handling of foreign policy in Ukraine as a partisan “witch hunt,” arguing Democrats are attempting to unwind the results of the 2016 election. “Most of my friends on the other side of the aisle had no problem backing President Obama when he stonewalled this House for years to block our quest to find out the truth in the Fast and Furious investigation,” he said on the floor. “That is why I filed an amendment to the resolution, rejected by the Rules Committee, saying, based upon the Democrat majority’s standard, they should have written articles of impeachment against President Obama and Eric Holder. I wish my colleagues would think about the standard being set. I predict that they will very soon regret it.” Democrats unveiled the two articles of impeachment last week, one of which pertained to abuse of power and the other relating to obstruction of Congress, which were first marked up in the House Judiciary Committee before heading to the House Rules Committee on Tuesday. .

Read Donald Trump's scathing letter to Nancy Pelosi - - President Donald Trump on Tuesday savaged House Democrats' impeachment proceedings in a six-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that read like a collection of his most vitriolic tweets. Read Trump's full letter below, or see the full PDF here.

Live updates: Trump impeached by the House on both articles- The House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump on both articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The vote followed weeks oftestimony related to his dealings with Ukraine and hours of fiery debate over the process. Trump is only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached. Follow us here for all of the latest breaking news and analysis on impeachment from NBC News' political reporters, as well as our teams on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Highlights:

• From solemnity to anger to hyperbole, here are some of the buzziest lines from the historic House debate on Wednesday.
• President Trump sent a rambling six-page letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, calling Congress' impeachment inquiry a partisan “crusade,” an “unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power” and a “spiteful” “election-nullification scheme.” Click here to read the full letter.
• The House Judiciary Committee released its full 658-page report just after midnight Sunday, in which the majority calls Trump the "Framers' worst nightmare."
• Read the details revealed in the House Intelligence Committee's weeks of impeachment hearings.

President Trump is impeached in a historic vote by the House, will face trial in the Senate — The House of Representatives voted Wednesday night to impeach President Donald Trump, making him only the third president to be charged with high crimes and misdemeanors and face a Senate trial that could remove him from office. The largely party-line vote after eight hours of highly charged partisan debate represented the culmination of a sprawling three-month investigation that was conducted by multiple committees in the Democratic-controlled House and was opposed at every turn by the White House and congressional Republicans.  Following Wednesday’s votes, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham called the impeachment an “unconstitutional travesty.” Trump, she said in a statement, “is confident the Senate will restore regular order, fairness, and due process,” and he is prepared “for the next steps and confident that he will be fully exonerated.” After the votes, a somber House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid tribute to the late Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who was among the Democratic leaders of the anti-Trump effort until his death at age 68 on Oct. 17.  “He said, “When the history books are written about this tumultuous era, I want them to show that I was among those in the House of Representatives who stood up to lawlessness and tyranny,’” Pelosi said. “He also said somewhat presciently, ‘When we are dancing with the angels, the question will be what did you do to make sure we kept our democracy.’” Article one, abuse of power, was adopted by 230 to 197, with one member voting present. Article two, obstruction of Congress, passed by 229 to 198 with one voting present. Two Democrats broke ranks and voted against impeachment on the first article.One of them was Rep. Colin Peterson, D-Minn., who represents a district that Trump won easily in 2016 and who had faced pressure for months to oppose the impeachment. The other was New Jersey Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who is expected to switch parties and join the Republican caucus. Van Drew and Peterson had consistently voted against allowing the impeachment probe to move forward in procedural votes this fall. A third Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, joined Peterson and Van Drew on Wednesday to vote against the second article of impeachment, obstruction of Congress. Golden did support passage of the first article, for abuse of power.

Tulsi Gabbard Votes ‘Present’ in Impeachment Against Trump -As the House of Representatives debated two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump on Wednesday, many members of Congress noted during their short speaking time that the impending vote would likely be one of the most important decisions of their legislative careers.For Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, however, the question of whether to vote for the president to be tried on charges of obstruction of Congress and abuse of powerwas apparently not worth answering. The Hawaii Democrat and presidential candidate, one of the last members of her party to come out in support of the impeachment inquiry, voted “present” for the two votes on the articles of impeachment against Trump and was nowhere to be found during four procedural votes on Wednesday morning or during the six hours of scheduled debate over the articles.In a statement released after she voted “present” on both articles, Gabbard said that because she “could not in good conscience vote either yes or no... I am standing in the center and have decided to vote ‘Present.’”Gabbard blamed both sides of the House for turning the impeachment inquiry into a “partisan endeavor,” blasting Trump’s defenders as having “abdicated their responsibility to exercise legitimate oversight,” and the president’s critics of using “extreme rhetoric.” “My vote today is a vote for much needed reconciliation and hope that together we can heal our country,” Gabbard concluded.

Trump has been impeached by the House. Here’s what happens next - Donald Trump is now the third president in U.S. history to be impeached by the House.Democrats on Wednesday night voted for two articles — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — after eight hours of debate on the House floor, where hundreds of lawmakers traded barbs for and against impeachment.The historic votes capped a three-month inquiry by House Democrats into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. But the impeachment process is far from over: The proceedings now move to a trial in the Senate, which holds the final authority on whether to convict Trump and remove him from office, or to acquit him. Republicans hold a 53-47 edge in the chamber. Conviction and removal requires 67 votes. No Senate Republicans have signaled that they would vote to convict Trump.   After the votes to impeach Trump, House Democrats will select so-called impeachment managers to appear before the Senate during the trial and share findings from their inquiry.Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) delivers remarks alongside Chairman Jerry Nadler, House Committee on the Judiciary (D-NY) and Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee (D-NY), following the House of Representatives vote to impeach President Donald Trump on December 18, 2019 in Washington, DC.House managers have historically been members of Congress, who assume the role of prosecutors in the Senate trial. For instance, 13 Republicans from the House Judiciary Committee acted as the managers in then-President Bill Clinton’s Senate trial, presenting their case for his removal over three days. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is expected to select the impeachment managers in the coming days, The New York Times reported. On Wednesday, after the impeachment vote, Pelosi told reporters that she wanted to see how Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, would lay out the trial’s rules before she sent over the articles. The delay could give Democrats some leverage in the process of setting the rules for the Senate trial.

At This Point Richard Nixon Resigned - Richard Nixon resigned as president after the House Judiciary Committee recommended he be impeached, the vote that just happened yesterday for President Trump. In the case of Nixon that vote was followed by a famous visit from three powerful GOP senators, including Barry Goldwater, who informed Nixon that he had lost the support of the GOP in the Senate. Of course now we have the GOP Senate Majority Leader McConnell going on Sean Hannity to promise that Trump will not be convicted and that he will “coordinate” with Trump’s lawyers to make sure there is no conviction. Curiously, public polling support for impeaching Nixon only got ahead of opposition to it after the SCOTUS ruling that led to the public release of the so-called “smoking gun” tape about a month before Nixon resigned. In contrast, support for impeaching Trump has exceeded opposition to it since soon after it was announced the impeachment hearings would happen and appears to be holding steady, even as the Trumpists run all over the place declaring how he is going to gain or is gaining from the impeachment proceedings. It may be that his base is all riled, but so are those who do not like Trump. I also find it a bit weird that Trump and his supporters are running around threatening that the next time they control the House under a Dem prez, well, they will just go and impeach him. They seem to forget that we have already seen this show with the Clinton impeachment, also a thoroughly partisan affair, and which never had support from more than about 30 percent of the population. That one went to trial with all the GOPs voting for conviction, with one Dem also voting for it, Mr. Clean Russell Feingold of Wisconsin. Of course the current GOPS say Clinton committed a crime called perjury and claim Trump has not, although last time I checked, bribery is still a felony.

McConnell- Senate Won't Help 'Sloppy Schiff's' Case, May Dismiss Impeachment After Opening Arguments - With the House about to pass articles of impeachment against President Trump, and the Senate firmly settled on a speedy, Biden-less 'trial' to acquit, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested in a Tuesday morning speech that he will move to dismiss the articles immediately following opening arguments.  Responding to Monday demands by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that current and former White House officials testify, McConnell argued that Schumer was trying to make "Chairman Schiff's sloppy work more persuasive," according to Breitbart.McConnell accused Schumer of going straight to the news media with his proposals rather than speaking to him in person, as Senate leaders had done in the past.He also noted that Schumer had misquoted the Constitution. The Democrat leader had claimed the Constitution gave the Senate “sole Power of Impeachment,” whereas Article I, Section 3 actually states, “The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.”“We don’t create impeachments over here … we judge them,” he declared.It was the House’s role to investigate, and to build a case. “If they fail, they fail! It’s not the Senate’s job to leap into the breach to search desperately for ways to get to guilty. That would hardly be impartial justice.”The Senate would not, he said, participate in “new fact-finding” that House Democrats were “too impatient” to pursue. –Breitbart In other words, McConnell won't allow the Trump administration to defend itself in the court of public opinion, or get to the bottom of alleged corruption by the Bidens, as Trump will likely be acquitted either way. He also won't let Schumer take another bite at the anti-Trump apple.

Pelosi says House may withhold impeachment articles, delaying Senate trial - Moments after a historic vote to impeach President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House could at least temporarily withhold the articles from the Senate — a decision, she suggested, that could depend on how the other chamber chooses to conduct its trial on Trump’s removal. “We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” she said, referring to the House “managers” who present the case for removal to the Senate. “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us. So hopefully it will be fair. And when we see what that is, we’ll send our managers.”

Pelosi threatens to delay Trump impeachment trial in bid to pressure McConnell– After the House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald Trump, Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday began a game of chicken with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. In a press conference following the historic vote Wednesday night, Pelosi told reporters that she wanted to see how McConnell, R-Ky., would lay out the trial’s rules before she sent over the articles to the Senate. “We can’t name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side and I would hope that would be soon. So far, we haven’t seen anything that’s looks fair to us,” Pelosi said. Pelosi’s stance was an apparent attempt to pressure McConnell, who will hold significant power once the impeachment proceedings are passed from the Democrat-led House to the GOP-controlled Senate. McConnell did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. The House voted to impeach Trump nearly along party lines on articles of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The Constitution mandates that the Senate will conduct a trial to decide whether to convict Trump and remove him from office. As part of the Senate trial, House Democrats will select so-called impeachment managers to appear before the Senate and share findings from their three-month inquiry into Trump’s Ukraine dealings. House managers have historically been members of Congress, who assume the role of prosecutors in the Senate trial. There is no set time frame for Pelosi to follow to carry out this step. But she suggested Wednesday night that she will hold off until she receives assurances about the Senate trial proceedings. “This is what I don’t consider a fair trial,” she explained when pressed by reporters. “That leader McConnell has stated that he’s not an impartial juror, that he’s going to take his cues, in quotes, from the White House, and he’s working in total coordination with the White House counsel’s office.” Pelosi was referring to comments made earlier this week by McConnell, who acknowledged during a Fox News interview that he is not an impartial juror. In impeachments, the party in the majority devises the rules, and lawmakers tend to use a combination of precedent from prior impeachments and whatever tactics are going to be most politically advantageous in the unique situation. While the process was in the House, Democrats structured the impeachment hearings this fall in such a way as to ensure that they would have uninterrupted chunks of time in which to lay out a complicated narrative that involved dozens of individuals for the public without disruption from Republicans. At the opening of the House impeachment hearings, Democrats made sure each party’s chairman and lawyers would get 45 minutes to speak without interruption.

Gabbard rips Pelosi for delay of impeachment articles  - Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) after she said that she would delay delivering House-passed impeachment articles against President Trump in an effort to ensure a fair trial in the Senate.“I was surprised to hear that,” Gabbard told Hill.TV on Thursday, breaking with fellow Democrats who have rallied behind Pelosi over the move.“You can’t kind of just shift and change and make up the rules as you go along," she said. "If you’re going to pursue this process, you’ve got to let it play out the whole way through.”Gabbard said the delaying their delivery perpetuates a sense of hyperpartisanship, adding that both parties are to blame.“This is not just on part of the Democrats — you see on those who are defending Donald Trump, you see a blind loyalty to their party’s leader,” she said.The Hill reached out to Pelosi's office for comment. The House voted to impeach Trump late Wednesday, making him the third president in U.S. history to be formally charged by the lower chamber. The articles, which charged Trump with abuse of power over his Ukraine dealings and obstruction of Congress, passed largely along party lines.

The Democratic Leadership Strategy on Impeachment Is Doomed and Dangerous  - Aaron Mate - House Democrats’ vote to impeach President Donald Trump may offer immediate feelings of satisfaction, but it should not be mistaken for a path forward. Behind their lofty rhetoric, Democrats have presented the public with a weak impeachment case and doubled down on a Cold Warrior–inflected, failure-ridden political playbook.Article I of Impeachment asserts that Trump “compromised the national security of the United States” by freezing military funding to Ukraine as it fought Russian-backed forces. Congressional Democrats and their impeachment witnesses repeatedly promoted the theme. “When the President weakens a partner who advances American security interests, the President weakens America,” thefinal House impeachment report proclaims. “We used to stand up to Putin and Russia. I know the party of Ronald Reagan used to,” Representative Adam Schiff intoned in closing remarks before the impeachment vote. “Their [Ukraine’s] fight is our fight. Their defense is our defense.” This rhetoric is not only transparently disingenuous but also dangerous. By the Democrats’ own logic, President Obama is guilty of a far worse offense than his newly impeached successor. Whereas Trump briefly paused military funding that was ultimately delivered to Ukraine, Obama refused to send that same military funding at all. This was, in my view, a welcome decision: In resisting Beltway pressure, Obama avoided further inflaming a deadly proxy war. At the time, Bill Taylor, the veteran US diplomat who would go on to become one of the Democrats’ star witnesses, described Obama’s approach as “appeasement.” Apparently, today’s Democratic leadership resoundingly agrees.Equally disingenuous is Article I’s denunciation of Trump’s “invitations of foreign interference in United States elections.” As the newly completed Department of Justice Inspector General’s i nvestigation reminds us, the Clinton campaign and DNC paid a British ex-spy, Christopher Steele, to obtain dirt on Trump from Russia. This act of foreign interference was so consequential that it led to the unwarranted surveillance of a US citizen, Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, and played a major role in fueling three years of baseless, all-consuming speculation that Trump is compromised by the Kremlin and that his campaign conspired with it. And when Ukrainians leaked documents that led to the resignation of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Democrats had no qualms about benefiting from that foreign meddling.It also does not help the Democrats’ case that the Ukrainian government continues to refute the notion that Trump used the military funding to coerce Ukraine into launching the investigations he sought. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly denied a quid pro quo attempt from Washington. Ukraine Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said last month that he “never [saw] a direct link between investigations and security assistance.… there was no clear connection.” Andriy Yermak, the only Ukrainian official thought to have been told by a US official (Gordon Sondland, the key Democratic fact witness) of a linkage between the military funding and the opening of investigations, said this month that he doesn’t even remember receiving such a message.

Trump Impeachment: Congress reconvenes amid uncertainty on timeline – A day after voting along mostly party lines to impeach President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, lawmakers are set to return to the Capitol as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced some uncertainty to the future timeline of the impeachment process. Speaking at a press conference following the House's vote on Wednesday evening, Pelosi seemed to suggest managers would not be named until Senate Republicans agreed to a “fair” process – which could result in a delay in the transmission of articles of impeachment to the Senate. On Thursday, lawmakers will also deliberate and likely pass a major bipartisan trade agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement – the United States Mexico-Canada Agreement. After the passage of impeachment articles, the House has to pass a separate resolution naming managers for impeachment in the Senate.  “We cannot name managers until we figure out what the process is on the Senate side,” Pelosi said. “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.”  The Senate has not yet announced its procedures for a trial.   Asked what she considered a fair trial, Pelosi cited Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s comments that he was “not an impartial juror” as an example of an unfair trial.  Pelosi also met with committee chairs who had led the impeachment inquiry following the press conference.   Leaving the meeting, Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., told reporters, “It’s hard to appoint managers if you don’t know what the plan is going to be.”   Pelosi declined to comment as she left the Capitol, telling reporters, “Good night.”   Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will speak on the Senate floor about what he denounced as the "precedent-breaking impeachment of the President of the United States" in a tweet.  Josh Holmes, a former top aide to McConnell, said in a tweet that Democrats' strategy was the equivalent of "holding a grenade with the pin pulled rather than facing what happens when they send it over McConnell’s wall."

Schumer indicates Democrats will force votes on impeachment trial witnesses Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) indicated on Tuesday that Democrats will force votes during the Senate impeachment trial on calling witnesses such as acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton. Schumer said that he will discuss his initial proposal for a Senate trial with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) but stressed that “every senator will have a choice.” “We will have votes on whether these people should testify, and whether these documents should be made public as part of the trial, and the American people will be watching. They will be watching. Who is for an open and fair trial?” Schumer asked. Schumer added that senators will have to decide if they “want a fair, honest trial that examines all the facts" or "a trial that doesn't let all the facts come out.” Schumer sent his initial offer on Senate impeachment trial procedure to McConnell over the weekend. As part of his offer Schumer wants to call four witnesses, including Mulvaney and Bolton. McConnell appeared to reject that offer on Tuesday, calling it "dead wrong," and warned that it "could set a nightmarish precedent for our institution." McConnell and Schumer are expected to meet to discuss Senate trial procedure “very soon,” according to the GOP leader. During the Clinton trial, the Senate passed a resolution 100-0 laying out basic procedure, but a subsequent resolution on specific witnesses broke down along party lines.

Democrats hope to focus public’s attention on McConnell in impeachment battle Senate Democrats hope that holding back articles of impeachment in the House will put more public attention on their fight with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) over the rules for a trial and pressure moderate Republicans to vote with them on key procedural questions. McConnell said Thursday that the Democratic tactic, which prevents a Senate trial from beginning, will put no pressure on him and that he will simply move ahead with Senate business. “It’s beyond me how the Speaker and Democratic leader in the Senate think withholding the articles the of impeachment and not sending them over gives them leverage, is beyond me,” the GOP leader said. But Democratic senators say getting McConnell to budge isn’t the only reason for holding the articles. They want to pressure McConnell’s moderate Republican colleagues such as Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Mitt Romney (Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who have criticized President Trump’s conduct, and colleagues in tough races next year such as Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Martha McSally (Ariz.). Democratic senators hope that slowing down the pace will give them time to highlight Republican opposition to additional witnesses and documents. “My hope is that my Republican colleagues will vote for specific witnesses and documents when the issue is presented,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.). “They will have that choice. It’s a historic choice. I hope they rise to that challenge because voters will haunt them in November and certainly history will haunt them if they fail,” he added. Even if the Republicans don’t budge, Democrats hope they attention they’re shining on McConnell will pay dividends with the public. After weeks in which House Republicans tarred House Democratic investigations of Trump as shams, Democrats in the Senate are preparing to make the same arguments about a GOP-run impeachment trial in the Senate. So far, there don’t appear to be any cracks in Republican unity, but Democrats are betting that might change as the procedural fight over the trial rules heats up.

Susan Collins set to play pivotal role in impeachment drama -Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is emerging as the most important vote in the Senate battle over President Trump’s impeachment trial, as Democrats regard her support as key to getting the additional witnesses and documents they need to build their case. Collins, who has played a pivotal role in the biggest Senate debates of the Trump era, finds herself once again in the spotlight as one of the Republicans considered most likely to side with Democrats. “She’s an important player,” said Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who noted that while every Senate vote is important, key trial questions will be decided by a handful of lawmakers. “Four Republicans can bring this back to a bipartisan position,” he said. Collins cast pivotal votes to defeat legislation to repeal ObamaCare in 2017 and to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Partisan lines have become so entrenched in the Senate that only a handful of senators are considered potential defectors on contentious votes. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), chairwoman of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said there’s “no question” that Collins will be a pivotal vote. She cited Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as another potential swing vote. But Stabenow said fellow senators don’t know what to expect from Collins, who has kept her cards close to the vest. “That is one of the big questions at this point,” she said. “We’re getting no indication at all.” A Democratic senator who requested anonymity said the Democratic caucus is most focused on Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). “Susan Collins and Lisa are key. Everyone is watching them because Susan is up for reelection and we all know what the party did to Lisa, so she has an interest in being independent,” the senator said. In 2010, Murkowski lost the Alaska GOP Senate primary but won the general election as a write-in candidate. When asked by The Hill whether she’s experiencing a sense of déjà vu about being the center of attention, Collins replied, “That’s not what I’m seeking to be. I’m just trying to do my job.”

Christianity Today editor calls for Trump to be removed from office -- Christianity Today, the flagship Evangelical magazine, called for President Trump to be removed from office in a new editorial.The piece, attributed to Christianity Today Editor in Chief Mark Galli, notes that the magazine’s “typical approach” is to “stay above the fray,” allowing readers to “make their arguments in the public square, to encourage all to pursue justice according to their convictions and treat their political opposition as charitably as possible.” But the editorial criticized Trump, saying “[T]he facts in this instance are unambiguous: The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.” Galli continued, noting that the president has, in his opinion, lowered the standard for presidential decorum, openly admitted to unsavory interactions with women and has worked with a "number of people who are now convicted criminals." “The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration,” Galli said. “His Twitter feed alone—with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders—is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused,” he added. The editor went on to say that the findings from an investigation conducted by former special counsel Robert Mueller were not enough to impeach the president, but that the recent impeachment hearings made it clear that Trump abused his power and betrayed his oath of office. “We believe ... that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. The impeachment hearings have illuminated the president’s moral deficiencies for all to see. This damages the institution of the presidency, damages the reputation of our country, and damages both the spirit and the future of our people." Galli opined that none of the president's positive qualities outweigh the "moral and political danger" America faces under Trump's leadership, before calling on lawmakers to impeach and remove the president.

Evangelical Trump supporters bash Christianity Today for calling for removal from office -Two prominent evangelical leaders are slamming the flagship evangelical magazine "Christianity Today" after it called for President Trump to be removed from office in an editorial. "Less than 20% of evangelicals supported @HillaryClinton in 2016 but now @CTmagazine has removed any doubt that they are part of the same 17% or so of liberal evangelicals who have preached social gospel for decades! CT unmasked!" wrote Jerry Falwell Jr., the president of evangelical Liberty University. "It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism," wrote Franklin Graham, CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse, an evangelical relief organization. Graham accused the magazine of being "used by the left for their political agenda." Christianity Today, which was founded by Graham's father, the prominent evangelical leader Billy Graham, in 1956, on Thursday called for Trump's removal from office in an editorial by its editor-in-chief. "We believe the impeachment hearings have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not, that President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath," wrote Mark Galli. The editorial mentioned Billy Graham in the context of the magazine's founding principle to "help evangelical Christians interpret the news in a manner that reflects their faith." "Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece," Franklin Graham wrote, before revealing that his father was a Trump supporter before his death in 2018. "My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation."

Trump slams debate commission, raising questions about his participation - President Trump on Monday hammered the Commission on Presidential Debates, raising questions about his participation in debates next year with the eventual Democratic presidential nominee. The president, in a trio of tweets, said he looked forward to debating "whoever the lucky person is who stumbles across the finish line" in the Democratic primary.But he chastised the nonprofit commission responsible for organizing the presidential debates and suggested he might avoid them. That group has scheduled three general election debates next year."As President, the debates are up to me, and there are many options, including doing them directly & avoiding the nasty politics of this very biased Commission," Trump tweeted. "I will make a decision at an appropriate time but in the meantime, the Commission on Presidential Debates is NOT authorized to speak for me (or R’s)!"The president claimed that the commission, which describes itself as nonpartisan, is "stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers." Trump pointed to an incident in a 2016 presidential debate in which the commission acknowledged technical issues with his microphone.

‘Don’t threaten me’: Records show Elizabeth Warren rejected $850/hr job over consumer group concern Democratic presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren refused to take a lucrative legal job in 2006 after a consumer advocacy group raised concerns about the work, earning the fury of an attorney who had sought to hire her, court documents show. The records from more than a decade ago, connected to a lawsuit against two credit reporting giants, shed new light on Warren’s motivations for taking on private legal work amid criticism from fellow contenders who have sought to cast the Massachusetts progressive as a hired gun for big business. The legal papers reviewed by CNBC show that years before Warren gained a national reputation as a zealous consumer advocate, a reputation that’s now at the center of her bid for the White House, she refused to take on an $850 per hour case because she didn’t believe it would advance principles consistent with her beliefs. The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide new context about Warren’s legal consulting work. That work has come under scrutiny in recent weeks as opponents including South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have accused Warren of hypocrisy for running on a populist message after years of taking on highly compensated work for corporate clients. Warren has struggled to defend her record working for companies like Dow Chemical and Travelers Insurance. Part of the the difficulty she has faced stems from the fact that the cases tend to involve arcane aspects of bankruptcy law, rather than simple narratives about taking on powerful interests in high-stakes court battles.

 Fiery Disagreements Erupt at Sixth Democratic Debate – Alexis Goldstein - At the sixth Democratic primary debate, a smaller field displayed greater distinctions and fiery disagreements. The PBS/Politicodebate at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, opened with questions echoing GOP talking points, such as claims about the alleged economic harm of wealth taxes (which Warren rebuffed well) but eventually ventured into real substance with challenging questions about Guantánamo Bay, Israel and Palestine, and the U.S. war in Afghanistan. The flash points of the evening were the debates among the candidates on money in politics, universal programs vs. means-tested ones, and what experience prepares one for the presidency. Early in the debate came a question arguing that the economic prosperity Trump brags about could dampen the field’s chances in the general. The candidates were universal in their pushback, agreeing that there hasn’t actually been an economic recovery, and that the middle class is still suffering. Businessman Andrew Yang pointed out that “GDP and stock market prices” are at record highs, but so are suicide, depression and student loan debts. Warren returned to her core corruption messaging, noting that the government works well for “people who want to make money … in private detention centers at the border, but not for those whose families are torn apart.” Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, said, “People aren’t getting paid enough,” and former Vice President Joe Biden said, “The middle class is getting killed.” Next, Politico’s Tim Alberta asked Yang, Sanders and Biden about Obama’s recent comment that “if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything.” Yang started off well, acknowledging that the United States “is deeply misogynist,” but then veered into misogyny himself, implying that men need to be nannied by women because “if you get too many men alone and leave us alone for awhile, we kind of become morons.” Yang’s joke casts women not as individuals with initiatives and ideas, but rather as babysitters who should be at the highest levels of politics only to modulate the impulses of men. Alberta pointed out that Sanders was the oldest person on stage, and Sanders interjected, “And I’m white as well!” The audience, ostensibly not sure what to make of his outburst, was awkwardly silent. Sanders continued, “The issue is where power resides in America. And it’s not white or black, or male or female,” but that the nation is “increasingly becoming an oligarchy.” But Sanders’s answer is an incomplete diagnosis of the problem. As activist Tracey Corder pointed out, “We have to be able to reckon with who has power and why they have it – that means talking race, gender AND class.” Alberta then asked Biden to weigh in on Obama’s comments, too. Biden responded defensively, saying Obama wasn’t referring to him. Alberta then asked Warren about her age, noting she’d be the oldest president ever inaugurated. Her response became one of the viral moments of the evening, when she quipped, “I’d also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated,” to laughs and cheers from the audience.

Full PBS NewsHour/POLITICO Democratic Debate PBSSpecial | 2h 56m 46s

Camera Footage Of Epstein's First Suicide Attempt Has Disappeared, And Nobody Knows Why -- Surveillance footage showing Jeffrey Epstein’s first alleged suicide attempt has “gone missing.” On July 23, Epstein was sharing a cell with Nick Tartaglione when the disgraced sex trafficker apparently tried to hang himself. Epstein subsequently claimed that Tartaglione, a former cop accused of killing four people in a botched drug deal, had tried to kill him.However, when Bruce Barket, Tartaglione’s lawyer, requested surveillance footage from the cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (which he had formally requested be preserved two days after the suicide attempt), he was told it had disappeared...“We asked for all the video and photographic evidence to be preserved, specifically this surveillance video. Now it’s gone,” said Attorney Bruce Barket.“I don’t know the details of how it was lost or destroyed or why it wasn’t retained when it should have been."The video footage was relevant to Tartaglione’s defense because it is potentially evidence of the ex-cop’s good character.“It is on the surface troubling,” Barket added.“I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve found out more details.”According to TMZ, the feds had no explanation for why the footage has gone missing, they said they simply can't find it. The judge, helpfully, told prosecutors to look further into what happened to it.

Epstein Tried To Marry His 24-Year-Old Blonde Bombshell Goddaughter In Brazen Tax-Shelter Scheme -  In what appears to be one of the most disturbing reports stemming from the Jeffrey Epstein estate, Business Insider reported on Wednesday that the unrepentant pedophile had plans to marry the young daughter of financier Glenn Dubin and Dubin's wife, former Miss Sweden Eva Andersson Dubin.  Epstein dated Andersson Dubin back in the 1980s before she met Glenn Dubin, the billionaire co-founder of hedge fund Highbridge Capital. Even after the two broke up, Epstein remained friends with Eva, and eventually the couple, with sources telling BI that their relationship continued even after his first arrest. After the birth of their daughter, Celina Dubin, the couple reportedly enlisted Epstein to be Celina's godfather (note: the couple denied this claim to Business Insider, though other sources corroborated it).  Epstein reportedly developed a close bond with Celina (Dubin was named one of Harvard's "15 Hottest Freshman" by the Harvard Crimson back in 2014; she's now 24 years old and studying medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinair) when she was still very young. She often referred to him as "Uncle Jeff," which seems intensely creepy in light of all of which Epstein has been accused. However, there's no evidence the two ever had a sexual relationship. Instead, it appears Epstein's motivation to marry Dubin was driven by his hope of establishing her as one of his heirs. His hope was apparently that by marrying him on paper, she would avoid onerous estate taxes, according to BI.According to documents obtained by Business Insider, Epstein (who, as a childless bachelor, had no direct heirs) had wanted Celina to inherit much of his fortune, reportedly including his private island in the Caribbean. To facilitate this, Epstein made Celina the beneficiary of a trust in 2014, and though he removed her name from it the following year, it still has some $50 million in it. It's unclear if Celina ever received any money from the trust before or after her name was removed.

ABC’s Epstein Story Didn’t Kill Itself — Multimillionaire predator Jeffrey Epstein died in suspicious circumstances at a Manhattan correctional facility on August 10. The wealthy and powerful New York financier, a convicted sex offender, stands accused by dozens of women and girls of trafficking, rape and sexual abuse.  He was an enormously influential and well-connected man who counted as friends billionaire business owners, Hollywood stars, British royals, and even top media figures like Katie Couric and Charlie Rose—with some of his associates falling under suspicion of condoning or even participating in a pedophile ring. Epstein’s crimes shocked the public, and his arrest, trial and mysterious death were major stories for much of 2019. But last month, leaked footage emerged showing that corporate media knew much about these crimes years previously. Discussing one of his accusers, ABC News anchor Amy Robach was caught on camera lambasting executives at her network for killing her investigations into the sex offender because of Epstein’s connections. The clip was originally leaked to infamous right-wing troll James O’Keefe, who has a long history of producing bogus stories (FAIR.org, 4/1/10, 3/14/11, 12/12/15, 10/21/16), but ABC employees, including Robach herself, have confirmed its authenticity.    In the video, Robach complains:“I’ve had the story for three years. I’ve had this interview with [Epstein complainant] Virginia Roberts. We would not put it on the air. First of all I was told, “Who is Jeffrey Epstein? No one knows who that is. This is a stupid story.” Then the palace found out that we had her whole allegations about Prince Andrew, and threatened us in a million different ways. We were so afraid we wouldn’t be able to interview Kate and Will that it also quashed the story. And then Alan Dershowitz was also implicated in it because of the planes.”“The planes” is a reference to the celebrity attorney’s frequent trips on Epstein’s infamous private jet, which he used for trafficking. A visibly exasperated Robach continued, revealing the level of detail of her investigation:She told me everything, she had pictures, everything. She was in hiding for 12 years. We convinced her to come out. We convinced her to talk to us. It was unbelievable what we had; Clinton, we had everything. I tried for three years to get it on to no avail, and now it’s all coming out and it’s like these new revelations, and I freaking had all of it!… What we had was unreal. Robach’s comments about being pressured into killing the story by powerful people ABC relied upon are a perfect example of the perils of access journalism.

Establishment Journalists Call For Big Tech To Censor Everyone Else -  In a major threat to what’s left of press freedom, establishment journalists are calling for Big Tech to censor those who won’t parrot the government-approved official narrative. Journalist Sulome Anderson has publically called for censorship of a site because it’s an independent news source. Anderson publicly requested that Google de-rank the independent news site The Grayzone. Anderson, who, according to her bio on her Twitter page, has published with news outlets such as The Washington Post, Newsweek, New York Magazine, and Foreign Policy, labeled a recent article by Grayzone contributor Rania Khalek as “dangerous”. For her part, Khalek called Anderson’s comments to Google a “dangerous threat to press freedom.” Khalek’s article, which Anderson specifically took aim at, is part of a two-piece investigation into alleged U.S. and Gulf states attempts to co-opt and influence the ongoing anti-corruption protests in Lebanon, according to Sputnik News. Khalek writes that:“By joining the roadblocks around Beirut, the protesters have inadvertently allowed themselves to be used by these US-allied parties. Whether they know it or not, the media-friendly artists and students at the ring road in downtown Beirut have given cover to the Lebanese Forces roadblocks in the north and the [Progressive Socialist Party] and Future Party roadblocks in the south.”Who decides which protests are worthy/unworthy? And why? It’s all about location!Protest against a government the US hates and you'll get the hero treatment in US media.But protest against a US ally and you’re a rioter.Watch my handy guide: pic.twitter.com/KDaCe2rbhA — Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) November 15, 2019 Anderson lashed out against the article, calling The Grayzone a “conspiracy theorist website” worth of Google’s power-hungry censorship: Can someone tell me why this piece on a conspiracy theorist website written by a woman who parachuted into Beirut to spread sectarian propaganda and now pretends to be native shows up on the first page of a @Google news search about the #LebanonProtests? https://t.co/YoQKRTUx8L   Anderson describes the piece as “dangerous” and demands to know the criteria for Google news searches so this article cannot be read.

Feds reap data from 1,500 phones in largest reported reverse-location warrant -  Federal investigators trying to solve arson cases in Wisconsin have scooped up location history data for about 1,500 phones that happened to be in the area, enhancing concerns about privacy in the mobile Internet era. Four Milwaukee-area arsons since 2018, as yet unsolved, have resulted in more than $50,000 of property damage as well as the deaths of two dogs, Forbes explains. In an attempt to find the person or persons responsible, officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) obtained search warrants to gather data about all the devices in the area at the time.The two warrants Forbes obtained together covered about nine hours' worth of activity within 29,400 square meters—an area a smidge larger than an average Milwaukee city block. Google found records for 1,494 devices matching the ATF's parameters and sent the data along.While this is far from the first search to demand a wide swath of data in a given geographic location, Forbes notes, this is the highest number of results such a geofenced search has so far produced. Not only is that a whole lot of potentially unrelated data for investigators to sort through, but it's also possible that the search will prove entirely fruitless, as whoever committed the crimes may not have a phone, may not have brought it with them, or may have brought it with them in airplane mode or powered off.

 Facebook says California’s new privacy law doesn’t apply to its trackers. These lawyers disagree. The California Consumer Privacy Act, which regulates data collection, doesn’t go into effect until next month, but it may already be heading for a showdown with one of the biggest data collectors of them all: Facebook. When the CCPA (full text here, if you really want to dig in) goes into effect on January 1, it will be the strictest digital privacy law in the United States to date, and the first law in the country that gives adults some rights over the collection of their data. Companies will be required to tell California residents what data about them is being collected, if it’s being sold, and to whom. It will give California residents the ability to opt out of having their data sold, and in some cases let them access and delete data a company has about them.Though this is a state law, it will likely affect all Americans. It’s both easier and safer for companies to apply it nationally, and it’s expected that most of them will follow Microsoft’s lead and do exactly that. You may have noticed several websites sending you notifications about updated privacy policies recently; this is likely why. Facebook is taking a different tack for its web tracker, Pixel. Pixel’s name comes from its physical appearance on a website that installs it: literally, one square pixel. But behind that pixel is a code that that installs cookies on your browser, allowing it to track your activity across the internet. Facebook is able to link your browser (and its activity) to your Facebook account, which gives it valuable data about you as an individual as well any categories it has placed you in — things like your location, age, gender, and interests. Facebook provides this code to businesses free of charge, and those businesses can then purchase ads based off the information that Pixel collects.   It can then purchase ads from Facebook that target, say, women ages 30-44 who live in Los Angeles, or advertise a certain product to site visitors who interacted with that product in some way.

Google fired an engineer who built a tool that notified employees of their labor rights. She's the fifth employee this month to accuse the company of illegal retaliation. -- A former Google engineer has filed a complaint against her former employer with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after she was terminated for building a tool that automatically reminded other Google employees of their rights when they visited certain websites.  Kathryn Spiers, a former security engineer at the California search giant, had modified a feature in the employee-only version of the web browser Chrome that displayed a pop-up notification telling employees that they "have the right to participate in protected concerted activities" when they visited the website of a labor-consulting firm hired by Google and some other websites. The tool was originally designed to present Google employees with security-related notifications as they browse the web, and Google suspended Spiers within hours of her change. She was subsequently fired over what the company said was a violation of its policy. On Monday, the Communications Workers of America union filed a charge with the NLRB, a US federal agency overseeing labor issues, alleging that Spiers' dismissal was illegal retaliation for engaging in protected activity, according to a copy of the complaint shared with Business Insider. In a statement, a Google spokesperson defended the firing: "We dismissed an employee who abused privileged access to modify an internal security tool. This was a serious violation." Google has been racked with labor issues for months, with activist employees staging protests and walkouts over numerous issues, from payouts made to executives accused of sexual harassment to the company's now shelved plans to build a censored search engine to operate in China. In November, it fired four employees — who have become known as the "Thanksgiving Four" — for what it said were violations of its data-security policies. They alleged they were retaliated against for trying to organize workers.  In an interview, Spiers said she believed she was also retaliated against for trying to inform Google employees of their rights.

‘I Slept With My Gun’: What It’s Like to Get Your Ring Camera Hacked - John was on his way home from the grocery store when he got the panicked call from his wife. After a weekend out of town, his kids were finally asleep in their Houston area home. His wife was getting ready for bed too, before she heard a stranger’s voice echoing down her hallway. “Is anyone home?” it asked. “We’re gonna find out,” it promised. The male voice was coming from a speaker on a camera posted near the TV in the living room. It was set up by the couple so they could monitor their babysitters remotely. . But now there was strange voice and a loud alarm emanating from the device, piercing like a klaxon through the hallways, threatening to wake the children a few rooms away. Then the voice began taunting John’s dog. The 33-year-old dad immediately pulled to the side of the road. He rushed to open the Ring app on his phone. Disconnecting the five security cameras he’d placed around the house would do the trick, he hoped. As he continued the drive, he wondered just how they had “broken in.” One scenario worried him more than the others. If whoever had hacked his camera had broken in through his wifi, he thought to himself, then that means they must be close. As he neared the driveway, John’s eyes darted up and down the street, searching for signs of anyone suspicious; a car, perhaps, that didn’t belong. Inside, he peered into his backyard, scanning the fence line. But the light only stretched so far, and he was left wondering if someone was there, just beyond its reach. “I slept with my gun next to my bed that night, which I never do,” he said. “I didn’t know if somebody was spying on us to look for an opportunity to break in—or something. That’s the unnerving part.” John’s family isn’t alone in their experience. In the past week, frightening tales of indoor cameras being hacked have gone viral. It’s now become apparent that Ring customers, in particular, are being targeted. After buying one of the Amazon-owned company’s doorbell cameras, John installed four more Ring devices around the house: Two Stick Up cams to watch the kids and the doggy door, as well as two floodlights equipped with cameras outside. A rash of vehicle burglaries in the neighborhood had led to the purchase. Now he was forced to disconnect them all and then begin about the annoying task of changing the passwords on every internet-connected device he owned.

These 91 companies paid no federal taxes in 2018 - Nearly 100 Fortune 500 companies effectively paid no federal taxes in 2018, according to a new report. The study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, covers the first year following passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act championed by President Donald Trump, which was signed into law in December 2017. The report covers 379 companies from the Fortune list that were profitable in 2018 and finds that 91 paid an effective federal tax rate of 0% or less. Those companies come from a wide range of industries and include the likes of Amazon, Starbucks and Chevron. The new tax law lowered the statutory corporate tax rate to 21%, but the companies in the report paid an average rate of 11.3%. Fifty-seven companies paid effective rates above 21%. The report was first covered by The Washington Post. The lower average rate means that the federal government brought in about $74 billion less in corporate taxes than if all the companies had paid the statutory rate, according to the report. The institute advocates for changes to the tax code that would increase corporate taxes, including repealing changes related to how companies account for capital expenditures and creating an alternative minimum tax for corporations. It calculated the effective tax rate by comparing the amount paid in taxes to the pretax profits. To be fair to these companies, these are the “effective” rates and were calculated using publicly available filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The tax expenses reflected in those documents do not necessarily match those in the private tax filings, and the analysis does not include state and local taxes. The following companies had effective rates of 0% or less, according to the report:

One jarring chart shows how taxes on workers have essentially replaced those on corporations  - The payroll taxes that the government collects from workers wages sustains two critical programs that benefit tens of millions of Americans: Social Security and Medicare. However, they're now shouldering more of the tax burden compared to corporations.Recent research from Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman — two progressive economists at the University of California, Berkeley — shows that payroll taxes on workers now makes up a significantly larger portion of national income compared to corporate taxes, which has steadily been on the decline for decades. Payroll taxes made up 7.8% of national income in 2018, compared to 0.9% for corporate ones — the widest gulf in almost two decades. This is shown in the chart below. Taxes on workers generated 35% of federal tax revenue in 2018, significantly higher than the 9% drawn from corporations, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  Zucman told Business Insider that the trend, combined with wages that haven't budged much upward, has contributed to the high level of wealth inequality in the United States. Tens of millions of American workers pay the 6.2% tax, which the federal government levies on wages to fund social insurance programs and employment benefits as well. It shrinks workers' paychecks as a result. Employers also carry the burden as they pay a 6.2% tax rate as well. Seventy-seven percent of tax filers in the US were projected to pay some amount of payroll tax in 2019, data from the Tax Policy Center shows. Taxes on the highest earners have been repeatedly cut by lawmakers over the last three decades: Twice under President Reagan, twice under President George Bush and also President George W. Bush, his son, according to the Washington Post. President Obama also temporarily extended the Bush tax cuts in the midst of the Great Recession, and made some of them permanent in 2013.President Trump overhauled the US tax code in 2017, drastically slashing the corporate tax rate which led to a substantial drop in federal tax dollars collected.

Goldman To Admit Guilt, Pay $2BN Fine And Hire Independent Monitor In Historic 1MDB Settlement - Two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that Goldman Sachs and the DoJ were finally nearing a deal in the federal probe of the Vampire Squid's role in the 1MDB scandal, one of the biggest government fraud cases in modern Asian history. During the opening years of this decade, Goldman organized a series of bond issues for 1MDB - short for 1Malaysia Development Bhd - a sovereign wealth fund that was supposed to finance major public works projects for the people of Malaysia.  But instead of being used for the public good, the fund was looted by financier Jho Low, who was put in charge of the project by then-Prime Minister Najib Razak. Low, allegedly with the help of two Goldman bankers, who were later accused of accepting bribes to facilitate the fraud, siphoned billions of dollars out of the fund and distributed to Razak and members of his inner circle. The fund went bust and bondholders were eventually left holding the bag.   Anyway, as of earlier this month, it appeared that the DoJ was preparing to let Goldman off easy with a (just under) $2 billion fine. Such a fine would be the biggest settlement with a US bank since the mortgage settlements after the crisis. Goldman's shares jumped in response to the headline, as the market interpreted it as positive news: The fine was smaller than analysts had expected, and there was no mention of a guilty plea anywhere in the report. Unfortunately, that has now changed.According to WSJ, Goldman is in talks to agree to a $2 billion fine, admit guilt and agree to pay for an independent monitor of its compliance practices.That's bad news for Goldman, though the guilty plea would only impact one of the bank's Asian subsidiaries, rather than the parent company.Goldman Sachs Group  is in talks with the U.S. government to pay a multibillion-dollar fine, admit guilt and agree to ongoing oversight of its compliance procedures in order to resolve a criminal investigation into its role in a Malaysian corruption scandal.Goldman and the Justice Department have largely agreed on a fine of just under $2 billion to settle allegations that the Wall Street firm ignored red flags while billions of dollars were looted from its client, a Malaysian government fund known as 1MDB, people familiar with the matter said. The bank and U.S. officials have discussed a deal in which a Goldman subsidiary in Asia - not the parent company - would plead guilty to violating U.S. bribery laws, some of the people said. The discussions also involve Goldman installing an independent monitor to oversee and recommend changes to its compliance procedures, the people said.

How a Whale Crashed Bitcoin To Sub-$7,000 Overnight -- Bitcoin lost billions of dollars worth of valuation within a 30-minutes timeframe as a Chinese cryptocurrency scammer allegedly liquidated its steal via over-the-counter markets. The initial sell-off by PlusToken caused a domino effect, causing mass liquidations.PlusToken, a fraud scheme that duped investors of more than $2bn, dumped huge bitcoin stockpiles from its anonymous accounts, according to Chainalysis.The New York-based blockchain consultancy cited an internal investigation that showedPlusToken scammers on a systematic crypto liquidation spree. Some of them have been actively selling bitcoin since June – right after the cryptocurrency established a year-to-date high of circa $14,000.It was the same period when the Chinese authorities nabbed people suspected to have been involved with the PlusToken scam. The latest bitcoin crash took the cryptocurrency’s rate down by close to 4 percent. The wild move downhill accompanied a sudden spike in volumes, validating an interim breakout that NewsBTC predicted in one of its analysis. The sudden dump prompted bitcoin to come out a sideways trading range | Source: TradingView.com, CoinbaseChainalysis noted that PlusToken had so far cashed out at least $185mn worth of bitcoin via OTC desks. Their cashout strategy, therefore, could have either manipulated the market dynamics directly or have indirectly changed the perception of traders towards bitcoin. But the most fearsome takeaway remains the scammer’s likelihood of continuing the price dump. Chainalysis’s study shows that the entity still holds a massive stash of bitcoin that it might liquidate at a later stage. That raises the prospects of more price crashes unless there is an adequate demand to match the scammer’s supply flow.

New York Fed Plans to Throw $2.93 Trillion at Wall Street’s Trading Houses Over Next Month as New York Times Remains Silent -- Pam Martens - One has to wonder how much money it would take for the New York Fed to throw at Wall Street before the New York Times reports to its readers on the biggest Wall Street bailout by the Fed since the financial crisis. Last Thursday, December 12, the New York Fed announced that over the next month it would shower the trading houses (primary dealers) on Wall Street with a total of $2.93 trillion in short-term loans. The money is for a Wall Street liquidity crisis that has yet to be explained in credible terms to the American people and yet the New York Times does not appear to have an investigative reporter assigned to investigate what’s really going on just 11 years after those same trading houses blew themselves up in the biggest financial crash since the Great Depression and took the U.S. economy along for the ride.The New York Fed’s repo (repurchase agreement) loan program began on September 17 when repo loan rates spiked from approximately 2 percent to 10 percent – meaning either liquid funds were not available to loan or the mega banks on Wall Street were backing away from lending to certain counterparties. Repo loans are typically between banks, hedge funds and money market funds on an overnight basis and are made against good-quality collateral. Since that time, the New York Fed has been making these loans to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars weekly.The New York Times covered the subject in September. Then an eerie silence took hold in October and November as the Fed continued to pump out over $3 trillion in cumulative loans to Wall Street’s trading houses. On December 8 and December 12, the New York Times simply ran articles by Reuters on the Fed’s loans, which are the first of their kind since the financial crisis.The $2.93 trillion that the New York Fed will funnel to Wall Street over the next month consists of up to $120 billion each weekday in overnight loans through January 14 and $440 billion in term loans ranging from 3-days to 32 days. In addition, during the last week of the year (on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday) the Fed will bump up its overnight loan offerings to $150 billion from $120 billion, thus providing an additional $90 billion that week.Adding to the suggestion that liquidity remains tight on Wall Street despite the Fed’s loans, the New York Fed offered a $50 billion 32-day term loan this morning and it was oversubscribed by $4.25 billion.The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Derby reported this massive new money spigot from the Fed after it was announced last Thursday but he wrote this regarding the source of the problem: “The apparent cause of that spike was a large tax payment date and settlements for Treasury debt auctions that affect how much money was available in the banking system.” That was the official-speak from the Federal Reserve and relates to what happened on September 17. It does not explain why the Fed has had to continue throwing hundreds of billions of dollars each week at Wall Street’s trading houses after those corporate tax payments and Treasury auctions were long out of the picture.

The New York Fed Is Keeping JPMorgan’s Secrets Close to Its Chest -  Pam Martens - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed) seems intent on stonewalling Wall Street On Parade from receiving some very basic information on JPMorgan Chase’s rapid drawdown this year on its liquid reserves at the New York Fed – a matter which some on Wall Street have fingered as a contributing cause of the ongoing repo loan crisis. . For the past decade we have been keeping close tabs on the crony operations of the New York Fed. (See related articles below.) The New York Fed has effectively morphed into a key cog in Wall Street’s wealth transfer system – where the little guy’s pocket is picked daily in the service of minting billionaires on Wall Street – who now increasingly want to rule the rest of us from the White House. Throughout its history, the overarching mandate of the Federal Reserve has been to provide emergency loans to deposit-taking banks, backed by solid collateral, so that they can continue to provide business and consumer loans to keep the economy functioning and growing. The Federal Reserve’s mandate has never been to prop up the high-risk casino trading houses on Wall Street. But since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, which allowed the casino trading houses on Wall Street – like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup – to own federally-insured banks holding the life savings of moms and pops across America, the New York Fed has morphed into Wall Street’s lender of first resort. As an illustration of just how far the New York Fed has strayed from the original mandate of the Federal Reserve Act, during the financial crisis it operated one program called the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Under that program, it loaned $8.95trillion in cumulative loans according to the GAO’s audit. Almost two-thirds of the money went to three trading houses on Wall Street: Citigroup received $2 trillion; Morgan Stanley received $1.9 trillion and Merrill Lynch received $1.775 trillion. (See chart below from the GAO report.) And instead of requiring good collateral, many of these loans were backed with stocks and junk bonds at a time when both markets were in a state of collapse. This is financial hubris at its finest. The New York Fed failed to rein in the risks of these trading houses while it was wining and dining their executives and setting up committees to jointly set “best practices” for the industry, then it secretly bailed out the corrupt firms to the tune of $29 trillion to cover its failures as a supervisor. With that as background, consider what is happening now as Wall Street On Parade has attempted to use the nation’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to bring some sunshine to the American people on why there is a liquidity crisis in the overnight lending market (repo market) on Wall Street while there seems to be plenty of liquidity to goose the stock market higher.

 New York Fed’s Fake Borrowing Rates Raise Ghosts of Libor’s Fake Rates – Pam Martens - When it comes to Wall Street’s mindset, the thinking is that it’s legal if you can get away with it. That mindset seems to have captured the Federal Reserve Bank of New York which secretly pumped trillions of dollars into insolvent banks in violation of its statutory mandate during the financial crisis; is alleged to have fired a bank examiner for refusing to alter her negative examination of Goldman Sachs; and failed to investigate a litany of crimes to which it was made aware. (See U.S. Senate Tries Public Shaming of New York Fed President Dudley.) For example, on June 27, 2012 the U.S. Department of Justice fined the U.K. trading house and bank, Barclays, $160 million for submitting false Libor borrowing costs. According to the Justice Department, “between approximately August 2007 and January 2009, in response to initial and ongoing press speculation that Barclays’s high U.S. Dollar LIBOR submissions at the time might reflect liquidity problems at Barclays, members of Barclays management directed that Barclays’s Dollar LIBOR submissions be lowered. This management instruction often resulted in Barclays’s submission of false rates that did not reflect its perceived cost of obtaining interbank funds.” Against that backdrop, consider what happened on September 17 of this year and every business day since then. On September 17, the interest rate on overnight loans in the repurchase agreement market (repo loans) spiked from the typical 2 percent to 10 percent. The U.S. repo market is where banks, hedge funds and mutual funds make overnight loans to one another against good collateral such as U.S. Treasury securities. The large spike in rates suggested to many on Wall Street that the mega banks on Wall Street were backing away from lending to one or more financial institutions or hedge funds out of fear over their creditworthiness. (See “Intra-day Bankruptcy”: A 2008 Email from the Fed Provides Insight into Today’s Overnight Repo Scare.) But instead of allowing the free market to engage in further price discovery in the overnight loan market and allow a free market to determine the true cost of borrowing for specific banks, the New York Fed instead jumped into the market on September 17 and proceeded to flood the market with hundreds of billions of dollars each week in supercheap loans, thus artificially manipulating and obfuscating the true borrowing cost in this market. The New York Fed has intervened in this market every single business day since September 17. Last Thursday, the New York Fed announced that it has no plans to allow this market to function on its own. (See New York Fed Plans to Throw $2.93 Trillion at Wall Street’s Trading Houses Over Next Month as New York Times Remains Silent.)

Where have all the CFPB fair-lending cases gone? - Despite assurances by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that it is serious about cracking down on fair-lending violations, the dearth of CFPB enforcement actions regarding redlining and other discriminatory practices in two years worries consumer and civil rights advocates. Under Director Kathy Kraninger, the CFPB has filed barely any fair-lending enforcement orders, in sharp contrast to the Obama administration. In the past year, the agency issued only one action related to fair lending, fining Freedom Mortgage $1.75 million for alleged violations of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. But neither Kraninger, nor her predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, filed any other orders or referred possible Equal Credit Opportunity Act violations to the Department of Justice in the past two years. Industry lawyers say the CFPB is still focused on fair-lending exams, and Kraninger told lawmakers in October that the agency was conducting investigations. Yet the lack of much public enforcement activity over such a long stretch concerns agency critics who say discrimination in the financial services sector still exists and is a barrier to minorities' financial well-being. "The absence of fair-lending cases isn’t because we’ve successfully ended discrimination," said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division. "It is, however, reflective of our new reality: Enforcement in this area has largely halted. The CFPB and the Department of Justice have an obligation to look out for discriminatory activity — which remains illegal — and to fight on behalf of those being harmed." Under the Trump administration, the bureau has signaled a desire to pull back from enforcement actions generally and fair-lending investigations specifically. In an April speech, Kraninger said the agency was refocusing on supervision instead of enforcement. And last year, Mulvaney had stripped the agency's Office of Fair Lending of enforcement powers. The drop in CFPB fair-lending cases can be attributed to a number of other factors. Mulvaney had instituted a temporary halt to all enforcement actions after coming aboard. Discrimination and redlining cases also take more time.

Warren, Brown call on GAO to investigate CFPB's fair lending oversight - Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are asking the Government Accountability Office to open an investigation into the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s oversight and enforcement of fair-lending laws. The two sent a letter Wednesday to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro “raising grave concerns about whether the bureau is fulfilling its statutory obligations.”Their letter came a day after an American Banker article that noted the CFPB's lack of enforcement activity surrounding fair-lending issues. The agency has filed just one enforcement action related to those issues in the past two years, while making no referrals to the Department of Justice for violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. The letter cited a GAO report in 2009 that found federal oversight of fair-lending laws was “inconsistent, fragmented, and resulted in relatively few fair lending cases." It also noted that lax fair-lending oversight contributed to the financial crisis.  “Federal agencies’ failure to effectively enforce fair lending laws enabled predatory lending practices that targeted racial and ethnic minorities, fueled the foreclosure crisis, and stripped wealth from black and Latino homeowners,” the letter said. The CFPB was more active in fair-lending enforcement under the Obama administration. The CFPB made 40 lending discrimination referrals to the Justice Department since 2011, peaking at 15 in 2014 but dropping to just two in 2017. The senators listed five specific questions for the GAO to examine, including th e “overall effectiveness” of the bureau’s oversight and enforcement of fair-lending laws. The lawmakers asked whether decisions by CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger and former acting Director Mick Mulvaney affected the agency’s effectiveness to enforce equal opportunity law. That statute prohibits credit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or because a person gets public assistance.

Crapo delivers crushing blow to pot banking — Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo delivered a significant blow Wednesday to legislation enabling banks and credit unions to serve the cannabis industry, announcing his opposition to a bill designed to help marijuana businesses in the more than 30 states that have legalized the substance.“I have significant concerns that the SAFE Banking Act does not address the high level potency of marijuana, marketing tactics to children, lack of research on marijuana’s effects, and the need to prevent bad actors and cartels from using the banks to disguise ill-gotten cash to launder money into the financial system,” Crapo said in a detailed statement about his views on the issue.Crapo's plans have been the subject of intense speculation since the House passed the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act. The biggest question has been whether he would hold a vote on pot banking legislation in 2019. But his statement all but confirms that he will not move such a bill this year.  Instead, Crapo requested public feedback to help forge a legislative solution to the issue that addresses his concerns.  “I remain firmly opposed to efforts to legalize marijuana on the federal level, and I am opposed to legalization in the State of Idaho,” Crapo said. “I also do not support the SAFE Banking Act that passed in the House of Representatives.”  Crapo’s opposition to the SAFE Banking Act comes after the House overwhelmingly passed the bill in a 321-103 vote in September, with 91 Republicans joining nearly all of the chamber’s Democrats.

Regulators find 'shortcomings' in living wills of six large banks — The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. identified shortcomings in six of the eight resolution plans submitted by the largest U.S. banks, the agencies said Tuesday. The two agencies, which under the Dodd-Frank Act are required to review large banks' living wills, said the eight global systemically important banks did not show "deficiencies" in their plans. But while "shortcomings" are less severe than deficiencies, they still “raise questions about the feasibility of a firm’s plan,” the Fed and the FDIC said Tuesday in a release. The regulators found shortcomings in the living wills submitted by Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, State Street and Wells Fargo. Those shortcomings were related to the banks’ inability to produce the data to execute their resolution strategy in the event of financial stress. "Examples include measures of capital and liquidity at relevant subsidiaries," the agencies said in their press release. Those six banks will need to submit plans on how they plan to address the issues raised by the regulators by March 31. The Fed and the FDIC did not identify any deficiencies or shortcomings in the living wills submitted by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. All eight banks received a feedback letter, which notes “that each firm made significant progress in enhancing its resolvability and developing resolution-related capabilities but all firms will need to continue to make progress in certain areas,” the agencies said. The Fed and the FDIC also said that Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo all successfully addressed shortcomings identified in the 2017 review of their resolution plans. Subs

 FHFA proposal would exempt Federal Home Loan banks from stress tests — The Federal Housing Finance Agency has proposed a plan that would exempt the Federal Home Loan banks from conducting stress tests. The FHFA's proposal would increase the stress test threshold for companies supervised by the agency from $10 billion to $250 billion of total consolidated assets. No Home Loan bank currently meets the new threshold. The proposal still requires the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to conduct stress tests. The plan would implement a provision of last year's financial regulatory relief law, and mirrors steps taken by the federal bank regulators for their institutions. The FHFA is also proposing to remove a requirement that stress tests include an “adverse scenario” from its stress testing regime. The new regulatory relief law amended the Dodd-Frank Act to no longer require such a scenario in stress tests. “Although the ‘adverse’ scenario has provided some additional value in limited circumstances, the ‘baseline’ and ‘severely adverse’ scenarios largely cover the full range of expected and stressful conditions,” the proposed rule says. “Therefore, FHFA does not consider it necessary, for its supervisory purposes, to require the additional burden of analyzing an ‘adverse’ scenario.” Although the Home Loan banks would no longer be required to participate in stress tests, the FHFA’s proposal suggests that the agency's director should be able to compel any institution it regulates with assets of less than $250 billion to participate in stress tests if it is warranted. The FHFA will accept comments on the proposal until Jan. 15.

Senate Democrats demand more GSE reform details from FHFA — Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee are pressuring Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to provide more details on administration plans to end the conservatorships of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a letter Tuesday, the lawmakers sought timelines on the release of new proposals for reforming the government-sponsored enterprises. The senators said they needed the information to conduct oversight of the housing finance system. “As members concerned with housing access and affordability, and the continued success of the secondary mortgage market, we request additional, detailed information regarding the Administration’s plans to reform these entities and the analysis that supports these plans,” the senators, led by Mark Warner, D-Va., wrote. “Without additional information, Congress will be unable to fulfill its proper oversight role, or otherwise design policies to protect critical access and affordability to homeownership and rental housing.” The letter includes more than 20 bullet points about aspects of GSE reform that the senators say they hope to better understand. The senators are seeking analyses of the effect of GSE reform plans on mortgage products, as well as the impact on housing affordability. They are also asking for details on the legal basis for using a consent agreement to end the GSEs' conservatorships. And they are looking to better understand plans for Fannie and Freddie to raise capital. The senators also ask whether the administration’s plan will reduce the GSEs' footprint, whether the GSEs will continue to contribute to the Housing Trust Fund and Capital Magnet Fund, and whether the administration plans to make any changes to the companies’ duty to serve requirements. Subsc

Senate Democrats demand OCC's Otting testify on CRA — Senate Democrats are demanding that Comptroller of the Currency Joseph Otting testify before the panel after the regulator unveiled plans Thursday to overhaul the decades-old Community Reinvestment Act. All of the Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee signed a letter to Otting Friday requesting his appearance before the panel, after he was unable to attend a regulator oversight hearing last week. “Revisions to the regulation for this foundational Civil Rights law will have a significant impact on low-income communities, communities of color, rural areas, affordable housing development, community development, and other underserved communities and activities across the banking system,” the senators wrote. “We respectfully request your timely appearance before the Committee to discuss this important proposal and its impact in detail.” The lawmakers said Otting’s appearance would also be an opportunity to discuss “prudential matters” that they could not ask him about last week when he did not join Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Jelena McWilliams, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman of Supervision Randal Quarles and National Credit Union Administration Chairman Rodney Hood at a hearing before the panel. The letter comes after the plan to overhaul the CRA was unveiled at a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board meeting Thursday. The OCC and FDIC issued the proposal without the Federal Reserve. In a rare move, House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., led a group of Democrats to attend the FDIC board meeting. Members of the party have raised concerns that regulators will weaken the law intended to combat redlining. Waters indicated at a House hearing last week that she would also call Otting to testify before her committee. Subsc

Reactions to CRA plan signal long fight ahead — Bank regulators moved the needle this week on efforts to reform the Community Reinvestment Act, but their sweeping proposal could set in motion a bruising battle to come. Clear fault lines had already appeared before the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released their 240-page notice of proposed rulemaking, with the Federal Reserve refusing to sign on to the document and Democratic lawmakers criticizing the plan even before it was unveiled. Reactions to the proposal ranged from moderate applause by banks to condemnation by community reinvestment and consumer advocates, who argued the proposal would end up hurting those the CRA was intended to benefit. The proposal would “significantly undercut the kind of smaller, more targeted investments that communities need the most," David Dworkin, CEO of the National Housing Conference, said in an interview. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Clear fault lines had already appeared before the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. released their 240-page notice of proposed rulemaking. Bloomberg News Critics of the plan seemed most concerned about three elements: the proposal to measure a bank's CRA compliance partly by the dollar value of its investments; a fear that community development's impact on the overall score will be diluted; and the impact of bigger CRA assessment areas on banks' most proximate neighborhoods. The proposal would transform the approach to calculating a bank's CRA activity by including both a measure based on the number of CRA-related loans and one based on the dollar amount of those loans. But some observers say the latter rewards banks for focusing its CRA efforts on higher-priced projects, which they say goes against the spirit of the law. "It creates a perverse incentive for investments to target the highest, largest-dollar volume, which could ultimately add to gentrification and displacement in many of these communities,” Dworkin said. In a statement following the agencies' release of the proposal, National Community Reinvestment Coalition CEO Jesse Van Tol was blunter in his assessment of the so-called single-metric approach for assessing CRA compliance. “Along with the banking industry, we and our members across the nation share the desire to modernize CRA,” Van Tol said in a statement. “However, the Trump administration seems determined to radically overhaul and water down the compliance system by introducing a numerical measure of performance that has been widely criticized, by bankers as well as community advocates, as overly simplistic.”

Homelessness increased 2.7 percent in 2019, HUD says -Homelessness increased by 2.7 percent since 2018, driven by major increases in California, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Significant increases in homelessness on the West Coast, especially in California and Oregon offset decreases in homelessness in other parts of the country, the department said in a statement Friday. Homelessness in California increased 16.4 percent. HUD's national estimate found that on a single night in 2019, 567,715 people were homeless. Homelessness decreased in 29 states and Washington, D.C. since 2018 and increased in 21 states. Homelessness among veterans fell 2.1 percent and homelessness among children fell 4.8 percent. "As we look across our nation, we see great progress, but we're also seeing a continued increase in street homelessness along our West Coast where the cost of housing is extremely high,"  HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in the statement.He said that homelessness in California was at a "crisis level" and called on local and state leaders to act.  Although homelessness increased over the past year, overall homelessness is down almost 11 percent since 2010.

Mortgage Equity Withdrawal Positive in Q3 The following data is calculated from the Fed's Flow of Funds data (released last week) and the BEA supplement data on single family structure investment. This is an aggregate number, and is a combination of homeowners extracting equity - hence the name "MEW" - and normal principal payments and debt cancellation (modifications, short sales, and foreclosures).  For Q3 2019, the Net Equity Extraction was $31 billion, or a 0.75% of Disposable Personal Income (DPI) .  This graph shows the net equity extraction, or mortgage equity withdrawal (MEW), results, using the Flow of Funds (and BEA data) compared to the Kennedy-Greenspan method.  Note: This data is impacted by debt cancellation and foreclosures, but much less than a few years ago.  MEW has been mostly positive for the last four years. With a slower rate of debt cancellation, MEW will likely be mostly positive going forward - but nothing like during the housing bubble.  The Fed's Flow of Funds report showed that the amount of mortgage debt outstanding increased by $85 billion in Q3.

 Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey -Mortgage applications decreased 5.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending December 13, 2019.... The Refinance Index decreased 7 percent from the previous week and was 135 percent higher than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 6 percent compared with the previous week and was 10 percent higher than the same week one year ago...  "Mortgage rates were mostly unchanged, even as a potential trade deal between the U.S. and China caused rates to inch forward at the end of last week,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA Senior Vice President and Chief Economist. “With rates showing little meaningful movement, both refinance and purchase activity took a step back. As we move into the slowest time of the year for home sales, purchase application volume is declining but continues to outperform year-ago levels, when rates were much higher. Purchase activity was 10 percent higher than a year ago.”Added Fratantoni, “2019 was another year of inadequate housing supply in relation to demand. The good news is that the tide could be slowly turning for potential buyers. Housing starts and permits rose strongly in November, and homebuilder confidence has surged to a level not seen since 1999.”... The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($484,350 or less) remained unchanged at 3.98 percent, with points remaining unchanged at 0.33 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent loan-to-value ratio (LTV) loans.

 NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 5.35 million in November -- From the NAR: Existing-Home Sales Descend 1.7% in November: Existing-home sales fell in November, taking a small step back after October’s gains, according to the National Association of Realtors®. The Northeast and Midwest both reported growth last month, while the South and West saw sales decline. Total existing-home sales, completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, decreased 1.7% from October to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 5.35 million in November. However, sales are up 2.7% from a year ago (5.21 million in November 2018). .. Total housing inventory at the end of November totaled 1.64 million units, down approximately 7.3% from October and 5.7% from one year ago (1.74 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 3.7-month supply at the current sales pace, down from 3.9 months in October and from the 4.0-month figure recorded in November 2018. Unsold inventory totals have declined for five consecutive months, constraining home sales.This graph shows existing home sales, on a Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) basis since 1993. Sales in November (5.35 million SAAR) were down 1.9% from last month, and were 2.7% above the November 2018 sales rate. The second graph shows nationwide inventory for existing homes. According to the NAR, inventory decreased to 1.64 million in November from 1.77 million in October. Headline inventory is not seasonally adjusted, and inventory usually decreases to the seasonal lows in December and January, and peaks in mid-to-late summer. The last graph shows the year-over-year (YoY) change in reported existing home inventory and months-of-supply. Since inventory is not seasonally adjusted, it really helps to look at the YoY change. Note: Months-of-supply is based on the seasonally adjusted sales and not seasonally adjusted inventory. Year-over-year Inventory Inventory was down 5.7% year-over-year in November compared to November 2018. Months of supply decreased to 3.7 months in November. This was lower than the consensus forecast. For existing home sales, a key number is inventory - and inventory is still low.

Comments on November Existing Home Sales --Earlier: NAR: Existing-Home Sales Decreased to 5.35 million in November A few key points:
1) Existing home sales were up 2.7% year-over-year (YoY) in November. This was the fifth consecutive month with a YoY increase - following 16 consecutive months with a YoY decrease in sales
2) Inventory is still low, and was down 5.7% year-over-year (YoY) in November.
3) Year-to-date sales are down about 1.1% compared to the same period in 2018.   On an annual basis, that would put sales around 5.28 million in 2019, down from 5.34 million in 2018.
Sales slumped at the end of 2018 and in January 2019 due to higher mortgage rates, the stock market selloff, and fears of an economic slowdown. The comparisons will be easy in December of this year, and with lower mortgage rates, sales will probably finish the year mostly unchanged from 2018. The second graph shows existing home sales Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA). Sales NSA in November (404,000, red column) were slightly below sales in November 2018 (406,000, NSA).   Note: There were fewer selling days in November 2019 compared to 2018. Overall this was a solid report.

Housing Starts increased to 1.365 Million Annual Rate in November - From the Census Bureau: Permits, Starts and Completions Privately‐owned housing starts in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,365,000. This is 3.2 percent above the revised October estimate of 1,323,000 and is 13.6 percent above the November 2018 rate of 1,202,000. Single‐family housing starts in November were at a rate of 938,000; this is 2.4 percent above the revised October figure of 916,000. The November rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 404,000. Privately‐owned housing units authorized by building permits in November were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,482,000. This is 1.4 percent above the revised October rate of 1,461,000 and is 11.1 percent above the November 2018 rate of 1,334,000. Single‐family authorizations in November were at a rate of 918,000; this is 0.8 percent (±1.3 percent)* above the revised October figure of 911,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 524,000 in November. The first graph shows single and multi-family housing starts for the last several years. Multi-family starts (red, 2+ units) were up in November compared to October.   Multi-family starts were up 7.3% year-over-year in November. Multi-family is volatile month-to-month, and  has been mostly moving sideways the last several years. Single-family starts (blue) increased in November, and were up 16.7% year-over-year. The second graph shows total and single unit starts since 1968.The second graph shows the huge collapse following the housing bubble, and then eventual recovery (but still historically low). Total housing starts in November were above expectations and revisions were minor.

Comments on November Housing Starts --Earlier: Housing Starts increased to 1.365 Million Annual Rate in November.  Total housing starts in November were above expectations and revisions to prior months were minor. The housing starts report showed starts were up 3.2% in November compared to October, and starts were up 13.6% year-over-year compared to November 2018.Single family starts were up 16.7% year-over-year, and multi-family starts were up 4.4% YoY. This first graph shows the month to month comparison for total starts between 2018 (blue) and 2019 (red). Starts were up 13.6% in October compared to October 2018. Year-to-date, starts are up 0.6% compared to the same period in 2018. Last year, in 2018, starts were strong early in the year, and then fell off in the 2nd half - so the comparison will be easy in December. My guess was starts would be down slightly year-over-year in 2019 compared to 2018, but nothing like the YoY declines we saw in February and March. However, with the strong finish to the year, starts will be up in 2019 compared to 2018. Below is an update to the graph comparing multi-family starts and completions. Since it usually takes over a year on average to complete a multi-family project, there is a lag between multi-family starts and completions. Completions are important because that is new supply added to the market, and starts are important because that is future new supply (units under construction is also important for employment). The rolling 12 month total for starts (blue line) increased steadily for several years following the great recession - but turned down, and has moved sideways recently. Completions (red line) had lagged behind - then completions caught up with starts- although starts are picking up a little again. As I've been noting for several years, the significant growth in multi-family starts is behind us - multi-family starts peaked in June 2015 (at 510 thousand SAAR). The second graph shows single family starts and completions. It usually only takes about 6 months between starting a single family home and completion - so the lines are much closer. The blue line is for single family starts and the red line is for single family completions. Note the relatively low level of single family starts and completions. The "wide bottom" was what I was forecasting following the recession, and now I expect some further increases in single family starts and completions.

US Single-Family Building Permits Reach 12-Year High -- After a big rebound in October, analysts expected a more mixed picture for November with starts expected to extend gains while permits are seen falling. However, the data was much more positive:

• Housing Starts +3.2% MoM (vs +2.4% exp)
• Building Permits +1.4% MoM (vs expectations of a 3.5% drop)

The second monthly rise in a row... Housing Starts rose 13.6% YoY - the most since May 2018... Single Family Starts accelerated back near cycle highs and multi-family also rose in November. And single-family permits hit 918k - the highest since August 2007... Two of four regions posted a gain in starts, led by a jump in the South to the fastest pace since March 2007. Starts in the West also advanced. All-in-all, very positive - corroborating other housing data, such as Homebuilder sentiment soaring to a 20-year high in December - as long as Powell keeps rates low.  The data indicate residential construction may add to fourth-quarter growth after contributing in the previous quarter for the first time since the end of 2017.

NAHB: Builder Confidence Increased to 76 in December, Highest since 1999 -- The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) was at 76, up from 71 in November. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor. From NAHB: Builder Confidence Ends Year Strong on Solid Economic Fundamentals Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes increased five points to 76 in December off an upwardly revised November reading, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. This is the highest reading since June of 1999.“Builders are continuing to see the housing rebound that began in the spring, supported by a low supply of existing homes, low mortgage rates and a strong labor market,” said NAHB Chairman Greg Ugalde, a home builder and developer from Torrington, Conn. “While we are seeing near-term positive market conditions with a 50-year low for the unemployment rate and increased wage growth, we are still underbuilding due to supply-side constraints like labor and land availability,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “Higher development costs are hurting affordability and dampening more robust construction growth.”… All three HMI components registered gains in December. The HMI index gauging current sales conditions rose seven points to 84, the component measuring sales expectations in the next six months edged up one point to 79 and the measure charting traffic of prospective buyers increased four points to 58.Looking at the three-month moving averages for regional HMI scores, the Northeast fell two points to 61, the Midwest increased five points to 63, the South moved one point higher to 76 and the West rose three points to 84.

AIA: "Architecture Billings Index continues to show modest growth" - Note: This index is a leading indicator primarily for new Commercial Real Estate (CRE) investment.
From the AIA: Architecture Billings Index continues to show modest growth: Demand for design services in November increased at a modest pace for the second month in a row, according to a new report today from The American Institute of Architects (AIA). AIA’s Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score of 51.9 for November reflects an increase in design services provided by U.S. architecture firms (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). During November, both the new project inquiries and design contracts scores were positive, posting scores of 60.9 and 52.9 respectively. “The uncertainty surrounding the overall health of the economy is leading developers to proceed with more caution on new projects,” said AIA Chief Economist, Kermit Baker, Hon. AIA, PhD. “​We are at a point where there is a potential for an upside but also a potential for things to get worse.”
• Regional averages: South (54.5); West (51.3); Midwest (51.1); Northeast (47.5)
• Sector index breakdown: commercial/industrial (52.9) mixed practice (52.2); multi-family residential (51.5); institutional (50.1)
This graph shows the Architecture Billings Index since 1996. The index was at 51.9 in October, down from 52.0 in October. Anything above 50 indicates expansion in demand for architects' services. Note: This includes commercial and industrial facilities like hotels and office buildings, multi-family residential, as well as schools, hospitals and other institutions. According to the AIA, there is an "approximate nine to twelve month lag time between architecture billings and construction spending" on non-residential construction. This index has been positive for 8 of the previous 12 months, suggesting some further increase in CRE investment in 2020 - but three of the previous six months were negative.

Personal Income increased 0.5% in November, Spending increased 0.4% - The BEA released the Personal Income and Outlays report for November: Personal income increased $101.7 billion (0.5 percent) in November according to estimates released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Disposable personal income (DPI) increased $87.7 billion (0.5 percent) and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $64.9 billion (0.4 percent).  Real DPI increased 0.4 percent in November, and real PCE increased 0.3 percent. The PCE price index increased 0.2 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.1 percent. The November PCE price index increased 1.5 percent year-over-year and the November PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 1.6 percent year-over-year.  The following graph shows real Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) through November 2019 (2012 dollars). Note that the y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the change. The dashed red lines are the quarterly levels for real PCE. The increase in personal income was above expectations, and the increase in PCE was at expectations. Note that core PCE inflation was up 1.6% YoY. Using the two-month method to estimate Q4 PCE growth, PCE was increasing at a 2.2% annual rate in Q4 2019. (using the mid-month method, PCE was increasing at 2.3%). This suggests slower PCE growth in Q4 than in Q3.

US Personal Incomes Grow At Fastest Pace Of 2019, Spending Picks Up - After a surprise slowdown in October, analysts were hopeful of a rebound in incomes and spending of Americans in November and they got just that.

• US Personal Incomes rose 0.5% MoM (dramatically better than the 0.0% in October - revised up to +0.1% - and expectations of a 0.3% rise)
• US Personal Spending rose 0.4% MoM (printing as expected and accelerating from October's +0.3%)

On a year-over-year basis, both incomes and spending re-accelerated but it was incomes that outperformed - up 4.9% YoY, the highest since Dec 2018.  The specifics show private workers doing best:

• Private worker wages up 5.7% Y/Y
• Government worker wages up 3.4% Y/Y

The income over spending gap means that savings rose in November (personal savings rate rose from 7.8% to 7.9%)... Finally, we note that The Fed's favorite inflation indicator - the PCE Deflator - remains well below the 'mandated' 2.0% level...

Real Disposable Income Per Capita in November - With the release of this morning's report on November Personal Incomes and Outlays, we can now take a closer look at"Real" Disposable Personal Income Per Capita. At two decimal places, the nominal 0.48% month-over-month change in disposable income was reduced to 0.32% when we adjust for inflation. This is up from last month's -0.02% nominal and down from the -0.26% real increase last month. The year-over-year metrics are 4.01% nominal and 2.50% real. Post-recession, the trend was one of steady growth, but generally flattened out in late 2015. Disposable income began a faster increase in 2012 and 2013 that continues. The first chart shows both the nominal per capita disposable income and the real (inflation-adjusted) equivalent since 2000. This indicator was significantly disrupted by the bizarre but predictable oscillation caused by 2012 year-end tax strategies in expectation of tax hikes in 2013. It will be interesting to see how the recent tax legislation affects the trend over time.  The BEA uses the average dollar value in 2012 for inflation adjustment. But the 2012 peg is arbitrary and unintuitive. For a more natural comparison, let's compare the nominal and real growth in per-capita disposable income since 2000. Do you recall what you were doing on New Year's Eve at the turn of the millennium? Nominal disposable income is up 97.5% since then. But the real purchasing power of those dollars is up only 38.4%.

 You Might Be Buying Trash on Amazon—Literally - Dumpster divers say it’s easy to list discarded toys, electronics and books on the retailer’s platform. So we decided to try. - Wall Street Journal - Just about anyone can open a store on Amazon.com and sell just about anything. Just ask the dumpster divers. These are among the dedicated cadre of sellers on Amazon who say they sort through other people’s rejects, including directly from the trash, clean them up and list them on Amazon.com Inc.’s platform. Many post their hunting accounts on YouTube. (video)

PCE Price Index: November Headline & Core - The BEA's Personal Income and Outlays for November was published this morning by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The latest Headline PCE price index was up 0.16% month-over-month (MoM) and is up 1.47% year-over-year (YoY). Core PCE is below the Fed's 2% target rate.  The adjacent thumbnail gives us a close-up of the trend in YoY Core PCE since January 2012. The first string of red data points highlights the 12 consecutive months when Core PCE hovered in a narrow range around its interim low. The second string highlights the lower range from late 2014 through 2015. Core PCE shifted higher in 2016 with a decline in 2017 and 2019.  The first chart below shows the monthly year-over-year change in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index since 2000. Also included is an overlay of the Core PCE (less Food and Energy) price index, which is Fed's preferred indicator for gauging inflation. The two percent benchmark is the Fed's conventional target for core inflation. However, the December 2012 FOMC meeting raised the inflation ceiling to 2.5% for the next year or two while their accommodative measures (low FFR and quantitative easing) are in place. More recent FOMC statements now refer only to the two percent target. The index data is shown to two decimal points to highlight the change more accurately. It may seem trivial to focus such detail on numbers that will be revised again next month (the three previous months are subject to revision and the annual revision reaches back three years). But core PCE is such a key measure of inflation for the Federal Reserve that precision seems warranted. For a long-term perspective, here are the same two metrics spanning five decades.

Industrial Production Increased in November -- From the Fed: Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization - Industrial production and manufacturing production both rebounded 1.1 percent in November after declining in October. These sharp November increases were largely due to a bounceback in the output of motor vehicles and parts following the end of a strike at a major manufacturer. Excluding motor vehicles and parts, the indexes for total industrial production and for manufacturing moved up 0.5 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively. Mining production edged down 0.2 percent, while the output of utilities increased 2.9 percent. At 109.7 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production was 0.8 percent lower in November than it was a year earlier. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector increased 0.7 percentage point in November to 77.3 percent, a rate that is 2.5 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2018) average. This graph shows Capacity Utilization. This series is up 10.6 percentage points from the record low set in June 2009 (the series starts in 1967). Capacity utilization at 77.3% is 2.5% below the average from 1972 to 2017 and below the pre-recession level of 80.8% in December 2007. Note: y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the change. Industrial ProductionThe second graph shows industrial production since 1967. Industrial production increased in November to 109.7. This is 26% above the recession low, and 4.1% above the pre-recession peak. The change in industrial production and increase in capacity utilization were above consensus expectations.

US Manufacturing Rebounds In November As Auto Production Soars -  After notable weakness in October, analysts expected November Industrial Production to rebound healthily (echoing the PMIs) and it did, rising 1.1% MoM (above the 0.9% expected rebound especially positive considering October was revised lower to -0.9% as was September). The manufacturing sector also rebounded 1.1% MoM - the biggest jump since October 2017 - but on a YoY basis, manufacturing remains in contraction...  Utilities rose a notable 2.9% in November (after falling 2.4% in October) and auto production surged...  And finally, the decoupling between the economy and the market continues...  Charts - Source: Bloomberg

US Freight Shipments Fall Below 2014 Level. Answers Emerge - Freight shipment volume in the US by truck, rail, air, and barge of consumer and industrial goods but not bulk commodities declined 3.3% in November from a year ago, the 12th month in a row of year-over-year declines, according to the Cass Freight Index for Shipments. This follows a huge boom in shipments through much of 2018, but by November last year, that boom was already fizzling, and by December last year, shipments declined on a year-over-year basis for the first time since the last freight recession. Note the infamous boom-and-bust cycles of the business:The Cass Freight Index tracks shipment volume of consumer goods, industrial products such as construction materials, equipment and components being shipped to or by manufacturers, supplies and equipment for oil & gas drilling, and many other things. But it does not track bulk commodities, such as grains. Cass derives the data from actual freight invoices paid on behalf of its clients ($28 billion in 2018).The boom levels last year had been stimulated by pandemic efforts all around to front-run the tariffs by loading up on merchandise. But November’s drop in shipment volume didn’t just put the index below November last year, but also below 2017 levels and 2014 levels and nudged it closer to the lows of the 2015 and 2016 freight recession.In the stacked chart below – note the seasonality of the business – the red line represents the index for 2019. The top black line represents 2018, the purple line 2017, and the yellow line 2014:Declining demand for transportation services, as seen in the drop in shipment volume, has started to put pressure on some freight rates, such as in trucking. But FedEx, UPS, and other freight companies have raised their rates, as ecommerce is booming. And many contracts were negotiated near the peak last year. So despite the declining shipment volume, freight expenditures – a function of shipment volume and freight rates – remain historically high.The total amount that shippers, such as manufacturers, retailers, or industrial companies, spent on freight by all modes of transportation – rail, truck, air, and barge – declined for the fifth month in a row, down 1.4% in November compared to a year ago, but was the second highest for any November.Just how powerful the surge in freight expenditures was last year – on high volume and high rates – becomes obvious in the stacked chart below. The top black line denotes 2018. The yellow line denotes 2017. For most of last year, freight expenditures completely blew past any prior record and peaked in September 2018 with a year-over-year surge of 19%, that then began to fizzle:

It happened again: Voters are sick and tired of bad roads – Former Gov Ed Rendell -  Now that the votes from November’s off-year elections have been tallied and the results analyzed, one thing is clear: It happened again.    Voters from Maine to Texas spoke loud and clear: They are sick and tired of endless car repair bills from driving on roads littered with potholes, exasperated at being stuck in endless traffic jams and frustrated at not having enough transit options. So at the polls, they approved a whopping 89 percent of the 305 state and local ballot initiatives seeking to generate revenue for transportation.   In many respects, this result is not surprising. These types of ballot initiatives have been wildly popular in recent years. According to data compiled by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, 81 percent of almost 2,000 ballot initiatives since 2010 have won the approval of voters.   This year, Mainers said yes to a $105 million bond measure that will inject life into projects ranging from roads to ports to transit to bike and pedestrian infrastructure. In Illinois, voters in Springfield agreed to a 20-year extension of a sales tax for transportation projects. And in Houston, a $3.5 billion bond measure for the area’s MetroNext transit improvement plan got the green light.  Action has not been limited to the ballot box. Governors and state legislators have stepped up in the face of growing citizen aggravation with the inadequate, aging condition of the nation’s transportation systems. Since 2013, 30 states have increased their gas tax — including five this year.  These actions have been across the political spectrum, including reliably red states such as Alabama and blue states such as California.  What policymakers and voters across America understand is that improving and modernizing our infrastructure spans the political divide and is further proof that there are no Democratic bridges or Republican roads.However, this message continues to fall on deaf ears in Washington. Despite starting the year in a partial government shutdown, 2019 began with optimism that a robust infrastructure package could finally move through Congress and onto President Trump’s desk. Talks between congressional Democrats and the president at first seemed promising, as Trump’s $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan was boosted to $2 trillion. But as the reality of how to pay for such a measure took hold, negotiations collapsed. 

Pittsburgh to Cleveland in 18 minutes? Planners say proposed hyperloop promises huge economic benefits - A feasibility study released Monday for a proposed hyperloop system shows that developers are considering three options for connecting Cleveland to Chicago and two options for a Cleveland-to-Pittsburgh route using high-speed, low-pressure tubes. The Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and California-based Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc. released the study of the Great Lakes Hyperloop System at a news conference at the Great Lakes Science Center in Cleveland. Proponents say hyperloop systems can move passengers and freight at more than 500 miles an hour through low-pressure tubes where almost all resistance has been eliminated. The study initially involved just Cleveland to Chicago, but Pittsburgh was added at the end of summer through a $100,000 grant from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. Northeast Ohio and Hyperloop Transportation split the $1.2 million cost of the study. Alexander Metcalf, president of consultant Transportation Economics and Management, said the study shows a hyperloop system can be operated privately at a profit. He estimated the cost of construction at $50 million to $60 million per mile depending on the route planners pick and said investors such as pension funds and hedge funds would be interested in financing it. “The biggest take-away from this study is that it is in fact a self-sustaining project,” Mr. Metcalf said. Although the study concentrates on a Pittsburgh-Cleveland-Chicago route initially, Northeast Ohio’s executive director, Grace Gallucci, stressed in an interview last week that the goal is to develop a system that connects with the northeastern U.S. to form a “mega-region.” That includes Washington, D.C.; Philadelphia, New York City and Boston. Eventually, the system could run across the country following two primary paths, Interstate 90 from Boston to Seattle and Interstate 80 from Teaneck, N.J., to San Francisco, both by way of Chicago, she said. The study recommended considering three options for the Cleveland-to-Chicago connection:

• ● A straight path under the Great Lakes, likely the most expensive option, would complete the trip in 31 minutes;
• ● Following railroad and utility rights of way below road grade, a trip of 36 minutes;
• ● Following the Ohio Turnpike, Indiana Toll Road and Chicago Skyway, a slower route due to curves, a trip of 47 minutes.

For Cleveland to Pittsburgh, the two options would be paralleling the Ohio and Pennsylvania turnpikes or following existing rail lines below grade. The first option, from Hopkins Airport to Downtown Pittsburgh, would take 24 minutes and the second, from Tower City in downtown Cleveland to Pittsburgh International Airport, would take about 18 minutes because the system could travel more than 100 mph faster on a straighter route.

REAL TRADE BALANCE - In October the real trade deficit fell to $79,133 (million 2012 $) from the third quarter average of $84,713 (million 2012 $), a 6.6% improvement. This implies that the fourth quarter is starting with trade making a significant large boost to fourth quarter real GDP growth. Remember, the trade balance is the difference between two very large numbers so a small change in either exports or imports can generate a large change in the balance.  The year over year percent change in exports is down -0.6% and imports have fallen -4.1%.  But since the December, 2018 peak, the real trade balance has contracted -13.2%. When you look at the details of US real trade, the changes in trade stem largely from oil and consumer goods. Other trade categories,  like food, industrial materials, capital goods  are each showing relatively small changes that are largely offsetting each other. For the most part both imports and exports of other goods have been stagnant for the past year.  The drop in auto and consumer goods imports reflects several points. One, it is a feature of the new world of the US being an open economy to an extent that just did not exist before about 1980.  In the old days if auto and other consumer goods demand weakened it would quickly show up as a negative for industrial production.  But now it shows up as a drop in imports as the economic adjustment is transferred to other economies.  This is a very significant factor in the point that the US has fewer recessions now – seemingly every ten years rather than every four years.  Nevertheless, the year over year change in US industrial production of cars and light trucks was -5.3%, -1.3% and -2.2% in the first, second and third quarters of 2019.  This compares to a reading of -13.4% in October.  Obviously, some of this is strike related so auto and truck output will rebound some but whether it will regain the 1.0 to 1.2 million units of recent years is an open question. In oil the increased supply from fracking is showing up as both lower imports and  a surge in exports as the net trade deficit in oil has almost vanished in both nominal and real terms.  In the trade balance the sharp contraction in the oil deficit has been largely offset by a surge in consumer goods imports.  The large drop in the October real trade deficit was driven almost exclusively by plunges in auto and consumer goods imports.  Obviously part of the drop in auto engines and parts was a product of the GM strike that caused some plants to shut down.  .  But real auto imports have fallen – 8.6% over the last two months.

Shutdown likely at Boeing Renton as 737 MAX crisis extends - The Boeing board is weighing a proposal from top management to temporarily shut down 737 production in Renton, with an announcement likely either after the financial markets close Monday or early Tuesday, according to a person close to the decision makers, who are meeting Sunday and Monday in Chicago.It’s likely Boeing will stop 737 MAX production this week or next and keep the assembly lines closed until the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) clears the jet to return to commercial service, which is currently expected around mid-February or early March, the person said.“It depends on the return to service. How long is that going to take? Is it 60 days? Probably,” the person said. “You can only build them for so long without delivering.”Ahead of the Christmas break, the imminent shutdown is tough news for Boeing’s Renton workforce, though not unexpected nine months into the grounding of the MAX and shortly after government officials telegraphed that it’s likely to extend to almost a year.The person close to the discussions said Boeing intends to do what it can to have “as little impact on employees as possible.” He said the company will transfer some of the roughly 12,000 people who work in Renton to other production facilities in the region, including the Auburn parts plant and the Everett widebody jet plant. However, the other facilities don’t have the capacity to absorb all of the Renton workers, and a substantial number of furloughs are likely, though perhaps beginning only after the normal holiday break for Christmas and New Year’s, which typically runs from Christmas Eve through New Year’s Day.

Boeing will suspend 737 Max production in January - Boeing is planning to suspend production of its beleaguered 737 Max planes next month, the company said Monday, a drastic step after the Federal Aviation Administration said its review of the planes would continue into next year. Boeing’s decision, made after months of a cash-draining global grounding of its best-selling aircraft, worsens one of the most severe crises in the history of the century-old manufacturer. The measure is set to ripple through the aerospace giant’s supply chain and broader economy. It also presents further problems for airlines, which have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and canceled thousands of flights without the fuel-efficient planes in their fleets. Boeing said it does not plan to lay off or furlough workers at the Renton, Washington, factory where the 737 Max is produced during the production pause. Some of the 12,000 workers there will be temporarily reassigned. Boeing last week acknowledged that regulators’ review of the planes — grounded since March after two crashes killed 346 people — would last until the following year, longer than the end-of-year approval the Chicago-based manufacturer was targeting. Just how long Boeing will keep its 737 Max production line halted was not immediately clear, because it will depend on when regulators clear the plane to fly again. U.S. airlines have taken the planes out of their schedules until at least March. American last week said it doesn’t expect to fly the planes before April.

Boeing Halts 737 Max Production to Reduce Cash Burn; Suppliers Hit; Measurable Ding to GDP Expected – Yves Smith - The lead story tonight at the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times is that Boeing has hit the pause button on manufacturing 737 Max planes, with its “infamous self-hijacking software MCAS,” in the words of Moe Tkacik. Recall that Boeing had been cheerily promising that the 737 Max would be approved to fly again as of various ever-retreating dates, with the latest being a public comment in November that it expected to deliver planes again potentially in December. Major buyers American Airlines and Southwest had signaled some skeptism by not scheduling a resumption of 737 Max service until March; American had just pushed that back to April.The FAA swiftly countered Boeing’s happy talk in November. We described at length why there was good reason to take new FAA Director Steven Dickson at his word, telling his troops in a medium guaranteed to get to the press that they should “take whatever time is needed” to assess the plane. Apparently Boeing has been trying to strong-arm the FAA by other channels. The agency gave a more direct smack-down last week. The latest version, which came in a letter from the FAA to Congressional investigators last week, was pointed: The administrator is concerned that Boeing continues to pursue a return-to-service schedule that is not realistic due to delays that have accumulated for a variety of reasons.More concerning, the administrator wants to directly address the perception that some of Boeing’s public statements have been designed to force FAA into taking quicker action. A Congressional hearing last week also exposed that the Boeing and the FAA both knew that the 737 Max was more crash-prone than typical jets, yet they didn’t consider grounding them until the second fatal MCAS-induced nose dive.  Boeing now has more 737 Max aircraft in its inventory that it sold before the troubled jet was grounded worldwide. The Seattle Times points out that many of Boeing’s 400 mothballed planes will need “extensive maintenance” to be able to fly. The Wall Street Journal cited analyst estimates that the freeze would cut Boeing’s $4.4 billion a quarter 737 Max cash burn by about 50%. As Bloomberg points out:The factory pause heightens the risk that financial damage will linger for years after regulators clear Boeing’s best-selling plane to resume commercial flight. The cash pressure is rising as almost 400 new aircraft languish in storage due to a global flying ban imposed nine months ago.

Boeing 737 MAX freeze divides suppliers into haves and have-nots - (Reuters) - Boeing Co’s decision to suspend aerospace’s biggest production line exposes contrasts in the U.S.-dominated 737 MAX supply chain, severely straining some niche machine shops while giving engine giants time to iron out their own wrinkles. The 737 MAX production freeze, the latest fallout in a 9-month-old grounding crisis, has already kicked off tough negotiations between Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, Boeing’s largest 737 supplier, one industry source said. Kansas-based Spirit has staffed its factory with enough workers to maintain a pre-crisis build rate of 52 aircraft per month, rising to 57 aircraft, the person said. Instead, furloughs in Kansas are likely if Boeing stops paying Spirit to build and store fuselages at those rates to conserve cash, the person said. “No way can they keep going,” a second supply chain source said. Spirit declined comment. Boeing declined comment on discussions with suppliers. The fallout depends on how long Boeing’s freeze lasts, and how much if any compensation Boeing pays to prop up some of the roughly 680 suppliers that feed its best-selling program. Payments may not come quickly.

US Manufacturing PMI Rebound Stalls - With ugly PMIs overnight across AsiaPac, and anything but Lagarde's stability in Europe (and UK) this morning, preliminary December US PMIs were expected to extend their rebound (despite a slump in economic surprise data) in the last month.

• Markit US Manufacturing PMI (Small Miss) 52.5 vs 52.6 exp and 52.6 prior - 2-month low
• Markit US Services PMI (Small Beat) 52.2 vs 52.0 exp and 51.6 prior - 5-month high

Commenting on the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, said:“The surveys bring welcome signs of the economy continuing to regain growth momentum as 2019 draws to a close, with the outlook also brightening to fuel hopes of a strong start to 2020. Business activity, order book and jobs growth all accelerated to five-month highs in December, buoyed by rising domestic sales and further signs of renewed life in export orders.“December’s expansion was led by an improved performance of the vast services sector, accompanied by another month of steady manufacturing growth. Encouragingly, expectations for business activity in the year ahead lifted higher in both sectors to reach the highest since June to suggest the expansion will continue to gain momentum as we head into the New Year. Optimism reflected reduced fears over trade wars and more favorable financial conditions."

NY Fed: Manufacturing "Business activity was little changed in New York State" -- From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey - Business activity was little changed in New York State, according to firms responding to the December 2019 Empire State Manufacturing Survey. The headline general business conditions index held steady at 3.5. New orders were also little changed, while shipments grew modestly. .. The index for number of employees was unchanged at 10.4, indicating that employment expanded for the fourth consecutive month. The average workweek index was 0.8, a sign that the average workweek was unchanged.… Indexes assessing the six-month outlook suggested that optimism about future conditions improved for a second consecutive month.  This was slightly lower than the consensus forecast.

Philly Fed Manufacturing Suggests Activity "Flat" in December - From the Philly Fed: Current Manufacturing Indexes Suggest Flat Growth in December: Manufacturing activity in the region was flat this month, according to results from the December Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The survey's broad indicator for current activity dropped to a reading near zero this month, although indicators for new orders, shipments, and employment remained at higher positive readings. The survey’s future activity indexes remained positive, suggesting continued optimism about growth for the next six months. The diffusion index for current general activity fell 10 points this month to 0.3, its lowest reading in six months … Manufacturers continued to report expanding employment this month, although the current employment index decreased 4 points to 17.8. This was slightly above the consensus forecast. Here is a graph comparing the regional Fed surveys and the ISM manufacturing index:

Kansas City Fed: "Tenth District Manufacturing Activity Decreased Further in December" - From the Kansas City Fed: Tenth District Manufacturing Activity Decreased Further in December The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City released the December Manufacturing Survey today. According to Chad Wilkerson, vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the survey revealed that Tenth District manufacturing activity decreased further in December while expectations for future activity remained positive.“Regional factory activity declined for the sixth straight month in December, driven again by weaker activity in durable goods manufacturing,” said Wilkerson. “About half of District firms said weakening in other goods-producing sectors (such as energy and agriculture) has negatively affected business in their area.”...The month-over-month composite index was -8 in December, down from -3 in both November and October. The composite index is an average of the production, new orders, employment, supplier delivery time, and raw materials inventory indexes. The decrease in district manufacturing activity continued to be driven by weak activity at durable goods plants, especially from declines in: wood products, nonmetallic mineral products, primary metal, fabricated metal products, machinery, and computer and electronic products manufacturing. Most month-over-month indexes fell in December. The shipments index turned negative and the production, new orders, order backlog, and employment indexes declined further. Aside from the index for raw materials prices, only the supplier delivery time index remained slightly positive.  Another weak regional manufacturing report.

Kansas City Fed Biz Survey Crashes Near 4-Year Low Ze… Despite a pickup in PMIs - that appears to be heralded as 'proving' the trough is in - Kansas City Fed's business survey has plunged to its lowest since Feb 2016 (confirming the weakness also seen in the Philly Fed).  Kansas Fed Survey fell to -8 from -3... Comments from survey respondents are mixed. Some of the more negative ones include...

• "The cost of fossil fuel energy has a direct impact on our business. The higher the cost of fossil fuels, the stronger the conditions in my business, and vice versa."
• "Weakness in the oil and gas market is significantly negatively impacting our business until we can offset that business with work from other sectors."
• "We are on hold until someone decides what the next round of tariffs will be."
• "The tariff on steel and the trade issues are still a concern for 2020. We are being very conservative on capital expenditures and use of cash until these two things calm down."

This is the sixth consecutive negative (contraction) monthly print for the index and under the hood, it's a $hit$how...

• Prices paid for raw materials rises to 16 vs 14 prior month
• Volume of new orders falls to -16 vs -3
• New orders for exports falls to -11 vs -6
• Production falls to -7 vs -5
• Number of employees falls to -10 vs -9
• Average employee workweek falls to -7
• Shipments falls to -6 vs 7
• Composite six-month outlook falls to 10 vs 15

Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims decreased to 234,000 -- The DOL reported:In the week ending December 14, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 234,000, a decrease of 18,000 from the previous week's unrevised level of 252,000. The 4-week moving average was 225,500, an increase of 1,500 from the previous week's unrevis ed average of 224,000.The previous week was unrevised.The following graph shows the 4-week moving average of weekly claims since 1971.

A yellow flag for initial jobless claims - As you know, I’ve been monitoring initial jobless claims closely for the past several months, to see if there are any signs of a slowdown turning into something worse. Simply put, if businesses aren’t laying employees off, those same people are consumers who are going to continue to spend, which is 70% of the total economy. So the lack of any such increase has been the best argument that no recession is imminent. This morning’s report of 234,000 initial claims is enough to put us over the threshold to a “yellow flag,” but historically still has more often coincided with slowdowns rather than recessions.To reiterate, my two thresholds for initial claims are:
1. If the four week average on claims is more than 10% above its expansion low.
2. If the YoY% change in the monthly average turns higher.
I’ve also added a threshold for the less leading, but also much less volatile 4 week average of continuing claims at 5% higher YoY. Aside from last week’s 252,000 claims, this week was the weakest but for two weeks  since January of 2018. As a result, the 4 week moving average of claims has risen to 225,500, and is 11.9% above the lowest reading of this expansion, which occurred back in April: On a YoY% change basis, the 4 week average is 1,500, or 0.7%, higher: For the first two weeks of December (blue in the graph below), the average is 243,000 vs. 223,200 for the entire month of December last year (red), or higher by 9.0%, while on direct comparison with the first two weeks of last December, they are higher by 12.2%: In short, pending the completion of December for a direct month to month comparison, both thresholds for initial claims have been met this week. Meanwhile, the less volatile 4 week average of continuing claims is 0.3% above where it was a year ago: The four week average of continuing claims, while cautionary, is consistent with a significant slowdown. But there have been similar readings in 1967, 1985-6, 3 times in the 1990s, and briefly in 2003 and 2005, all without a recession following. So the threshold for continuing claims being a negative (vs. neutral) has not been met.

BLS: Job Openings "Edged up" to 7.3 Million in October - Notes: In October there were 7.267 million job openings, and, according to the October Employment report, there were 5.855 million unemployed. So, for the twentieth consecutive month, there were more job openings than people unemployed. Also note that the number of job openings has exceeded the number of hires since January 2015 (almost 5 years). From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary The number of job openings edged up to 7.3 million (+235,000) on the last business day of October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the month, hires and separations were little changed at 5.8 million and 5.6 million, respectively. Within separations, the quits rate was unchanged at 2.3 percent and the layoffs and discharges rate was little changed at 1.2 percent. ... The number of quits was little changed in October at 3.5 million and the rate was unchanged at 2.3 percent. Quits increased in other services (+66,000) and educational services (+12,000). Quits decreased in retail trade (-63,000) and in durable goods manufacturing (-21,000).  The following graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS. This series started in December 2000.

BLS: November Unemployment rates at New Series Lows in Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon and South Carolina - From the BLS: Regional and State Employment and Unemployment Summary Unemployment rates were lower in November in 7 states, higher in 5 states, and stable in 38 states and the District of Columbia, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Seven states had jobless rate decreases from a year earlier, 2 states had increases, and 41 states and the District had little or no change. The national unemployment rate, 3.5 percent, was little changed over the month and from November 2018. ...Vermont had the lowest unemployment rate in November, 2.3 percent. The rates in Alabama (2.7 percent), Alaska (6.1 percent), Georgia (3.3 percent), Illinois (3.8 percent), Oregon (3.9 percent), and South Carolina (2.4 percent) set new series lows. (All state series begin in 1976.) Alaska had the highest jobless rate, 6.1 percent. This graph shows the number of states (and D.C.) with unemployment rates at or above certain levels since January 1976. At the worst of the great recession, there were 11 states with an unemployment rate at or above 11% (red). Currently only one state, Alaska, has an unemployment rate at or above 6% (dark blue). Note that Alaska is at a series low (since 1976). Two states and the D.C. have unemployment rates above 5%; Alaska and Mississippi. A total of thirteen states are at a series low: Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Washington.

Top 1.0% of earners see wages up 157.8% since 1979 - Newly available wage data for 2018 show that annual wages for the top 1.0% were nearly flat (up 0.2%) while wages for the bottom 90% rose an above-average 1.4%. Still, the top 1.0% has done far better in the 2009–18 recovery (their wages rose 19.2%) than did those in the bottom 90%, whose wages rose only 6.8%. Over the last four decades since 1979, the top 1.0% saw their wages grow by 157.8% and those in the top 0.1% had wages grow more than twice as fast, up 340.7%. In contrast those in the bottom 90% had annual wages grow by 23.9% from 1979 to 2018. This disparity in wage growth reflects a sharp long-term rise in the share of total wages earned by those in the top 1.0% and 0.1%. These are the results of EPI’s updated series on wages by earning group, which is developed from published Social Security Administration data and updates the wage series from 1947–2004 originally published byKopczuk, Saez and Song (2010). These data, unlike the usual source of our other wage analyses (the Current Population Survey) allow us to estimate wage trends for the top 1.0% and top 0.1% of earners, as well as those for the bottom 90% and other categories among the top 10% of earners. These data are not top-coded, meaning the underlying earnings reported are actual earnings and not “capped” or “top-coded” for confidentiality. As Figure A shows, the top 1.0% of earners are now paid 157.8% more than they were in 1979. Even more impressive is that those in the top 0.1% had more than double that wage growth, up 340.7% since 1979 (Table 1). In contrast, wages for the bottom 90% only grew 23.9% in that time. Since the Great Recession, the bottom 90%, in contrast, experienced very modest wage growth, with annual wages—reflecting growing annual hours as well as higher hourly wages—up just 6.8% from 2009 to 2018. In contrast, the wages of the top 0.1% grew 19.2% during those nine years. Wages fell furthest among the top 0.1% and 1.0% of earners during the financial crisis from 2007 to 2009 and the top 0.1% in 2018 had not yet recovered their prior earnings in 2007.It is worth noting that our series on the wage growth of the bottom 90% corresponds closely to the Social Security Administration’s series on median annual earnings: between 1990 and 2018 the real median annual wage grew 21.2%, very close to the 22.5% growth for the bottom 90%.

Amazon blocks sellers from using FedEx ground-delivery shipping - Amazon is no longer allowing third-party sellers to use FedEx’s ground-delivery shipping, marking the latest escalation in the companies’ ongoing rivalry. FedEx confirmed the decision after a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday. The news sent FedEx shares down as much as 1.1%. “While this decision affects a very small number of shippers, it limits the options for those small businesses on some of the highest demand shipping days in history, and may compromise their ability to meet customer demands and manage their businesses,” a FedEx spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. “FedEx Ground stands ready to support our customers and will continue to deliver record-breaking volume this holiday season.” Amazon declined to comment. Amazon said it sent a message out to sellers on Sunday, telling them it is temporarily restricting FedEx’s ground and home delivery services for Prime orders. The company said sellers can still use FedEx’s Express shipping service for Prime orders, or FedEx’s ground and home delivery services for standard orders. Amazon added that it was halting the service to make sure FedEx is able to manage cutoffs for delivery by Christmas and so that customers are able to receive their packages on time. The move comes after FedEx in August announced it would end its ground-delivery contract with Amazon, after halting its express U.S. shipping contract with Amazon in June. At the time, a FedEx spokesperson told CNBC that the change was part of the company’s effor

Contractor Admits Planting Logic Bombs In His Software To Ensure He’d Get New Work -Many IT workers worry their positions will become obsolete as changes in hardware, software, and computing tasks outstrip their skills. A former contractor for Siemens concocted a remedy for that—plant logic bombs in projects he designed that caused them to periodically malfunction. Then wait for a call to come fix things.On Monday, David A. Tinley, a 62-year-old from Harrison City, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of $7,500 in the scheme. The sentence came five months after he pleaded guilty to a charge of intentional damage to a protected computer. Tinley was a contract employee for Siemens Corporation at its Monroeville, Pennsylvania, location.According to a charging document filed in US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, the logic bombs Tinley surreptitiously planted into his projects caused them to malfunction after a certain preset amount of time. Because Siemens managers were unaware of the logic bombs and didn’t know the cause of the malfunctions, they would call Tinley and ask him to fix the misbehaving projects. The scheme ran from 2014 to 2016. Tinley will be under supervised release for two years following his prison term. He will also pay restitution. The parties in the case stipulated a total loss amount of $42,262.50. Tinley faced as much as 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Oakland Officials Consider Moving City's Homeless Onto A Cruise Ship - Oakland City Council President Rebecca Kaplan recently suggested a plan to house up to 1,000 people from the city’s homeless population on a cruise ship, but officials with the Port of Oakland have disputed the proposal, calling it “untenable.”  During a meeting last week, Kaplan told members of the city council that she has already been in contact with cruise ship companies about the possibility of using their vessels for emergency housing for the city’s homeless.“Maybe we can have a way to create a thousand housing units overnight,” Kaplan said of the program, adding that her plan will come at “no or low” cost because the city would not be purchasing the boat, but simply renting it, and requiring the residents to contribute towards the rental fee based on their level of income.It may sound counterproductive to charge homeless people for a place to stay, and perhaps it is, but even homeless shelters require a small fee of their residents, and the housing will likely be far more affordable than most apartments or hotels.“It could be a great way to house a lot of people quickly. Cruise ships have been used for emergency housing after natural disasters and for extra housing for things like Olympics,” Kaplan told the San Francisco Chronicle.Kaplan suggested that the ship could work similarly to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, a large old ship that is now docked in the harbor, acting as a hotel for tourists and other visitors to the area.Many members of the council are on board with the proposal, but it would need to be approved by the Port of O akland and they seem reluctant to allow such a cruise ship to dock in their port for extended periods of time.

Pennsylvania teens charged after covering two cars, home with slices of cheese | PhillyVoice -Three Pennsylvania teens are facing disorderly conduct charges after allegedly plastering a home and a pair of cars with cheese slices.The trio —an 18-year-old man and two 17-year-old minors — allegedly tossed the queso at a residence in Girard, Pennsylvania, on Saturday morning, per Pennsylvania State Police. The teens' names have yet to be released, according to WFMJ.  Police say the teens admitted their respective roles in what appears to have been a prank, per WFMJ. So far, there's no word on what motivated their decision to throw cheese, nor is there confirmation on the variety of cheese used in the prank.  (If we had to take a guess on the kind of cheese used, we'd imagine Kraft Singles: the individual slices stick well to surfaces, cover a good amount of surface area, and make a great splat sound when they hit a car's windshield. If this were a South Philly situation, we'd imagine perhaps sliced round provolone instead.)  Girard, a borough in Erie named after Stephen Girard, the former Philadelphia banker and namesake of Girard College, has an estimated population of just over 3,000, according to the most recent Census data. The average car ownership in Girard, according to the Census data, is two cars per household, and the homeownership rate is roughly 67%, so if some teens were simply out throwing cheese around Girard one night, this was at least a cheese-related prank representative of Girard's demographics.

New York Times uses racial politics to promote charter schools - On November 26, the New York Times ran a front-page “news” article (“Minority Voters Chafe as Democratic Candidates Abandon Charter Schools”) claiming that “black and Latino families” are “feeling betrayed” by Democratic Party candidates who have criticized charter schools. In the article, the Times, which is politically aligned with the Democratic Party, complains that “the front-runners for the presidential nomination are moving away from the charter school movement.” The event seized upon by the newspaper as the supposed expression of widespread sentiment among African Americans in favor of charter schools and anger over Democratic candidates’ criticisms of charters is the appearance of a group of primarily black protesters at last month’s Democratic presidential debate in Atlanta.   The group, calling itself the Powerful Parent Network, wielded signs with slogans such as “Charter schools = self-determination” and “Black Democrats want charters!” The GoFundMe sponsoring the trip said the purpose was to confront Elizabeth Warren, who had criticized charters during an appearance with American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten on the picket line of striking Chicago teachers the previous month. The strike was called reluctantly by the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) after the Democratic mayor and Chicago Public Schools officials refused to negotiate a contract that included token improvements to make it sellable to the rank-and-file, along with more input from the union to protect the interests of the CTU bureaucracy. The unstated political agenda behind the Times ’ article is to counter this growth of working-class unity and militancy by sowing racial divisions, and simultaneously maintain the ruling class offensive against public education. It is in line with the Times ’ efforts to push the Democratic presidential race further to the right.It is part of a deeply reactionary campaign by the Times to promote racialist politics and make it the focus of the Democrats’ 2020 election campaign. At the center of this effort is the newspaper’s 1619 Project, which is being promoted in schools across the US. The “Project,” attempts to rewrite US history as one unbroken story of hatred and oppression of “black people” by “white people.”

Big teacher pay proposals are missing the mark - Democratic Presidential candidate South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg just unveiled a $700 billion education plan in which he pledged to “honor teachers like soldiers” and “pay them like doctors.” In doing so, Buttigieg joined a long line of 2020 hopefuls such as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who’ve announced plans to boost teacher pay. It’s easy to see why pols would be motivated to tackle teacher pay: Not only are teacher unions a significant force in the Democratic nominating process, but 72 percent of Americans say that teachers should be paid more. And this is all in the public eye due to a wave of teacher strikes in recent years, in locales that range from Los Angeles and Chicago to West Virginia and Oklahoma. It’s heartening to see this focus on teacher pay. Terrific teachers are underpaid. School system rolls are too often bloated with administrative and support staff, which means less money for classroom educators. Too much teacher compensation is tied up in benefits, shrinking take-home pay — and pay systems do little to acknowledge teachers who work exceptionally hard or who are exceptionally good for students. Unfortunately, the teacher pay conversation has been more narrowly framed by the problematic assertion that America’s teachers are systematically underpaid relative to similar workers. Yahoo News has asserted “teachers now make more than 20 percent less than similarly educated professionals.” The Washington Post reported that the “teacher pay penalty” was a “record 21.4 percent” in 2018, while New York Magazine lamented that teachers “could expect to be paid far less than college graduates in other professional fields.” Here’s the catch: It’s not at all clear that this is true. In fact, the methodology used to produce the “teacher pay gap” is hugely suspect.  Indeed, the source of the “teacher pay gap” statistic is an annual report by the energetically progressive Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Applied to other fields, for instance, it finds that nurses are overpaid and that telemarketers are underpaid.

 College Enrollment Skids For 8th Year In A Row, But Student Loans Skyrocket -  The stunning decline of men in the student headcount. With college costs blowing through the roof, with “luxury student housing” and not so luxury “student housing” having become asset classes – including, of course, CMBS, now in rough waters – for global investors, with textbook publishers gouging students to the nth degree, and with the monetary value of higher education questioned in more and more corners, the inevitable happened once again: College enrollment dropped for the eighth year in a row.The post-secondary student headcount – undergraduate and graduate students combined – in the fall semester of 2019 fell 1.3% from the fall semester last year, or by over 231,000 students to 17.97 million students, according to the Student Clearing House today. In the fall of 2011, the peak year, 20.14 million students had been enrolled. Since then, enrollment has dropped by 10.8%, or by 2.17 million students:  This is based on enrollment data submitted to the Student Clearing House by the schools. It does not include international students, which account for just under 5% of total student enrollment in the US. Duplicate headcounts – one student enrolled in two institutions – are removed from the data to eliminate double-counting.The 10.8% decline in enrollment since 2011 comes even as student loan balances have surged 74% over the same period, from $940 billion to $1.64 trillion:  Enrollment in for-profit colleges collapses.The overall decline in enrollment hasn’t been spread evenly across the board. After myriad scandals, lawsuits, government action, and government inaction, enrollment in for-profit four-year colleges has plunged by 54%, from 1.64 million student in the fall of 2010, as far back as the data series is available, to 750,000 now. The current year-over-year decline of 2.1% pales compared to the plunges of 15% in 2018, of 7% in 2017, of 15% in 2016, and of 14% in 2015. Despite the relatively small share of total enrollment – by 2019, the share has withered to just 4% – these for-profit colleges account for 41% to the total decline in enrollment since 2001:  Enrollment at public two-year schools, such as junior colleges, has plunged by 22% since 2011, to 5.37 million (green line in the chart below). But enrollment at private nonprofit four-year colleges has ticked up 3.9% since 2011. Yet, even these schools saw enrollment decline by 0.6% over the past year, to 3.84 million (brown line in the chart below). And public four-year schools too had been hanging in there and the student headcount remains up 2.2% from 2011 though it too declined 1.2% over the past 12 months, to 7.82 million. At public schools, the peak was in 2016 with 8.1 million students (blue line):

California Schools Sued Over Use Of Culturally-Biased Standardized Testing For Admissions - The Wall Street Journal reports that a much-anticipated lawsuit against the University of California, alleging that the university system discriminates against low-income students, racial minorities and others by requiring SAT or ACT admissions tests was filed Tuesday in California state court on behalf of a high-school sophomore, two seniors, and a first-year student at Pasadena City College (several California social-justice nonprofits are also plaintiffs in the suit), all of whom it says would be strong candidates for more selective UC campuses except for their test scores.  Aside from this sounding like the standard parent unable to admit their child is not the next Einstein, the plaintiffs seek to bar the UC system from requiring applicants to submit SAT or ACT scores, and from using scores in admission decisions. “These discriminatory tests irreparably taint UC’s ostensibly ‘holistic’ admissions process,” the lawsuit says, adding that the tests “act as a proxy for wealth and race and thus concentrate privilege on UC campuses.” Earlier this year,  under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity.”  Colleges, it was suggested, could use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission. But, as we reported previously, this gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities.   The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels. The University of California has calculated that race predicts SAT scores better than class.  Asian students outscore white students on the SAT by 100 points; they outscore blacks by 277 points. It is not Asian families’ economic capital that vaults them to the top of the academic totem pole; it is their emphasis on scholarly effort and self-discipline. Every year in New York City, Asian elementary school students vastly outperform every other racial and ethnic group on the admissions test for the city’s competitive public high schools, even though a disproportionate number of them come from poor immigrant families. The 'adversity score' idea was eventually dismissed after significant backlash as defenders of the tests maintain that students with high scores tend to fare well in college and beyond. The standardized tests have been considered by many as an equalizer, allowing colleges to identify talent from high schools with which they are not familiar. “The notion that the SAT is discriminatory is false,” said a spokesman for the College Board. “Any objective measure of student achievement will shine a light on inequalities in our education system. Our focus, with our members and partners, is combating these longstanding inequalities.”

Mayor Pete Is Wrong — Free Public College Could Unite the Country - Alexis Goldstein - A new ad from the Pete Buttigieg campaign reignited a social media debate that first began when Sen. Amy Klobuchar criticized free public college for all in the November Democratic debate. Klobuchar had warned that universal higher education was bad because it could mean “sending rich kids to college for free.” Buttigieg’s ad replicates Klobuchar’s critique, but added that free public higher education for all would “[turn] off half the country.”  Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg’s criticisms of free public college include misleading spin. The “half the country” Buttigieg alleges would be turned off by free public college isn’t actually funding it. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both propose raising taxes on the wealthy as the funding source for free public college: Sanders with a tax on Wall Street trades, Warren with her Ultra-Millionaires Tax (which hits only75,000 households). Should free public college truly come to be, only 1.4 percent of the benefit would go to the children of millionaires and billionaires, Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal estimated. Even if, as a result, wealthy people sent their kids to public colleges at extremely high rates, this wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. In fact, programs that are universal tend to have the highest polling. A November 2018 Pew poll showed 74 percent of Americans and 68 percent of Republicans said Social Security benefits should not be reduced in any way. And 83 percent of the publichas a favorable view of Medicare. Meanwhile one recent experiment in universal benefits, free pre-K in New York City, has been praised as “smart politics” by Shael Polakow-Suransky, the president of Bank Street College, as it makes the program less vulnerable to budget cuts.  Non-universal programs inevitably leave out people who weren’t aware of the benefit, who filled out the paperwork wrongly, who failed to jump through a procedural hoop or who just barely missed an income requirement. As an example, Buttigieg’s free-college-for-some plan leaves out some people who are not millionaires: The plan excludes households with joint incomes over $100,000, regardless of location or how large the household is.  Both New York and California had extensive free public college programs until the mid-1970s. In 1974, New York Times education editor Fred M. Hechinger predicted that public colleges charging tuition would breed resentment, and “threaten to turn higher education into an instigator of class warfare.” Because low-income Americans get a subsidy that middle-income Americans don’t, “middle‐class families are likely to react in anger and political vindictiveness.” This observation was prescient. It’s the programs that only give aid to a portion of society that have the lowest popularity, while universal programs like Medicaid and Social Security are extremely popular.

Is College 'Worth It'?- One Study Says Maybe Not - The unjustifiably high cost of college tuition in the US has dragged a whole generation into debt slavery. The average cost of a 4-year degree in the US is 3x higher than it was in 1990. Even tuition at in-state schools is climbing more quickly than incomes. As more people are forced to go into deep levels of debt to afford an education, more would-be students are being forced to take a hard look and reevaluate the ROI on a college degree.And as college tuition continues to outpace wage growth, for a growing number of people, the answer to 'is college worth it?' is going to be no. A reporter at Clever.com did some digging, and tabulated the ROI on different types of degrees: the bachelor's, master's and doctorate. Generally speaking, people with at least a bachelor's degree typically earn more money over their lifetime than those who never attended college, and it's also easier to get a job with a degree.But while Americans with a bachelor's degree might be on to something, those who earn a Master's and PHD-level degrees can't say the same.While nearly half the population has a bachelor's degree, only 13% of Americans have a master's or Phd-level degree.And according to Clever's analysis, many higher-level degreesmay not be worth the time and money that students spend.In fact, the longer someone spends in school, the more the value of their degrees diminishes.Of c ourse, ROI changes depending on the subject that an individual studies. Clever found that the best bachelor's degrees, unsurprisingly, tend to be in the STEM area: operations research, petroleum engineering, biological and physical sciences, biopsychology and gerontology.

"It's For Racists!" - Academics Slam Quantum Computing Article For Using The Term 'Supremacy' - A cadre of academics is not happy about the journal Nature using the term “supremacy” in an article about quantum computing. Titled “Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor,” the October piece deals with, well, just what it says: the superiority of computers using quantum processors versus so-called “classical” ones. But 16 scholars say “supremacy” is for … racists. They want the phrase “quantum advantage” to be used in its place.  We consider it irresponsible to override the historical context of this descriptor, which risks sustaining divisions in race, gender and class. We call for the community to use ‘quantum advantage’ instead. … In our view, ‘supremacy’ has overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism through its association with ‘white supremacy’. Inherently violent language has crept into other branches of science as well — in human and robotic spaceflight, for example, terms such as ‘conquest’, ‘colonization’ and ‘settlement’ evoke the terra nullius arguments of settler colonialism and must be contextualized against ongoing issues of neocolonialism. Surprisingly, all 16 who signed the complaint are associated with the hard sciences. They’re obviously brilliant individuals;  nevertheless, there are a few indications about the origins of their linguistic policing:

Spongebob, Tom Brady, & Cow-'Rape'- The 5 Most Insane Academic Works Of 2019 - Academic publications have historically been revered as bastions of intellectual rigor, and “peer- reviewed” analysis, but are increasingly becoming home to what would have once been considered fringe or radical ideological viewpoints, arguably fueled by political persuasions.  Campus Reform reported on a number of these instances in 2019. Here are just a few of the most outrageous.

• 1. Prof: Spongebob perpetuates ‘violent, racist’ acts against indigenous people - University of Washington professor Holly Barker published an article titled “Unsettling Spongebob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom” to express her distaste for the yellow sponge character and his sea-faring friends. Her chief complaint was that the series bases its fictional setting on the nonfictional location of Bikini Atoll, a coral reef in the Marshall Islands used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing during the Cold War. She says Spongebob, as an “American” seems to have no regard for the usage of nuclear warfare and occupying land that does not belong to him. Barker stresses that the fictional lagoon is representative of violence against indigenous people, driven out by colonial powers.
• 3. Prof: Tom Brady’s ‘white male omnipotence’ buttresses American white supremacy’ English professor Kyle Kusz at the University of Rhode Island published a chapter this September about the supposed propagation of white supremacy by the New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Kusz said that Brady gained his popularity during the “latest wave of white rage and white supremacy." The professor reasons that Brady often supports brands that would be considered “upscale” and the commercials he appears in make him appear superior to the viewer. Kusz relates an appearance of Brady in a 2015 commercial to something that would be seen in a Leni Reifenstahl’s Nazi Film, "Triumph des Willens." He also notes the fact that Brady takes “boys only trips” to the Kentucky Derby with a group of mostly white men, claiming that this shows that he advances white supremacy within his personal life.
• 4. NY univ. Promotes paper comparing cow insemination to ‘rape,’ milking cows to ‘sexual abuse’ - An academic paper promoted at the College at Brockport State University of New York by the Women’s and Gender Studies program calls on society to reflect on the rampant “sexual exploitation” of dairy cows by the milk industry in order to “fully fight gendered oppression." Titled “Readying the Rape Rack, Feminism and the Exploitation of Non-Human Reproductive Systems,” the author questions whether milk is even beneficial to humans. The author encourages the reader to “place the importance of animals’ lives as equal to your own,” and address the plight of dairy cows similarly to women’s rights issues. The piece is aimed at discussing how the bodies of cows, specifically their reproductive system, have been poked and prodded at in “the same way women's health has been at stake for years.”

DeVos accused of scheming to stop the next president from canceling student loan debt - Billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos this week proposed handing over the federal government's $1.5 trillion student loan portfolio to a "stand-alone government corporation," a move observers condemned as a corrupt ploy to strip the next president of the ability to cancel student loan debt. "This very much appears to be a Betsy DeVos scheme to block the next president from unilaterally forgiving federal student debt, which she is well aware a president could do without Congress," The Intercept's Ryan Grim wrote in a series of tweets late Wednesday. "The DeVos family is heavily invested in the student loan industry and this is just flat-out corruption." DeVos' plan, first introduced on Tuesday, would spin off the Education Department's Federal Student Aid office into a new and supposedly independent federal agency. "One has to wonder: why isn't Federal Student Aid a stand-alone government corporation, run by a professional, expert, and apolitical Board of Governors?" DeVos tweeted Tuesday. "A separate Federal Student Aid would be better positioned to deliver world-class service to students and their families as they finance higher education." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate who has proposed wiping out all student loan debt, dismissed the Education Secretary's plan on Twitter.  "No, this isn't it, Ms. DeVos," said Sanders. "Cancel all student debt." Devos' proposal, which has not been fully developed, came weeks after she was held in contempt of court failing to comply with an order to stop collecting loan payments from former students of a defunct for-profit college company that defrauded tens of thousands of borrowers.

 73% of student loan borrowers don’t know what happens to their debt if they die - Almost three out of four student borrowers say they have no idea what effect their death would have on their loans, according to a recent survey of roughly 400 borrowers by Haven Life, a life insurance agency backed and owned by MassMutual. Yet it’s not surprising that most people are unaware of what happens when a student loan borrower or co-signer passes away, says Barbara Ginty, a certified financial planner and host of the “Future Rich” podcast. “The reason is because it is a scary thing to think about....losing a parent, most often the co-signer, or a parent losing a child,” she says. “Most people don’t think about it until something happens.” For some borrowers, that may be OK. If all of your loans are federal student aid and in your name, then the outstanding balance will be wiped out through what’s called a “death discharge.” If a friend or family member sends a death certificate or other proof of death paperwork to your loan servicer, the loans will be cleared. But it can get more complicated with other types of loans. The same protections are in place for Parent PLUS loans. If your parents take out that type of loan, you bear no responsibility for paying back the loan. If your parent should pass away with a balance still due, the government treats it the same as regular student loans and it’s discharged. If you’re the one to die, the loan is also forgiven. Federal loans make it fairly straightforward to discharge student loan debt because of a death, but the stipulations around those issued by private lenders can vary. About 1.4 million Americans have borrowed from private lenders, according to a report by LendEdu.If you consolidate your federal student loans with a private lender, you will lose the government’s death discharge protections, says Robert Farrington, founder of The College Investor and a student loan debt expert.And when it comes to private lenders, discharges happen on a “case by case” basis, says Elaine Griffin Rubin, the senior contributor for financial aid site Edvisors. The good news is that many major lenders are offering this type of relief more and more to families who have had their children pass away, Rubin says. However, you may have to really dig for information about their policies. While popular refinancing company SoFi doesn’t list death and disability discharge as an option for borrowers, The College Investor confirmed this lender does offer to forgive loans if the borrower should pass away. But when it comes to the death of a co-signer, such as a parent, Ginty says you need to read the fine print ahead of time because lenders may not be as forgiving.

The SECURE Act- It's Reality & What You Need To Know - Like a thief in the night, in a rare bipartisan agreement, Congress passed the Setting Up Every Community for Retirement Enhancement Act or the SECURE Act. The most creative element of the act admittedly, is the name. All is needed now is the President’s signature which is a foregone conclusion. I’m torn by this Act.There are several good elements to it; however, those who plan to leave significant wealth through non-spousal inherited IRAs are going to face formidable issues with this bill, which I will expand upon.The possible passage of the Act is one of the reasons we’ve been expanding RIA’s initiative to help clients with surgical, occasionally aggressive, Roth conversions. SECURE will take effect on January 1, 2020. Here are the highlights: 70 ½ and still working? We’ve got a solution for that. As we discuss in our Right Lane Retirement Classes, working past 70 is not a rarity for today’s ‘retiree.’ The Labor Force Participation Rate growth rate for those age 75 is up 76% since 2000. There are many reasons for this with the most prominent being this cohort needs the money.The SECURE Act gets traditional IRAs in line with traditional 401(k) and Roth IRAs and will allow working older Americans, 70.5+, to continue to contribute to their pre-tax retirement accounts. Let me say this is no big deal. In fact, I’m very concerned this provision may lead retirees along with advice from mainstream financial professionals, to continue to overfund pre-tax accounts for absolutely no reason.In other words, most older Americans past 70 shouldn’t be concerned about saving taxes today as they are about increased relief against taxes that cut into their consumption income, including Social Security. Why would I care to contribute to a pre-tax retirement account when I’m living it or close to living retirement or some phase of it, and income is my imminent lifeblood at this stage of life?The only good thing I see about this change is the ability for continuation of backdoor Roth IRAs. However, by 70.5 most people have already rolled over their retirement accounts into IRAs which would diminish the positive effects of backdoor Roths anyway due to something called the pro-rata rule. Again, I consider this provision a way to clean up what should have been done previously and not a clear win for anybody except Wall Street and brokers.

As Rural Americans Struggle for Health Care Access, Insurers May Be Making Things Worse -Living in rural America certainly comes with a number of benefits. There is less crime, access to the outdoors, and lower costs of living.Yet, not everything is rosy outside the city limits. Rural communities face growing infrastructure problems like decaying water systems. And they have more limited access to amenities ranging from grocery stores to movie theaters, lower quality schools, and less access to high-speed internet.  Yet perhaps most daunting are the tremendous health disparities rural Americans face, in terms of both their own health and accessing care. As a number of my recent studies indicate, these disparities may be exacerbated by insurance carriers and the networks they put together for their consumers.  At the turn of the last century, cities were known to be cesspools rampant with disease. Much has changed since then. Today, health care disparities between urban and rural America have indeed reversed. And they are growing wider. Over the last several decades, many rural areas have lost a large share of their residents. In many areas, the young are moving away, leaving an aging population behind. Besides being older, those staying behind are poorer and have lower levels of education. To make things worse, they are also more likely to be uninsured. And they tend to be sicker, exhibiting higher rates of cancer, heart disease, stroke and chronic lower respiratory disease. It comes as no surprise that their life expectancy is generally lower as well. The demographic challenges are made worse by the limitations posed by the health care system. For one, rural areas are experiencing tremendous health care provider shortages. Access is often particularly limited for specialty care. But much more mundane health care services that most of us take for granted, like hospitals – including public hospitals and maternity wards – are also affected.Politics have made rural access challenges worse in many places. Partisan opposition to the Affordable Care Act has led many states with large rural populations, like Texas and Kansas, torefuse to expand their Medicaid programs or support enrollment in Affordable Care Act marketplaces. This stance is particularly damaging because the program provides a crucial lifeline to rural providers. Rural communities across the country face tremendous health care access issues. And as recent study my colleagues and I did of access to cardiologists, endocrinologists, OB-GYNs and pediatricians shows, insurance plans may further complicate the issue. One of our starkest findings was the existence of what we called “artificial provider deserts” – areas where providers are practicing and seeing patients, but insurance carriers do not include any of them in their networks. Without access to local providers, some rural residents are forced to travel 120 miles or more to reach in-network care.

China’s Dangerous Chokehold On Our Medicines - The U.S. doesn’t depend on China for 80 percent of the oil needed to fuel our economy. That would be economic suicide. But we do depend on China for 80 percent of the core components to make our generic medicines. How dependent are we? If the Chinese government turned off the spigot, pharmacy shelves would be empty within months. Hospitals would cease to function. Doctors couldn’t perform surgery, treat cancers with recommended medicines, or provide dialysis treatment for people with kidney failure. Infectious diseases such as pneumonia and STDs would go untreated. Members of Congress, the White House, the military, veterans, seniors—everyone would be affected. Generic drugs are 90 percent of the medicines Americans take. Thousands of them, sold at corner drug stores, grocery store pharmacies, and big box stores, contain ingredients made in China. As a country, we recognize the geopolitical leverage China would wield if global oil supply and refineries were concentrated in a single country. But we have had a blind spot as to China’s chokehold on our medicines. How did we get here? Here’s the story about how we lost our industrial capacity to manufacture antibiotics, life-savers against infectious diseases that if untamed would wreak havoc on the nation’s health.

‘It comes down to pure greed’: Insulin prices double, causing many people with diabetes to turn to extremes – Mindi Patterson’s family pays nearly $1,000 each month for insulin. Her husband, Roc, 47, and her two sons, 19-year-old Pierce and 14-year-old Martin, all have Type 1 diabetes and need insulin to survive. But the medicine they so desperately depend on comes at a hefty price. The family pays between $300 and $400 a person in out-of-pocket costs on insulin each month. Without health insurance through Patterson’s job at Costco, the family would pay close to $5,000 a month for the life-saving medication, she said. “We’re just one misstep away or car accident away” from financial disaster, Patterson said. In people with Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas can’t make insulin. Those with the condition require several doses of insulin a day and spent $5,705 per person on it in 2016, an increase of $2,841, or 99%, per person since 2012, according to the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute. Costs continue to rise, so much so that almost half of people with diabetes have temporarily skipped taking their insulin, according to a 2018 survey by UpWell Health. “Insulin prices doubled in a four-year period,” s “They continue to go up, and the infuriating thing is that there is no change in the process for creating the product.” All people with Type 1 and some with Type 2, whose body doesn’t use insulin the way it should, need the drug, More than 30.3 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and 90% to 95% of them have Type 2 diabetes, according to the 2017 National Diabetes Statistics Report. Unlike people with Type 1 diabetes, those with Type 2 can often lessen their dependence on insulin through healthier diet and exercise. “As extreme as it sounds, if I go without insulin I will die,” said Anthony Myer, 29, who has Type 1 diabetes. He pays $240 for a single vial of insulin after insurance, which lasts him about nine days.

In The Fight For Money For The Opioid Crisis, Will The Youngest Victims Be Left Out? - Babies born to mothers who used opioids during pregnancy represent one of the most distressing legacies of an opioid epidemic that has claimed almost 400,000 lives and ravaged communities. In fact, many of the ongoing lawsuits filed against drug companies refer to these babies, fighting through withdrawal in hospital nurseries.The cluster of symptoms they experience, which include tremors, seizures and respiratory distress, is known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS. Until recently, doctors rarely looked for the condition. Then case numbers quadrupled over a decade. Hospital care for newborns with NAS has cost Medicaid billions of dollars.Studies indicate more than 30,000 babies with the condition are born every year in the U.S. — about one every 15 minutes. Although their plight is mentioned in opioid-related litigation, there are growing concerns that those children will be left out of financial settlements being negotiated now.  Robbie Nicholson, of Eagleville, Tenn., tried to comfort her second child while the baby slowly underwent withdrawal from drugs Nicholson had taken during pregnancy.  “The whole experience is just traumatizing, really,” Nicholson said. […] There are thousands of children like Nicholson’s daughter entering the education system. Dr. Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist in Nashville, Tenn., said schools and early childhood programs are on the front lines now. “You hear teachers talking about infants with a development delay,” he said. “I just got an email this morning from somebody.” Studies haven’t proven a direct link between in utero exposure to opioids and behavior problems in kids. And it’s challenging to untangle which problems might stem from the lingering effects of maternal drug use, as opposed to the impacts of growing up with a mother who struggles with addiction and perhaps unemployment and housing instability as well. But Patrick, who leads the Center for Child Health Policy at Vanderbilt University, said that is what his and others’ ongoing research wants to find out. As states, cities, counties and even hospitals go after drug companies in court, Patrick fears these children will be left out. He pointed to public discussion of pending settlements and the settlement deals struck between pharmaceutical companies and the state of Oklahoma, which make little or no mention of children.

Sackler-owned opioid maker pushes overdose treatment abroad The gleaming white booth towered over the medical conference in Italy in October, advertising a new brand of antidote for opioid overdoses. “Be prepared. Get naloxone. Save a life,” the slogan on its walls said. Some conference attendees were stunned when they saw the company logo: Mundipharma, the international affiliate of Purdue Pharma — the maker of the blockbuster opioid, OxyContin, widely blamed for unleashing the American overdose epidemic. “You’re in the business of selling medicine that causes addiction and overdoses, and now you’re in the business of selling medicine that treats addiction and overdoses?” asked Dr. Andrew Kolodny, an outspoken critic of Purdue who has testified against the company in court. “That’s pretty clever, isn’t it?” As Purdue Pharma buckles under a mountain of litigation and public protest in the United States, its foreign affiliate, Mundipharma, has expanded abroad, using some of the same tactics to sell the addictive opioids that made its owners, the Sackler family, among the richest in the world. Mundipharma is also pushing another strategy globally: From Europe to Australia, it is working to dominate the market for opioid overdose treatment. “The way that they’ve pushed their opioids initially and now coming up with the expensive kind of antidote -- it’s something that just strikes me as deeply, deeply cynical,” said Ross Bell, executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation and a longtime advocate of greater naloxone availability. “You’ve got families devastated by this, and a company who sees dollar signs flashing.”

Far from U.S. epidemic, ‘the other opioid crisis’ rages in vulnerable countries - Reports rolled in with escalating urgency — pills seized by the truckload, pills swallowed by schoolchildren, pills in the pockets of dead terrorists. These pills, the world has been told, are safer than the OxyContins, the Vicodins, the fentanyls that have wreaked so much devastation. But now they are the root of what the United Nations named “the other opioid crisis” — an epidemic featured in fewer headlines than the American one, as it rages through the planet’s most vulnerable countries. Mass abuse of the opioid tramadol spans continents, from India to Africa to the Middle East, creating international havoc some experts blame on a loophole in narcotics regulation and a miscalculation of the drug’s danger. The man-made opioid was touted as a way to relieve pain with little risk of abuse. Unlike other opioids, tramadol flowed freely around the world, unburdened by international controls that track most dangerous drugs. But abuse is now so rampant that some countries are asking international authorities to intervene. Grunenthal, the German company that originally made the drug, is campaigning for the status quo, arguing that it’s largely illicit counterfeit pills causing problems. International regulations make narcotics difficult to get in countries with disorganized health systems, the company says, and adding tramadol to the list would deprive suffering patients access to any opioid at all. Tramadol is available in war zones and impoverished nations because it is unregulated. But it is widely abused for the same exact reason. Tramadol has not been as deadly as other opioids, and the crisis isn’t killing with the ferocity of America’s struggle with the drugs. Still, individual governments from the U.S. to Egypt to Ukraine have realized the drug’s dangers are greater than was believed and have worked to rein in the tramadol trade. The north Indian state of Punjab, the center of India’s opioid epidemic, was the latest to crack down. The pills were everywhere, as legitimate medication sold in pharmacies, but also illicit counterfeits hawked by street vendors. This year, authorities seized hundreds of thousands of tablets, banned most pharmacy sales and shut down pill factories, pushing the price from 35 cents for a 10-pack to $14. The government opened a network of treatment centers, fearing that those who had become opioid-addicted would resort to heroin out of desperation. Hordes of people rushed in, seeking help in managing excruciating withdrawal. For some, tramadol had become as essential as food. “Like if you don’t eat, you start to feel hungry. Similar is the case with not taking it,” said auto shop welder Deepak Arora, a gaunt 30-year-old who took 15 tablets day, so much he had to steal from his family to pay for pills. “You are like a dead person.” Jeffery Bawa, an officer with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, realized what was happening in 2016, when he traveled to Mali in western Africa, one of the world’s poorest countries, gripped by civil war and terrorism. They asked people for their most pressing concerns. Most did not say hunger or violence. They said tramadol.

India has 60 species of poisonous snakes, but only a single type of antivenom. It’s not enough - Much like snakes themselves, India’s focus on research on snake antivenoms seems to have slithered past policy makers and scientific bodies. At least 46,000 people die of snake bites every year in India, report independent studies. This accounts for half of all the snake-related deaths in the world. This is the biggest human-animal conflict in the country, and yet, both research and the treatment of victims is shockingly dated and on the verge of becoming irrelevant. “The essence of the technology to treat snake bite victims hasn’t changed for a century,”  Scientists have now published a new study that exposes the lack of research in snake antivenoms – also known as anti-snake venoms or ASVs – emphasising and scientifically quantifying the need to develop region-specific snake antivenoms to make them more effective. For a country that is as varied as India, both in geography and biodiversity, there is only one type of snake antivenom used for treatment: polyvalent snake antivenom. This antivenom is a mixture made from venom extracted from the ‘big four’ snakes: the spectacled cobra, the common krait, Russell’s viper and the saw-scaled viper. The country has some 270 species of snakes, of which 60 are considered venomous and medically relevant, and with various levels of toxicity. Not only are the current antivenoms ineffective to those patients bitten by snakes outside of the big four, their efficacy is also severely limited between two populations of the big 4 of the same species but from different regions of the country, say experts. The new research paper studied the composition of venoms from snakes like Sochurek’s viper, the Sind krait, the banded krait, and two populations of monocled cobras, as well as their closest ‘big four’ relatives – saw-scaled viper, common krait and spectacled cobra. It found out that the venom composition of these snakes is vastly different, not just between snake populations from the same species, but from varied regions too. “For instance, a stark variation was observed in the venom of two populations of the same monocled cobra species from West Bengal and Arunachal Pradesh. The former was found to be highly neurotoxic, while the latter was rich in cytotoxins,” said Sunagar.

Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study - People living with air pollution have higher rates of depression and suicide, a systematic review of global data has found. Cutting air pollution around the world to the EU’s legal limit could prevent millions of people becoming depressed, the research suggests. This assumes that exposure to toxic air is causing these cases of depression. Scientists believe this is likely but is difficult to prove beyond doubt. The particle pollution analysed in the study is produced by burning fossil fuels in vehicles, homes and industry. The researchers said the new evidence further strengthened calls to tackle what the World Health Organization calls the “silent public health emergency” of dirty air.“We’ve shown that air pollution could be causing substantial harm to our mental health, making the case for cleaning up the air we breathe even more urgent,” said Isobel Braithwaite, at University College London (UCL), who led the research. “We know that the finest particulates from dirty air can reach the brain via both the bloodstream and the nose, and that air pollution has been implicated in increased [brain] inflammation, damage to nerve cells and to changes in stress hormone production, which have been linked to poor mental health,” Braithwaite said. Joseph Hayes, also at UCL and part of the research team, said: “The evidence is highly suggestive that air pollution itself increases the risk of adverse mental health outcomes.”  The research, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, used strict quality criteria to select and pool research data from 16 countries published up to 2017. This revealed a strong statistical link between toxic air and depression and suicide. This is supported by more recent research, including studies that linked air pollution with “extremely high mortality” in people with mental disorders and a quadrupled risk of depression in teenagers. Other research indicates that air pollution causes a “huge” reduction in intelligence and is linked to dementia. A comprehensive global review earlier in 2019 concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body.

Agriculture and transportation are major polluters - Scientific research over the years definitively has found that air pollution causes premature deaths due to ischemic heart disease, strokes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer, among other maladies. Now there’s a growing body of research arguing that an industry’s economic benefits must be balanced against the premature deaths that its pollution generates — focusing attention on agriculture, transportation, electric utilities and manufacturing that account for 75% of the nation’s air pollution.  These hidden impacts — so-called gross external damage — aren’t currently included in more traditional gross domestic product, or GDP, calculations, but they should be deducted from the total value of goods produced and services, according to a Carnegie Mellon University-based study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study establishes a method for policymakers to analyze the economics of pollution health impacts, and reports the surprising finding that agriculture and transportation now produce more fine particulate pollution nationwide than electric utilities and manufacturing.  A separate CMU analysis, done at the request of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, found that locally generated air pollution boosted the number of premature deaths from 864 in 2011 to 980 in 2014 in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. That increase was linked to “increases in local economic activity.” Overall, emissions nationally and locally have been declining steadily with decreased use of coal. Still, air pollution is a major contributor to premature mortality in the United States, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study states. “The number of deaths and damages highlight the importance of air pollution as a policy issue.”  Mortality increases as industrial development occurs closer to urban centers, said Nicholas Muller, the CMU associate professor who co-authored the study.  That’s a key concern with shale gas development, which involves drilling wells and using hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” to recover natural gas and then processing and transporting it to market. CMU models place a cost on each ton of pollution, based on the size of populations that the pollution will impact.  So emissions generated in Washington County — with one of the highest level of shale gas development statewide — bear the highest mortality costs per ton in Western Pennsylvania because the county sits directly upwind of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, the region’s highest population center, CMU pollution models show.

Dump it down the drain’: How contaminants from prescription-drug factories pollute waterways  - A cacophony of machines, some as big as a dump truck, mix pharmaceutical ingredients, press them into tablets, and fill capsules at a West Virginia factory owned by generic-drug giant Mylan. By the end of each run, the walls, ceilings, floors, and nearly every nook and cranny of the intricate equipment were caked in powdery drug residues, say three former Mylan employees. It was standard practice, the former workers said, to then hose down some of the rooms and machines for up to eight hours and then spray them with alcohol to clear the remaining drug residues, and the wastewater would flow down a drain in the center of each room. “You just go dump it down the drain,” said the employee who was laid off in 2018. “It always bothered me pouring pharmaceuticals down the drain,” said another former employee who worked in quality control for nearly 10 years.  The drug-tainted wastewater streamed through underground pipes to a municipal treatment plant, but some of the medicine likely passed through unhindered and out to the Monongahela River. Typically, wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to remove pharmaceuticals, so when scientists from the United States Geological Survey tested effluent from the Morgantown, W.Va., plant several years ago, along with the discharges from six other treatment plants, it detected very high levels of some drugs. Downstream from the Morgantown plant, an anti-seizure medication was measured at nearly 90 times the amount considered safe for wildlife. Over the past decade, cocktails of drugs from opioids to antidepressants have been showing up in rivers all over the U.S. Studies have detected these chemicals in the bodies of fish and aquatic insects, altering behaviors that are key to survival. Now, an investigation by STAT and Type Investigations identifies for the first time major drug companies that are likely dumping substantial quantities of drugs from their manufacturing facilities into rivers and streams. Until now, consumers have shouldered much of the blame for drug pollution, which can enter the ecosystem through urine or from flushing unused drugs down the drain. Although drug pollution from consumers is widespread, it generally occurs in low concentrations. Contaminants leaking from manufacturing facilities, in contrast, can be found at much higher levels that can be harmful to fish and other aquatic life downstream. Mylan and the other companies identified by the investigation would be breaking no federal or state laws by contributing to drug pollution in waterways; pharmaceuticals are not a regulated pollutant in the U.S. Mylan issued a statement disputing the investigation’s findings.

Utility Executives Kept Flint’s Tainted Water a Secret - Executives at one of the world’s largest utilities companies knew that families in Flint, Michigan, might be at risk of being poisoned by lead in their tap water months before the city publicly admitted the problem, according to internal company emails.Email exchanges in February 2015 between executives at Veolia and a city contractor show some senior employees were aware that lead from the city’s pipes could be leaching into drinking water. They argued that city officials should be told to change Flint’s water supply to protect residents.But the company never made that recommendation public. At the time, Veolia was exploring other lucrative contracts with the city.Flint began struggling with foul-tasting, discolored water after switching to the Flint River as its supply in April 2014. Test results soon showed elevated levels of carcinogens. The water was corrosive, so it was releasing lead from pipes. The city found extraordinarily high lead levels in one resident’s water in February 2015 but residents were not made aware of the extent of the problem until September 2015. Five years later, the people of Flint continue to demand accountability for the water crisis, which exposed residents to high levels of lead, a potent neurotoxin. Children and infants who consumed the water are likely to suffer lifelong learning disabilities. Flint residents are still advised to either drink bottled water or filter it from the tap. The emails, reviewed by the Guardian and MLive in a joint investigation, came to light in a lawsuit filed by the Michigan attorney general in the Genesee County circuit court. The lawsuit accused Veolia of “professional negligence, negligence, public nuisance, unjust enrichment, and fraud.” The attorney general alleged Veolia gave Flint bad advice and did not help it to prevent its lead crisis by pushing harder for safeguards against corrosion or a switch to a different water supply.

Toxic Chemicals Found in Rainwater and Drinking Water Throughout the U.S. -  Researchers found that rainwater in some parts of the U.S. have high levels of toxic chemicals. If the chemicals are found in similar levels in drinking water, it would spur regulatory action, according to The Guardian.  The research from the National Atmospheric Deposition Program, which works with the Department of the Interior's U.S. Geological Survey, found the toxic forever chemicals per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) present in rainwater samples from across the country, according to The Guardian.  The substances are dubbed forever chemicals because they do not degrade in the environment. Exposure to PFAS has been linked to various ailments, including cancers in humans and animals, especially in the kidneys and testicles. They have also been linked to thyroid disease, weakened immunity and other diseases, as NBC News reported. While more than 4,700 variants of toxic forever chemicals have been identified, the EPA only regulates two of them: PFOS and PFOA. The chemicals are common in everyday items like insulation, food packaging, carpeting, cookware and firefighting foam, according to NBC News. Shafer and his team tested 37 samples of rainwater from 30 different areas, mostly on the East Coast, but extending as far west as Washington State and as far south as Alabama. Every single sample tested positive for at least one of the 36 different compounds that the scientists tested for. The largest sample was from Massachusetts and showed 5.5 nanograms (ng) per liter. Several other samples had a slightly smaller concentration of 4 ng per liter, while most samples showed concentrations that were less one ng per liter, according to The Guardian.  "There's a dearth of knowledge about what's supporting the atmospheric concentrations and ultimately deposition of PFAS," said Shaefer, as The Guardian reported. He suspects the PFAS are entering the atmosphere through various avenues, including factory emissions and fire-fighting foams.   The scourge of PFAS has caused various health problems around military bases where the chemicals were once prominent in fire-fighting equipment. In those communities, levels of PFAS in water have been hundreds, and, on occasion, thousands of times higher that what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) advises. However, since most of those chemicals are not listed on the Safe Drinking Water Acts list of banned contaminants, there is no regulation that requires utilities to test for them, as NBC News reported. The Department of Defense spending bill that Congress passed last week dropped key provisions that were written to reduce ongoing releases of the toxic fluorinated chemicals called PFAS, remove PFAS from tap water and clean up legacy PFAS contamination, as the Environmental Working Group said in a press release.

 There Are More Than 300 US Military Bases With Possible Toxic Forever Chemical Contamination  Hundreds of military installations have either known or likely water contamination caused by runoff from firefighting foam used in response to vehicle and aircraft accidents, according to the Environmental Working Group. Using Defense Department data, the organization built an interactive map of 305 sites, which are found in all 50 states. Each map dot opens up to information and links on perfluorooctane sulfonate or perfluorooctanoic acid, known as PFAS.“Of these sites, 138 have not been previously identified on EWG’s map of known PFAS contamination at militar y bases, civilian airports and industrial sites,” according to a Tuesday new release. “In addition, 42 of these sites were not included on a list of 401 locations the Pentagon gave to Congress of active and former installations where PFAS contamination was known or suspected.”   An interactive Environmental Working Group map lays out PFAS contamination across 305 military sites. (EWG) The map went live the day after the House and Senate armed services committees finalized a compromise defense authorization bill for 2020, which includes provisions to approaching the PFAS issue going forward. Expected to see a vote in the House on Wednesday, the law would prohibit the use of PFAS-laden firefighting foam after Oct. 1, 2024, and immediately ban any use of the foam outside of emergency situations.  While the bill dropped a provision that would have brought PFAS-contaminated bases under the federal Superfund law, providing funding and a requirement to clean them up, the NDAA pushes the Pentagon to work with state governments to start clean up using funds from the Defense Environmental Remediation Account.  It would also require that military firefighters are testing for PFAS levels in their blood, as the chemicals do not break down over time and are known to build up in the human body.  In the mean time, the Air Force has been testing a system that might be able to remove PFAS from ground water, and DoD is funding research into a new firefighting foam.

At Least 61 US Veterans Who Guarded 'Contaminated' Ex-Russian Base Died Or Have Cancer - At least 61 US special operations forces who were deployed to a former Soviet base just a few hundred miles from the Afghanistan border have either died or have cancer, according to a new report by McClatchy DC's Tara Copp. The deployment, which began shortly after the 9/11 attacks, were to a military site in Uzbekistan called Karshi-Khanabad, known as K2. It was leased by the United States from the Uzbek government weeks after the 2001 terrorist incident, as it was in close proximity to al Qaeda and Taliban targets. The US troops were greeted by "radiation hazard" warning signs, 'black goo' oozing fro the ground, and pond water that glowed green, according to the report. K2 was contaminated with chemical weapons remnants, radioactive processed uranium and other hazards, according to documents obtained by McClatchy. At least 61 of the men and women who served at K2 had been diagnosed with cancer or died from the disease, according to a 2015 Army study on the base. But that number may not include the special operations forces deployed to K2, who were likely not counted due to the secrecy of their missions, the study reported. -McClatchy DC According to the report, the Defense Department knew K2 was contaminated from the start based on documents obtained by McClatchy which are now being made public (see below). After Uzbek soldiers who prepared the base fell ill in 2001, US Central Command ordered an intelligence review of hazards at the facility. "Ground contamination at Karshi-Khanabad Airfield poses health risks to U.S. forces deployed there," reads the classified report dated November 6, 2001, which added that the "tent city" the US military was building - which included tents for eating, sleeping and showering - were "in some cases directly on top of soil that probably was contaminated" by four separate hazards.

Goodbye to ToxMap–and Our Environmental Right-to-Know - On December 16, the National Library of Medicine is retiring the revelatory environmental mapping tool known as ToxMap.  Ever so quietly, the door will close on what has arguably become the most accessible and user-friendly portal created by the federal government for letting Americans know about the toxics lurking next door.  Thanks largely to the 1986 Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), the EPA had been collecting huge amounts of data on chemicals of concern being released from individual facilities—the Toxic Release Inventory.  But until the early 2000s, this vast store of “public” information demanded considerable time and expertise to find and tap, much less to interpret. When EDGI colleague Sara Wylie informed us of the NLM’s decision, my initial shock flowed from my years of relying on ToxMap in the classroom. On the very first day of the environmental history class I teach at my university, I open it up to show students just how many toxic releases are happening on or near their own university campus and in the towns where they had grown up.   Students snap to alertness, and a few jaws drop. Toxmap serves as an effective reality check, alerting them to just how pervasive and proximate toxic chemicals have become across the American landscape. But with the National Library of Medicine now apparently abandoning this project, via a shuttering of their “Specialized Information Services” and a divvying up of the rest of the “Toxnet” website it maintained, those lessons suddenly become harder to teach.  Instead of a front-page map with locations, toxic releases, enforcement actions, and health effects all available at a glance and a click, the only substitutes provided by the government are harder to find, often more partial and difficult to navigate, and frequently culminate in eye-glazing spreadsheets of numbers.  With very little ado, access is corroding to a kind of information that is not just my students’ but all Americans’ right to know.

Screen could offer better safety tests for new chemicals - It's estimated that there are approximately 80,000 industrial chemicals currently in use, in products such as clothing, cleaning solutions, carpets, and furniture. For the vast majority of these chemicals, scientists have little or no information about their potential to cause cancer. The detection of DNA damage in cells can predict whether cancer will develop, but tests for this kind of damage have limited sensitivity. A team of MIT biological engineers has now come up with a new screening method that they believe could make such testing much faster, easier, and more accurate.  The National Toxicology Program, a government research agency that identifies potentially hazardous substances, is now working on adopting the MIT test to evaluate new compounds.  "My hope is that they use it to identify potential carcinogens and we get them out of our environment, and prevent them from being produced in massive quantities," says Bevin Engelward, a professor of biological engineering at MIT and the senior author of the study. "It can take decades between the time you're exposed to a carcinogen and the time you get cancer, so we really need predictive tests. We need to prevent cancer in the first place." Engelward's lab is now working on further validating the test, which makes use of human liver-like cells that metabolize chemicals very similarly to real human liver cells and produce a distinctive signal when DNA damage occurs. Le Ngo, a former MIT graduate student and postdoc, is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. Currently, tests for the cancer-causing potential of chemicals involve exposing mice to the chemical and then waiting to see whether they develop cancer, which takes about two years. Engelward has spent much of her career developing ways to detect DNA damage in cells, which can eventually lead to cancer. One of these devices, the CometChip, reveals DNA damage by placing the DNA in an array of microwells on a slab of polymer gel and then exposing it to an electric field. DNA strands that have been broken travel farther, producing a comet-shaped tail.

Report: Delaware one of four Chesapeake Bay states that cut funding and/or staff at agencies handling pollution - States in the Chesapeake Bay region cut funding or staff to their main pollution control agency over the last 10 years, the Environmental Integrity Project reported. Environmental agencies in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New York each saw budget reductions, even after adjustments for inflation, between 2008 and 2018, according to the report, “The Thin Green Line: Cuts in State Pollution Control Agencies Threaten Public Health.”Those states, as well as Maryland, also reduced their environmental workforce during the same time period. The report was especially critical of Pennsylvania legislators and governors for cutting funding by 16 percent and staffing by 15 percent, even as state spending overall grew by 18 percent. Among the 48 states studied, 30 of them cut funding to the operating budgets of agencies that protect public health and the environment. Both Delaware and New York were in the top 10 states with the largest cuts. Delaware cut funding to its Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) by 33 percent and staffing by 21 percent over the decade. New York, with more than a dozen counties at least partly in the Bay watershed, cut its Department of Environmental Conservation budget by 31 percent and staffing by 29 percent. Maryland increased funding for its Department of the Environment by 1.6 percent, though it reduced staffing by 5 percent. Virginia increased funding by 5.5 percent and staffing by just less than 2 percent to the Department of Environmental Quality. West Virginia was the only state to show dramatic increases in financial support to its Department of Environmental Protection over the decade, increasing funding by 46 percent and staffing by 8 percent.

Precautionary Decontaminations After Houston Mercury Spill — Dozens of people were decontaminated as a precaution Sunday after trace amounts of mercury was spilled at three locations in Houston, city officials said. Fire Chief Sam Pena said at a news conference Sunday evening that the situation was under control and crews were cleaning up the spills. There’s no timetable for when the cleanup will be complete. Someone called 911 around 11:15 a.m. to report a white liquid on the ground, Pena said. Officials later determined that mercury was spilled outside a Walmart, a Sonic Drive-In and a nearby gas station. All three locations were evacuated and between 30 and 60 people were asked to take decontamination showers as a precaution, Pena said. The fire chief added one woman was taken to a hospital as a precaution because she was pregnant. Police said it’s unclear how or when the chemical was spilled. Federal and local investigators were trying to determine whether it was intentional. Authorities also said they’re looking into reports that someone checked into a hospital Friday in Harris County, where Houston is located, claiming to have been exposed to mercury. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mercury exists in three forms. Elemental mercury is liquid at room temperature. It is used in some thermometers, fluorescent light bulbs and electrical switches. Dr. David Persse with the Houston Health Department said that because all three spills happened outdoors, the risk to people in the area is minimal.

U.S. Is 7th Deadliest Country for Pollution - The U.S. is the wealthiest country to make an appearance on a list ranking the 10 nations with the most pollution-related deaths, The Guardian reported Wednesday.The list is part of the latest report from the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) on the global health impacts of air, water and workplace pollution. Overall, pollution was responsible for 15 percent of deaths worldwide in 2017, remaining the No. 1 environmental killer. Pollution kills three times more people every year than HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria put together, according to The Guardian, and 15 times more people than war or violence.  "The report reminds us all that pollution is a global crisis. It does not matter where you live. Pollution will find you," GAHP acting Executive Director Rachael Kupka said in a press release. Pollution is deadliest in India, where it claimed 2,326,771 lives. China came next with 1,865,566 deaths and Nigeria third with 279,318. The U.S. ranked seventh, higher than Russia, Ethiopia and Brazil, with 196,930 deaths.The findings come as the Trump administration has worked to roll back both air and water pollution standards. At the same time, the climate crisis is making air pollution in the U.S. worse, partly because it increases wildfires."We're facing serious risks from pollution and those risks are exacerbated by climate change. The U.S. has historically been the gold standard in tackling pollution, and today we are sadly not doing enough and the fact that we're going backward is unconscionable," former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy said in the press release. "This report reminds us that climate change isn't just about faraway countries or forest fires and floods – it's about our health and the health of our kids – here and now."   However, report coauthor and chair of the GAHP board of directors Richard Fuller said that the figures, from 2017, wouldn't account yet for the full impact of Trump rollbacks. "We won't pick up the extra deaths for a few years, but it doesn't look good for the US," he told The Guardian. "The [regulatory] roll-backs could lead to the US moving up the chart, and as always it will be poor communities who are disproportionately affected." The report also listed the countries with the most deaths per 100,000 people and the most deaths from air pollution specifically. The second list featured many smaller countries and was led by Chad, the Central African Republic and North Korea. India, the only country to make all three lists, came in 10th with 174 deaths per 100,000 people.

Queensland school runs out of water as commercial bottlers harvest local supplies -- The Tamborine Mountain state school has run out of water, even as water miners in the Gold Coast hinterland are sending millions of litres to commercial bottling operations. Trucks sent by the Queensland government carrying emergency supplies to the school, including Mount Tamborine bottled water, have been passing trucks heading in the opposite direction taking local water to bottling plants for beverage giants such as Coca-Cola. The school remains open but parents have been advised by teachers to consider keeping their children at home. Water miners in the Mount Tamborine area supply roughly 130m litres of water each year to commercial bottling operations. Now the local bores are running dry. “It was more or less the final straw for me. The school’s bore is 50 metres deep and has never ever had these issues before.” “The school bore has been operating since the school was there. There’s many other bores that have run dry. We are the largest community in Australia that doesn’t have reticulated water. If it doesn’t rain, people get water trucked in to fill their tanks. “Now the government is buying water back from Coca-Cola to bring here, which is where it came from in the first place.” The education department said it would continue to deliver water to the school until the end of the school holidays. Residents said the situation was a tipping point and would concentrate longstanding concern that the local water supply should be prioritised above the three commercial operations, which between them have approvals to send roughly 2.5m litres a week down the mountain. The situation seems to fall into a regulatory void, with no mechanism to halt commercial operations in times of severe drought or ensure that local water is allocated to locals.

New York bottle bill expansion could boost glass container recycling by 65%: study  --A new study by the Rochester Institute of Technology's Pollution Prevention Institute shows that expanding New York's bottle bill to offer a 5-cent deposit on wine and liquor bottles would increase those items' recycling rates by 65% and eliminate low-value material from more than 160 MRFs. But it could also cost the state's more than 4,500 wine and liquor sellers a collective $36 million for labor and/or reverse vending machine equipment. The report, commissioned by the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, stops short of giving any recommendations about whether New York should expand the bottle redemption program. The authors recommend further research on several elements, including costs and redemption alternatives, before determining the best path forward.  New York last added new containers — water bottles — to its redemption program in 2009. Although the new study didn't offer recommendations either for or against further expansion, industry participants indicate the conclusions drawn about increased glass recycling rates could prompt legislative action.Even though the report did not offer recommendations, industry participants say the implications for New York's bottle bill are clear. "The main message is that the current avenues of recycling for wine and liquor bottles are either not working or performing at a very low level, and there's an opportunity to have wine and liquor bottle recycling rates at a very high level. That's through adding wine and liquor bottles to the deposit program,"

Microplastics 1 million times more abundant in the ocean than previously thought --Nothing seems safe from plastic contamination. A new study by NSF-funded researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests there could be a million times more pieces of plastic in the ocean than previously estimated.Biological oceanographer Jennifer Brandon found some of the tiniest microplastics in seawater at much higher concentrations than previously measured. Her method showed that the traditional way of counting marine microplastics is likely missing the smallest particles, suggesting that the number of microplastics in the ocean is off by five to seven orders of magnitude.Brandon now estimates that the ocean is contaminated by 8.3 million pieces of mini-microplastics per cubic meter of water.  Her discovery is published in Limnology and Oceanography Letters."For years we've been doing microplastics studies the same way, by using a net to collect samples," Brandon said. "But anything smaller than that net mesh has been escaping."Most plastics are so chemically strong that neither microbes in soil nor water can break down the elemental bonds. For answers, Brandon turned to salps, gelatinous filter-feeding invertebrates that suck in water to eat and to propel themselves around the upper 6,500 feet of the ocean. Their stomachs were a likely place to find mini-microplastics. Of the 100 salps Brandon surveyed from water samples collected in 2009, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017, 100 percent had mini-microplastics in their guts. "Despite tremendous interest in microplastics, we are just beginning to understand the scale and effects of these ocean contaminants," "This study demonstrates that marine plastics are far more abundant than anyone realized and can be found potentially everywhere in the ocean. This is troubling, especially when the consequences for the environment and human health remain largely unknown."

Can plastic recycling be fixed? - As governments move to reduce the huge volumes of plastic waste choking the world’s oceans, a wave of entrepreneurs, scientists and multinational companies are rushing to overhaul the world’s recycling systems, bringing the latest technology and manufacturing practices to an industry that has long struggled to keep pace with the massive amounts of plastics produced by modern society.Leading the way are the businesses that have the most to lose from a public and regulatory backlash against plastics — petrochemical makers that have invested tens of billions of dollars to build and expand plants along the Texas Gulf Coast. Chemical companies and product manufacturers are responding to efforts to ban single-use plastics such as shopping bags and straws by committing to create a circular economy for plastic waste.They are putting money into initiatives from chemical recycling technologies that break down plastics into their chemical building blocks to educating residents on what to put into recycling bins. The biggest players, such as the Exxon Mobil and the Houston chemical company LyondellBasell, are working with investors, nonprofits and scientists to expand existing recycling programs and create more efficient ways to process recycled plastic so it can compete with the cheap, virgin material they produce. It’s a tall mission. The national recycling rate for plastic is about 9 percent, according to the latest data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Even in regions with the most up-to-date equipment, such as Washington, D.C., existing technology has proven inadequate.At a recycling facility in suburban Maryland run by the Houston company Waste Management, about 90 tons of water bottles, food containers, grocery bags and seemingly endless forms of plastic packaging collected from recycling bins are processed each day.Out of that, less than half will be separated by optical sorters than can distinguish so-called high value plastics that manufacturers like to shred and reuse in everything from bottles to clothing, according to Waste Management. The majority of the material — most of it adorned with a triangular symbol attesting to its recyclability — will be compressed into giant cubes and stacked on wooden pallets for sale to junk dealers, who will pick through it for better-quality plastics that machines and workers missed.“The bulk of it gets sent to (be burned at) the waste energy facility in Baltimore, or to the landfill,” said Michael Taylor, who manages five n ortheastern recycling facility for Waste Management. “The manufacturers claim it’s recyclable, but it’s not going to be recycled at a facility like this.”

Smog forces schools shut in Iran - Air pollution forced schools to close on Sunday in parts of Iran including Tehran, as the capital lay under a thick cloud of smog considered hazardous to health. The pollution level in the capital was "unhealthy for sensitive groups" and officials warned the young, elderly and people with respiratory illnesses to stay indoors, with sporting activities suspended. The decision to shut schools in the capital was announced late Saturday by deputy governor Mohammad Taghizadeh, after a meeting of an emergency committee on air pollution. "All of (Tehran) province's schools except for Firuzkuh and Damavand counties are closed for Sunday," he said, quoted by state news agency IRNA. Schools in the capital will close on Monday, the third day of the Iranian working week, he added later in a state TV interview. An "odd-even" traffic scheme based on vehicles' registration numbers was imposed to restrict traffic in the capital, IRNA reported. Trucks were banned outright in Tehran province. Taghizadeh added that all activities at Tehran province's numerous sand quarries would also be halted. Schools were also closed in the northern province of Alborz and in the central cities of Qom and Arak, IRNA reported. "We are forced to live with and tolerate this situation," a Tehrani dentist, giving her name as Iran, told AFP. "I think no one does their job properly in this country, be it the authorities or the people," she added, fumbling with a white mask, worn commonly on the capital's polluted days.

Staggering Video Shows How Much of Earth Was Actually on Fire in 2019 - Sometimes you need to see the bigger picture to understand the scale of a problem. A new visualisation from the Copernicus programme in Europe has done exactly that, showing how wildfires have been worsening around the world.Pulling together imagery and sensor readings from satellites, the 92-second clip shows our world on fire during 2019, mapping the areas of the planet that lit up with wildfires over the course of the last 12 months.As the clip develops, the seriousness of the problem becomes clear: some parts of the world barely get a break from wildfire activity during 2019. Other regions light up, then go dark again as the seasons change.The data were pulled together and made available through an initiative called the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). It's organised by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, and is designed to help governments and companies plan for wildfires and the resulting pollution."It has been an extremely busy year for CAMS regarding the monitoring of wildfires," says CAMS senior scientist Mark Parrington. "Throughout the year we have been closely watching the intensity of the fires and the smoke they emit all around the world and have experienced at times some quite exceptional fire activity."Even in places where we would expect to see fires at certain points of the year some of the activity has been surprising." Since the turn of the year we've seen devastating fires spreading across California, for example, leaving behind a trail of destruction that's visible from space. Hundreds of buildings have been destroyed by ravaging flames in the state, with the Kincade wildfire in particular thought to be responsible for burning tens of thousands of acres of land. We've seen wildfires in the Arctic too, a sign of warming conditions in the coldest parts of Earth. You can see these fires appear in the Copernicus video as winter turns to summer in the Northern Hemisphere.  Add in the threat to people and property, and it's a worrying situation. We've recently seen air quality in Sydney, Australia hit 12 times the level deemed as hazardous, because of nearby fires releasing smoke and particles into the air.

‘Like a furnace’: Australia set to see hottest day ever with 50C forecast as devastating bushfires rage - A “once in a lifetime” heatwave is set to sweep across Australia over the coming days, making almost the entire country “like a furnace” with temperatures on course to break records. Highs of over 50C are expected, with meteorologists warning the heat could break the country’s existing record of 50.7C measured at Oodnadatta, South Australia, in 1960. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has said people in the south can expect back-to-back days of 49 and 50 degrees in some remote regions for Wednesday and Thursday. Diana Eadie, a bureau forecaster, told The Sydney Morning Heralda weak pressure pattern had allowed heat to build, while the late arrival of the monsoon over northern Australia had contributed to the build-up of the “very warm air mass” that would start to move south. The bureau has weather warnings in place for almost the entire country, with fire warnings issued in Western Australia, New South Wales, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory.  Dr Adam Morgan, a forecaster at the bureau said high temperatures were already marking the beginning of “an exceptional week that’s likely to break numerous December and all-time temperature records across the country. They may even approach or exceed Australia’s warmest day on record, which currently stands at a nationwide average maximum of 40.3C, set on 17 January 2013.” The warnings come as parts of Australia are being scorched by enormous bushfires that have already destroyed hundreds of homes.  A bushfire on Gospers Mountain, northwest of Sydney, which has spread to cover more than 400,000 hectares, has been upgraded to an “emergency” situation. There are also numerous smaller fires burning in the vicinity, all of which have created a “public health emergency” in Sydney, Australia’s most populous city, where air pollution has reached levels as much as 11 times higher than the threshold to be classified as “hazardous”.

Australia heatwave: Nation endures hottest day on record - BBC News - Australia has experienced its hottest day on record with the national average temperature reaching a high of 40.9C (105.6F). The Bureau of Meteorology (Bom) said "extensive" heat on Tuesday exceeded the previous record of 40.3C set on 7 January 2013. Taking the average of maximum temperatures across the country is the most accurate measure of a heatwave. The record comes as the nation battles a severe drought and bushfire crisis. Forecasters had predicted the most intense heat would come later in the week, meaning the record could be broken again. As hundreds of fires rage, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been criticised for his response to the natural disasters and his government's climate policies. Australia heated up this week as a mass of hot air swept east across the continent, with meteorologists forecasting "severe to extreme heatwave conditions". Several individual heat records for towns and cities have already been shattered. On Tuesday, places across the nation's centre recorded temperatures above 45C. At the start of the week, Perth, the capital of Western Australia, recorded three days in a row above 40C - a record for December.The dominant climate driver behind the heat has been a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - an event where sea surface temperatures are warmer in the western half of the ocean, cooler in the east. The difference between the two temperatures is currently the strongest in 60 years. The warmer waters cause higher-than-average rains in the western Indian Ocean region, leading to flooding, and drier conditions across South East Asia and Australia. But Australia has been enduring a drought for a long time - several years in some places. Bom says the dry soil has meant less evaporation - which would normally exert a cooling influence on the landscape. According to Bom, Australia has warmed overall by just over 1C since 1910, with most of the heating occurring since 1950. Nine of Australia's top 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2005.

As Australia fires rage, heat wave sees hottest day nationwide – CNN - Australia experienced its hottest average day across the country Tuesday, with the national temperature soaring as devastating wildfires continued to burn across New South Wales (NSW) state. The average maximum temperature across the country on Tuesday was 40.9 degrees Celsius (105.6 Fahrenheit), according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology -- beating the previous 2013 record of 40.3 Celsius (104.5 Fahrenheit). That's just the average nationwide figure -- the heat has spiked even higher in some places, like the town of Ceduna in South Australia, which hit 45.5 degrees Celsius (nearly 114 Fahrenheit). The heat wave comes as deadly bush fires continue to ravage NSW, exacerbated by the heat, wind, and the worst drought in decades. According to the state's Rural Fire Service, 100 active fires are still burning across the state, of which 54 are not yet contained. A total fire ban remains in place statewide until midnight on Saturday. As records fall and blazes continue, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been heavily criticized for taking a pre-Christmas holiday, believed to be in Hawaii. Newspaper cartoonists depicted the leader lounging on a beach, while smoke from the Australian bush fires blighted his view. The hashtag #WhereTheBloodyHellAreYou emerged online in response to the PM's absence. It was tweeted by the model Lara Worthington (previously Lara Bingle) who rose to fame in a 2006 Tourism Australia advertisement featuring the now-famous slogan: "So where the bloody hell are you?" 

Australia heatwave: Forecasters warn of even hotter temperatures - BBC News - Australia's heatwave is expected to worsen after the country experienced its hottest day on record. The national average temperature reached a high of 40.9C (105.6F) on Tuesday, beating the previous record of 40.3C set in 2013. But this record could be eclipsed, as forecasters have predicted even more intense heat later in the week. It comes amid a drought and bushfire crisis that has spurred criticism of government climate policies. Temperatures were expected to exceed 40C in parts of Australia until the end of the week. Parts of the state of New South Wales (NSW), of which Sydney is the capital, were forecast to hit temperatures in the mid-40s on Thursday. On Saturday, parts of Sydney were forecast to reach temperatures of about 46C. Heatwaves are Australia's deadliest natural disaster and have killed thousands more people than bushfires or floods. Australia heated up this week as a mass of hot air swept east across the continent. The dominant climate driver behind the heat has been a positive Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - an event where sea surface temperatures are warmer in the western half of the ocean, cooler in the east. The difference between the two temperatures is currently the strongest in 60 years. The warmer waters cause higher-than-average rains in the western Indian Ocean region, leading to flooding, and drier conditions across South East Asia and Australia. According to the Bureau of Meteorology (Bom), Australia has warmed overall by slightly more than 1C since 1910, with most of the heating occurring since 1950. Officials predict that 2019, on the temperatures recorded so far, will be among the four warmest years on record.

Bush fires claim lives and property as Australia endures hottest days in recorded history - Two volunteer firefighters were killed and three injured last night in a vehicle accident while fighting raging fires southwest of Sydney. Three other volunteers were severely burnt when flames overran their crew. The deaths and injuries were the most tragic price paid in a day that saw dozens of homes razed to the ground and millions of people endure the combination of stifling heat and hazardous levels of smoke-caused air pollution. National parkland and forests to the southwest, west and northwest of Sydney have been ablaze for months, engulfing the city of some five million people with vast smoke clouds. Since September, some 2.7 million hectares have gone up in flame in the state of New South Wales alone, with hundreds of thousands of hectares more in Queensland, Western Australia, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. Cumulatively, an area larger than the European country of Belgium has been burnt out across Australia before the most intense period of the annual fire season even begins. Yesterday, the predominantly volunteer fire services in NSW confronted over 100 fires, including 53 that were assessed as “uncontrolled.” Over 2,500 firefighters were deployed. Among the most intense and dangerous was the Green Wattle Creek fire burning in bushland southwest of Sydney, and threatening towns such as Bargo, Buxton, Balmoral and Tahmoor. Residents were advised that it was “too late to leave,” as fire forced the closures of roads and rail lines. Throughout the day, at least 20 houses were destroyed, along with other buildings and vehicles. Raging flames near Bargo overtook a five-member crew. Two male firefighters, aged 36 and 56, had to be airlifted for emergency treatment for serious facial, body and airway burns. A female firefighter had to be treated for burns and smoke inhalation. The fire risk to lives and property is expected to worsen in many parts of the country over the weekend, as powerful winds are forecast. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, Wednesday, December 17, 2019 was the hottest day in recorded Australian history, with an average maximum temperature of 41.9 degrees Celsius (107.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The previous recorded high was 40.9C on December 16, which exceeded the 40.3C registered in January 2013.

Australia's Fires Emitted Half of the Country’s Annual CO2 Emissions - The bushfires that have been tearing through New South Wales and Queensland, decimating koala habitats, taxing the water supply, and choking the air since August have claimed six lives. Now, new NASA data shows that the fires have emitted 250 million tons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of half thee country's annual greenhouse gas emissions, according to The Guardian. In 2018, Australia's total greenhouse has emissions was 532 million tons of carbon dioxide. Dr. Niels Andela, a scientist at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and a collaborator in the Global Fire Emissions Database, gave the data to The Guardian Australia. Usually, bushfires are considered carbon neutral, because when vegetation regrows it absorbs the carbon dioxide the fires have emitted. However, scientists are predicting that the scale of this year's fires coupled with drought-stricken forests will make it impossible for the vegetation to absorb the carbon, as The Guardian reported. "Drought-stressed trees recover less well – carbohydrates reserves are exhausted – and under climate change tree growth may be slow and fires more frequent, meaning less tree biomass and even loss of forest cover," said David Bowman, a fire ecologist at the University of Tasmania, to the Guardian. "This is a nasty negative feedback cycle of a biosphere carbon sink becoming a source [of carbon]."  The bushfires have already burned over 6.7 million acres of land and they could last through the Australian summer, until March or longer, as Gizmodo reported. The fires follow the pattern of the Amazon fires and the California fires that create a carbon feedback loop, where human activity compromises Earth's ability to absorb carbon as we emit more of it, according toGizmodo. These events are becoming more common as the Earth warms. It's especially evident in melting permafrost, which releases a tremendous amount of trapped carbon as it thaws, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Arctic Report Card found.  "This pulse of fire emissions should indeed be of concern. Any additional carbon emissions to the atmosphere, with no guarantee that it will be removed back by regrowing vegetation in a later stage, is of concern, particularly in an Australia under climate change," said Canadell, as The Guardian reported. He added, "Thus, it is important to understand both risks – the emissions from fires but also the potential long-term loss of CO2 sink capacity of the terrestrial vegetation due to the incomplete recovery of burned landscapes due to permanent degradation. These emissions are very significant."

Acting prime minister tells climate protesters: 'You are wasting your time. Go and do something productive' -- Deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, who is acting PM while Scott Morrison is overseas, has confirmed that Morrison will be back at work on Monday. As in, he is returning to work the day before Christmas eve.This morning, hundreds of protestors camped outside Kirribilli House, angry at Morrison’s absence and lack of leadership during the bushfire crisis. Speaking to the protesters through reporters at the RFS state control centre, McCormack said: You are wasting your time. Go and do something productive. Go and donate your time to meals on wheels and something like that. The fact is, the PM is not there. He is having a well deserved holiday.  Those people who are shouting and screaming … go and help someone out in need. Do a good turn rather than shouting and screaming and holding up placards that not always the words are spelt correctly on .... He’s entitled to a holiday. The PM takes a week off, he is entitled to that. McCormack said there was no need for Morrison to return home early, despite NSW declaring a state of emergency and expecting some of its hottest days on record. The prime minister is very across this issue. He is getting daily briefings, if not hourly briefings, and he is very across it. We are in constant contact. I am the acting prime minister, I am here at the state control centre, I am here with RFS Commissioner Fitzsimmons.

There’s a 60,000-Year-Old Way to Help Stop Australia Burning (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s indigenous people say the bushfire-ravaged country is paying the price for ignoring their expertise in managing the ecology of the world’s-driest inhabited continent. The fires have already burned more than 6 million acres -- an area the size of Massachusetts -- and caused smoke haze to blanket Sydney and other cities. With a deepening drought suggesting there’s no end in sight to the crisis, indigenous fire practitioner Victor Steffensen is calling for a radical change in how the land is managed.“The Western mindset is always about dealing with problems while they’re doing damage -- it’s reactive,” Steffensen, 46, said from Cairns in the nation’s far northeast. “If we can use our way, these types of fires will never get the chance to start.”  Australia typically relies on reducing fuel loads in bush land through controlled burns during cooler winter months, placing a priority on land surrounding residential areas.This year, those preventative efforts have proven to be fatally inadequate as the fire season got off to a ferocious and early start due to tinder-box conditions. Dozens of blazes, usually caused by lightning strikes, quickly got out of control, often in remote areas which firefighters found difficult to access. Six Australians have been killed and the deaths of more than 2,000 koalas in New South Wales state alone have sparked concern that the species is being pushed toward extinction.The indigenous approach is to manage the landscape with so-called “cool, slow” controlled burns often conducted at night. They’re designed to reduce dangerous fuel loads of scrub and fallen timber on forest floors, and incrementally tackle large tracts of land with multiple small-scale burns. Such an approach is more labor intensive and takes longer. But the lower intensity and slow progress of the fire gives animals chance to escape and protects the forest canopy.“Indigenous burns are done over smaller areas at lower intensities,” said Justin Leonard, who has spent two decades studying the risks from bushfires to life and infrastructure with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. “The innate lesson they provide is we will never defeat fire in this country, so we have to use it as a tool and adapt.” As this year’s fires destroy millions of dollars of property and choke the inhabitants of Sydney, anger has been directed at the conservative government, with accusations that policies supporting the coal industry and refusing to punish greenhouse-gas polluters may be exacerbating climate change.

Tasmania’s flowering giants: ‘We will never see such trees again’ - In Australia’s island state of Tasmania, many of the world’s biggest flowering trees lie in ruins after this year’s bushfires. The Arve Giant, a eucalyptus regnans (“king of the eucalypts”), had attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors in recent decades, but it succumbed in January. Adventure photographer Steve Pearce recently photographed the collapsed giant. Before its fall, it was a contender for the world’s biggest flowering tree by volume at 360 cubic metres, which is roughly the equivalent volume of three Boeing 737-300s. “This tree was 87 metres tall. It had a circumference of 17.2 metres. Now it is just a crumpled mess,” said Pearce. The world’s biggest and tallest trees are the softwood redwood trees of California. This year a 100.7-metre (Yellow meranti) flowering giant was discovered in the Borneo rainforests, topping the tallest of Tasmania’s trees by just 20cm. The Kermandie Queen, which rivalled the Arve Giant in volumetric size, was also severely damaged by the fires and has shed large branches which themselves are the size of regular trees. The tallest tree in the southern hemisphere, a 100.5-metre eucalyptus regnans called the Centurion, near the Huon River, was badly scorched but has clung to life. However, it suffered a crown failure and had its top reduced. It does not look well at all. Several neighbouring giants have died. Then there was El Grande, previously Australia’s largest tree, in the Florentine Valley 100km from Hobart, standing 79 metres high with a girth of 19 metres and a volume of 439 cubic metres. It was, at the turn of the century, the world’s biggest-stemmed flowering plant. Approximately 350 years old, it burned in April 2003 after catching fire in a deliberate burn-off of the debris remaining after the clear-felling of old-growth forest in the tree’s immediate vicinity by Sustainable Timbers Tasmania (SST), then called Forestry Tasmania.

Amazon Sees Alarming Rise in Deforestation -- Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon rainforest last month jumped to the highest level since records began in 2015, according to government data. A total of 563 square kilometers (217.38 square miles) of the world's largest rainforest was destroyed in November, 103% more than in the same month last year, according to Brazil's space research agency.From January to November this year an area almost the size of the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico was destroyed — an 83% overall increase in destruction when compared with the same period last year.The figures were released on Friday by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and collected through the DETER database, which uses satellite images to monitor forest fires, forest destruction and other developments affecting the rainforest. Overall, deforestation in 2019 has jumped 30% compared to last year — 9,762 square kilometers (approximately 3769 square miles) have been destroyed, despite deforestation usually slowing during November and December.Environmental groups, researchers and activists blamed the policies of Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro for the increase. They say that Bolosonaro's calls for the Amazon to be developed and his weakening support for Ibama, the government's environmental agency, have led to loggers and ranchers feeling safer and braver in destroying the expansive rainforest.

Degraded soils mean tropical forests may never fully recover from logging - Continually logging and re-growing tropical forests to supply timber is reducing the levels of vital nutrients in the soil, which may limit future forest growth and recovery, a new study suggests. This raises concerns about the long-term sustainability of logging in the tropics. Trees of recovering tropical forests were found to have tougher leaves, with lower concentrations of the nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen—both essential for plant and tree growth—than trees of old-growth forests. This suggests that multiple cycles of logging and recovery irreversibly remove phosphorus from the forest system, and are pushing the nutrient content towards ecological limits. "Old-growth tropical forests that have been the same for millions of years are now changing irreversibly due to repeated logging," said Dr. Tom Swinfield, a plant scientist in the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute, and first author of the paper published in the journal Global Change Biology. Soil nutrients including phosphorus come from rocks, and are taken up by trees through their roots. Cutting down the trees causes these nutrients to be lost through soil erosion, gas emissions, and removal of nutrients in the extracted timber. The researchers estimate that as much as 30% of the available phosphorus in the soil is being removed from tropical forest systems by repeated logging. "We see that as the logged forests start recovering, they're actually diverging from the old growth forests in terms of their leaf chemistry and possibly also species composition, as the amount of available nutrients goes down,"

Did Illegal Wildlife Trade Cause Wild Tigers to Become Extinct in Laos? - Are tigers extinct in Laos? That's the conclusion of a detailed new study that found no evidence wild tigers still exist in the country. What researchers did find during a five-year camera survey of the biodiversity-rich Nam Et-Phou Louey National Protected Area was evidence of snares — lots and lots of deadly snares, which are designed to trap and kill any animals that stumble across them. "Snares are simple to make," said Akchousanh Rasphone, a zoologist with the Wildlife Research Conservation Unit and lead author of the study. "One person can set hundreds or even thousands of snares, which kill indiscriminately and are inhumane for anything that is captured." Most animals killed in snares are destined for Asia's bushmeat markets, although tigers themselves are sought by wildlife traffickers for their valuable furs and body parts. The loss of tigers in Laos was an avoidable, if not unexpected, tragedy. The most recent worldwide tiger population estimates, released in April 2016, put the number of tigers remaining in the country at all of two. The observation of those last two Laotian tigers came from the first year of the camera survey; they were never seen again — except, in all likelihood, by the trappers who killed them.  "We did our best despite being defeated by the high international demand in the illegal wildlife trade for this species."Their deaths continue the slow decline of the Indochinese tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). Today their only healthy populations remain in Thailand, which at last count had about 189 wild tigers. The Indochinese tiger (previously considered its own subspecies) also persists at unsustainable levels in China (about 7 tigers), Vietnam (fewer than 5) and Myanmar (no reliable population count). Unfortunately, the news of tigers' extirpation in Laos hasn't generated much attention in the country. "It occurs to me that the only thing that our government was concerned about was that the study made the country lose face, instead of taking it as a lessons learned and thinking about how not to repeat the same mistakes again for the species of conservation importance that are left." And that's a big concern, as snaring affects a lot more than just tigers.

 Very Serious - 30,000 Pigs Dead As Pig Ebola Spreads In Indonesia's North Sumatra - Last month more than 4,000 pigs died from African swine fever (ASF) in Indonesia's North Sumatra province. The outbreak appears to be worsening in December with as many as 30,000 pigs dead, according to the province's food security and livestock agency, reported Reuters. The @OIEAnimalHealth has also confirmed the outbreaks of African #Swine Fever in North Sumatra province, Indonesia . In total 392 villages got infected with #ASF, and over 28,000 #pigs were killed. Read more on @PigProgress and see the updated map ⏩ https://t.co/5TCSqAijRc pic.twitter.com/aBHupicESe— Vincent ter Beek (@vincenttb) December 18, 2019The Agriculture Ministry has just declared an outbreak of ASF in the North Sumatra province of the country: "Very serious handling is being carried out, including isolating those areas," the North Sumatra Minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told reporters on Wednesday.  For several months, carcasses have been found on roadways and rivers as farmers quickly discarded pigs out of fear of contagion would decimate their herds.

Pig Ebola Is Now Running Wild In Indonesia, And Has Already Killed A Quarter Of The World's Swine -  The global pig population is being absolutely decimated by a disease that does not have a cure.  African Swine Fever, also commonly referred to as “Pig Ebola”, is raging out of control in dozens of countries all over the globe.  It has a mortality rate of close to 100 percent, and once it hits an area even the pigs that are able to survive the disease are killed off in order to prevent it from spreading elsewhere.  Unfortunately, African Swine Fever just continues to pop up in more locations.  As you will see below, it is now sweeping through the heavily-populated nation of Indonesia.  Nearly 270 million people live in Indonesia, and they are heavily dependent on pork as a source of protein.  But of course the same thing could be said about almost all of the countries where African Swine Fever is currently raging. The mainstream media in the U.S. hasn’t been properly reporting on this crisis, and that is likely because this disease has not spread to our nation yet. But let there be no doubt – this is truly a crisis of Biblical proportions.  The following comes from an Australian news source… Experts say the disease has wiped out an estimated 25 per cent of the world’s pig population. The fever has been reported in around 50 countries, including China, Belgium, Slovakia, Cambodia, North Korea, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. And this same figure is being quoted by the New York Daily News… African swine fever has been reported in nearly 50 nations — including China, South Korea, the Philippines and Belgium — and it’s causing an incredible crisis on a global scale. Alarmingly, more than one-quarter of Earth’s pigs have been wiped out by the virulent disease. Unfortunately, everyone on the entire planet is going to feel the pain of this crisis as it continues to intensify.  We are potentially facing a serious global pork shortage, and this disease continues to pop up in new areas.  When it recently began spreading in Indonesia, it made headlines all over the globe.  The following comes from Reuters… Nearly 30,000 pigs have died from African swine fever (ASF) in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province as of Dec. 15, causing millions of dollars of economic losses as authorities try to quarantine the areas affected, officials said on Wednesday. The Agriculture Ministry has declared an outbreak of the highly contagious virus in the country and said it is contained only in some parts of North Sumatra, minister Syahrul Yasin Limpo told reporters. Asian countries rely very heavily on pork to feed their populations, and the severe losses that we are witnessing are not going to be easy to replace. At this point, Indonesia has become the 11th Asian nation where African Swine Fever is spreading…

Chinese criminal gangs spreading African swine fever to force farmers to sell pigs cheaply so they can profit - Chinese criminals have been exploiting the country’s African swine fever crisis by intentionally spreading the disease to force farmers to sell their pigs for a low price before smuggling the meat and selling it on as healthy stock, state media has reported.Sometimes the gangs spread rumours about the virus, which is fatal to pigs, but in more extreme cases they are using drones to drop infected items into farms, according to an investigation by the magazine China Comment, which is affiliated to state news agency Xinhua,The disease has reduced the country’s pig herds by over 40 per cent because of mass culls designed to stop it spreading further. The resulting shortages have seen pork prices more than double, providing opportunities for the criminals to exploit. The magazine’s report said that the gangs tried to spread panic among farmers to force them to sell their livestock at a discount rate.Sometimes they spread rumours about the disease spreading in the locality and may even leave dead pigs on the side of a road to make farmers believe the infection is spreading.In some extreme cases, the gangs even placed infected feed inside local pigsties, the report said. “One of our branches once spotted drones air dropping unknown objects into our piggery, and later inspection found [the] virus in those things,” a farmer manager told the reporters. Once they have bought the pigs, the gangs then smuggle the animals or their meat to other areas where prices are higher, despite a ban on transporting pork or livestock between provinces to control the spread of the disease.

Magnitude 6.8 earthquake hits southern Philippines - At least nine people died after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines on Sunday. The quake injured more than a hundred people, caused severe damage to numerous buildings, and displaced thousands of residents in the area. It is the latest in a string of powerful tremors to hit the region over the past few months. Striking at 5:11 p.m. local time on Sunday, the quake’s epicentre, at a depth of 22.4 kilometres, was near the town of Padada in the poor rural areas of Davao del Sur province, about 90 kilometres south of the heavily populated Davao City. One of the nine victims was a six-year-old girl who was inside her family’s house in a village in Mantanao town when the building collapsed on top of her. An 81-year-old woman died from a heart attack during the quake. The other fatalities were registered in the affected towns of Magsaysay, Hagonoy and Malita. The latest count by the National Emergency and Disaster Risk Reduction Council stated 111 people had been injured. Over 9,700 people were evacuated after Sunday’s massive tremor, which destroyed 74 homes and partially destroyed 125. Damage was caused to 41 public buildings, 128 schools, and 19 health centres. Patients were evacuated from hospitals as a precaution and nervous crowds gathered outside shopping malls after the jolt. Roads were blocked by rubble and mangled metal, while power outages soon became widespread. On Monday two female bodies were recovered from the rubble of a ruined municipal market in Padada town. . Many are feared trapped beneath the devastated three-storey building. Searchers were looking for a person who had texted authorities saying six people were still alive under the rubble. “It’s very distressing,” regional disaster official Christopher Tan told CNN Philippines. “There’s a very slim chance of finding survivors.”

Updated USGS Model Puts East And South Bay In Jeopardy Of Catastrophic Quake - According to a recently released map and study conducted by the USGS (United States Geological Survey), East Bay and San Jose are far more susceptible to damaging seismic shake-ups than previously thought, not made better by the fact that those areas are, apparently, sitting on sand. As reported by KPIX, areas in both the East and South Bay are more at risk of experiencing future seismic events in the next 100 years than understood, prior. The USGS published an update to their National Seismic Hazard Model (NSHM) Thursday, showing a 75 percent or higher chance of a damaging quake hitting the Bay Area in the next century; no stretch of the Bay Area, now, seems to be omitted from that postulated cataclysm. These new maps are probabilistic maps, not ShakeMaps – the ones that are near-real-time maps of ground motion and shaking intensity following significant earthquakes – and paint a hypothesized picture, showing data-backed inferences on the probability a quake will happen in an area. Oddly enough, it's not the structures, even the towering ones, in those areas that have seismologists and geologists concerned: It's the actual ground they're founded on, as highlighted in the published full report. Soil analysis conducted by the USGS showed areas in Concord, Walnut Creek, San Jose, and Vallejo sit on sediment basins ... so, basically, massive sand pits.  “The fact that [these sediment basins are] so deep is what we worry about. The update helps us to understand better, in more detail for different types of levels,” Mark Petersen, a USGS research geophysicist who worked on the study, told Pasadena News Now on the update. Unlike, say, ravines made from harder, denser limestone and igneous rock, the quasi-liquid-acting nature of these sedimentary basins helps amplify an earthquake’s elongated waves, the ones responsible for taking down tall buildings and long bridges. These sand basins – like one in Los Angeles, as deep as Mount Everest is tall – are, essentially, filled with a mix of sand, silt, and clay, which can also cause structures to sink, once those wavelengths disturb the sediment columns.

These 13 Indian cities face the greatest danger from earthquakes, says a new study - More than a dozen Indian cities are at a high risk of experiencing major casualties in the event of an earthquake, says new report that studies the earthquake risk for 50 cities in seismically active zones around the country. As much as 59% of the country is vulnerable to earthquakes, the report says. It adds that more than 90% of casualties in previous earthquakes in India have been because of the collapse of buildings that were not designed to withstand the shocks. The Earthquake Disaster Risk Index takes into account not just the chance of an earthquake occurring in a particular location, but also the number of people that would be exposed to it and how vulnerable the buildings in the city are to collapse. It was developed by the National Disaster Management Authority in association with IIIT-Hyderabad The study says that 13 of the 50 cities are at high risk, and 15 of them are at medium risk. “This scenario is alarming and needs immediate attention,” notes the report. The study took 13 years and required field visits to 25 cities, as well as an extensive study of the built areas of the sites. Computer modelling was used to quantify the risk of built areas collapsing in earthquakes. The 50 cities and one district – Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh – selected for the study are located in regions with a high population density situated in Seismic Zones IV or V. These are areas most prone to earthquakes, according to the Bureau of Indian Standards. Also included were areas with a high “housing threat factor”, a parameter that combines the earthquake hazard and housing density of a city. Cities identified by the government to be developed as smart cities were also studied. The National Disaster Management Authority’s earthquake hazard vulnerability profile estimates that 58.6% of the country lies in Zones III, IV and V, which means that it is prone to earthquakes of moderate to very high intensity.

 Magnetic North Pole Is Moving Toward Russia at a Swift Pace, Confounding Scientists - Earth's magnetic north pole, which serves as an anchor point for our navigation has been actively moving east from the Canadian Arctic towards Russia, as CNN reported. The magnetic north pole, unlike geographic poles, is capable of moving and has traveled about 1,400 miles since 1831. However, in recent years, the magnetic north pole has moved at a surprisingly swift pace, confounding scientists looking for an explanation, according to CNN. The rapid movement of the magnetic north pole forced the researchers who create the World Magnetic Model(WMM) to create a new forecast a year ahead of schedule, according to the WMM press release.  The magnetic north was moving so swiftly that the WMM released an interim update in February to avoid navigational or operational issues with the discrepancy between where the true magnetic north pole is and where the 2015 model pegged it to be, according to Forbes.  The model is updated every five years, so the next one is due in 2025, as Phys.org reported. The updated model, which is used by the civilian navigation systems the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and U.S. and British militaries, shows the magnetic north pole moving towards Siberia, though it has slowed its pace to 25 miles per year, or 40 kilometers per year, as Forbes reported. To be clear, when a compass points north, it's pointing at the magnetic north pole, not the geographic pole. In recent years, the magnetic poles and the geographic poles have been closely aligned, but that has not always been the case, as Phys.org reported. The location of the magnetic north pole stems from geological processes deep under the Earth's crust. The Earth's molten iron outer core moves as the planet spins. The flow of molten iron creates a magnetic field that determines the poles. The magnetic field also protects Earth from solar wind and charged particles from the sun, as Forbes reported. From time-to-time the magnetic poles flip, meaning that the magnetic north pole is near the South Pole. While has happened a few times in Earth's history, it is a slow and arduous process that takes 22,000 years to complete, which researchers say is much longer than anticipated or expected, according to CNN. The last time polarity reversal took place was 770,000 years ago

How Africa will be affected by climate change - BBC News - The African continent will be hardest hit by climate change.  There are four key reasons for this:

• First, African society is very closely coupled with the climate system; hundreds of millions of people depend on rainfall to grow their food
• Second, the African climate system is controlled by an extremely complex mix of large-scale weather systems, many from distant parts of the planet and, in comparison with almost all other inhabited regions, is vastly understudied. It is therefore capable of all sorts of surprises
• Third, the degree of expected climate change is large. The two most extensive land-based end-of-century projected decreases in rainfall anywhere on the planet occur over Africa; one over North Africa and the other over southern Africa
• Finally, the capacity for adaptation to climate change is low; poverty equates to reduced choice at the individual level while governance generally fails to prioritise and act on climate change.

African climate is replete with complexity and marvels. The Sahara is the world's largest desert with the deepest layer of intense heating anywhere on Earth. In June and July the most extensive and most intense dust storms found anywhere on the planet fill the air with fine particles that interfere with climate in ways we don't quite understand. The region is almost completely devoid of weather measurements yet it is a key driver of the West African monsoon system, which brings three months of rain that interrupts the nine-month long dry season across the Sahel region, south of the desert. For the decades following the 1960s and peaking in 1984, there was a downturn of rainfall of some 30% across the Sahel, which led to famine and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the displacement of many millions. No other region has documented such a long and spatially extensive drought. Evidence points to Western industrial aerosol pollution, which cooled parts of the global ocean, thereby altering the monsoon system, as a cause. The currently observed recovery of the rains is projected to continue through the 21st Century, particularly over the central and eastern Sahel. But that change seems to depend on exactly where future heating in the central Sahara peaks, emphasising cruelly the region we least understand. In southern Africa we are seeing a delay in the onset and a drying of early summer rains, which is predicted to worsen in forthcoming decades. Temperatures there are predicted to rise by five degrees or more, particularly in the parts of Namibia, Botswana and Zambia that are already intolerably hot.  Meanwhile over Kenya and Tanzania, the long rains from March to May start later and end sooner - leading to an overall decrease in rainfall.

For Caribbean nations, climate change means shrinking populations  -- To visitors, Vieques, the small island community off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, looks much the way it did before Hurricanes Irma and Maria wreaked havoc in September 2017.  To Latona, however, Vieques is meaningfully different. One of the most noticeable things that’s changed since the hurricanes, Latona says, is that there are fewer familiar faces. “The community definitely feels like it’s gotten smaller,” she said. “People who left after Maria — or even Irma — stuck around until the next storm, but eventually gave up trying to rebuild and left.” Latona understands why some of her neighbors packed up for good. In the two years since Maria, the local hospital has yet to be rebuilt, and getting to the nearest alternative requires a sometimes hours-long commute to the Puerto Rican mainland. Many of the stores in her neighborhood have closed, leaving food supplies limited. Then there are the frequent power outages. Watching the community shrink has been hard on Latona’s 6-year-old son. Every time a classmate stops showing up for school, she has another conversation with him about the trauma they’ve been through and the choice they’ve made to stay — for now, at least. Puerto Ricans had already been leaving in droves prior to Maria. With a struggling economy, the population dropped 9 percent between 2000 and 2015. After the twin hurricanes of 2017, as many as 210,000 sought refuge in the mainland U.S. As of last December, more than 130,000 Puerto Ricans never returned. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Puerto Rico’s population will decrease to 2.98 million by 2050, its lowest level since 1980. “There’s a real sense of ‘what’s the point of coming back?’’’ Latona said, describing the perspective of Puerto Ricans who have left. “Why bother toughing it out and returning if the next catastrophe that makes you lose everything is just another season away?” It’s an increasingly urgent question for many of the Caribbean’s 43 million residents. The Caribbean contributes less than one percent of all global CO2 emissions but is subject to disproportionate consequences of warming temperatures and sea level rise, in the form of tropical storms.

The Climate Crisis Isn't Just Taking Pacific Islanders' Homes, It's Taking Our Identities - According to traditional knowledge, in Southeast Asia at the end of the last Ice Age, “fenua imi,” the swallowing of land, forced people to relocate to faraway atolls in a region now called Oceania. About 4,500 years of global stability allowed for the island cultures to develop and thrive in ways specifically tied to the local environment. Now fenua imi has returned. Guam, my ancestral land, is one of 38 nations and territories in the Pacific Islands, including Kiribati, West Papua, Fiji, and New Caledonia, where Pasifika people like me have lived for thousands of years. In recent history, our homeland has been divided, colonized, and used as a pawn in U.S. war efforts. Guam’s geographic position and natural deepwater port, Apra Harbor, make it one of the U.S. military’s most strategic bases around the world, so military land seizures have remained constant since World War II. Drone footage by Lynn Englum, Vanishing Places It now faces near unlivable conditions because of the climate crisis: Dead arms of staghorn coral are beached; typhoons and super typhoons sweep through more regularly, building on Guam’s position in the most active storm basin in the world; drinking water reservoirs already contaminated with military runoff are becoming depleted as the dry season gets drier. Our subsistence way of life is threatened by nuclear wastewater spills, shifting fishing cycles, and salinated land. Since 1993, sea level surrounding Guam has risen 4 inches and is expected to rise by 3 feet in the next century. Low-lying islands throughout the Pacific could become uninhabitable by 2050.  But the loss of these islands, atolls, and archipelagos is more than just loss of land: it’s a threat to the political and cultural future of Pasifika communities. It’s why, even in the face of rising seas, the loss of tillable land, pesticide pollution, and a simulated war zone, the island feels impossible to leave. Already, island nations throughout the Pacific are preparing to leave their homes. In 2014 then Kiribati president Anote Tong purchased a large section of land on an island in Fiji for citizens forced to relocate because of the climate crisis. This migration represents a cultural loss. The land our creators made for us, the land that our ancestors are buried in, is disappearing underwater with more and more centimetres of land slipping away every year. Five of the Solomon Islands have been lost since the mid-20th century, and sea level around Palau is rising at a rate three times the global average.

 Tiny shells reveal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean - In first-of-its-kind research, NOAA scientists and academic partners used 100 years of microscopic shells to show that the coastal waters off California are acidifying twice as fast as the global ocean average—with the seafood supply in the crosshairs. California coastal waters contain some of our nation's more economically valuable fisheries, including salmon, crabs and shellfish. Yet, these fisheries are also some of the most vulnerable to the potential harmful effects of ocean acidification on marine life. That increase in acidity is caused by the ocean absorbing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In the new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, scientists examined nearly 2,000 shells of microscopic animals called foraminifera by taking core samples from the seafloor off Santa Barbara and measuring how the shells of these animals have changed over a century. Every day, the shells of dead foraminifera rain down on the ocean floor and are eventually covered by sediment. Layers of sediment containing shells form a vertical record of change. The scientists looked back through time, layer by layer, and measured changes in thickness of the shells. "By measuring the thickness of the shells, we can provide a very accurate estimate of the ocean's acidity level when the foraminifera were alive," said lead author Emily Osborne, who used this novel technique to produce the longest record yet created of ocean acidification using directly measured marine species. She measured shells within cores that represented deposits dating back to 1895.

We May Have Gravely Underestimated The Threat of 'Dead Zones' in The World's Oceans -- Scientists call them 'dead zones': vast expanses of ocean water that contain little or no oxygen, making it almost impossible for many marine life-forms to survive within them. These giant ecological hazards – which have dramatically expanded in both number and volume in recent decades – are now extending beyond the seainto freshwater sources on land, and according to a new study, we may have underestimated the size of the problem.The conventional view on dead zones (aka oxygen minimum zones [OMZs] and sometimes also called 'shadow zones') is that their hypoxic conditions are produced when excess nutrient pollution from human activities flows into coastal waters, encouraging the growth of algae blooms, which in turn decompose into organic material that sinks to the seafloor. As that organic material slowly plummets into the abyss, it attracts and consumes oxygen in a process that deprives marine life of the same vital resource. This overall process is viewed as the primary cause of dead zones, but there could be another important factor behind the problem that we've overlooked until now, according to an international team of researchers led by biogeochemist Sabine Lengger from the University of Plymouth, UK. "Our study shows that organic matter that sinks to the seafloor is not just coming from the sea surface, but includes a major contribution from bacteria that live in the dark ocean and can fix carbon as well," Lengger says.  "Existing models could be missing out on a key contribution as a result of which people have underestimated the extent of the oxygen depletion we are to expect in a future, warming world."

 PIOMAS December 2019 - Arctic Sea Ice by Neven -  (see graphics) Another month has passed, and so here is the updated Arctic sea ice volume graph as calculated by the Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System (PIOMAS) at the Polar Science Center:November 2019 saw an above average sea ice volume increase according to PIOMAS (3834 vs 3553 km3 for the 2007-2018 period). In fact, only three years - 2007, 2011 and 2018 - saw a larger increase, which means all other years gained on 2019. Of course, it also means that 2019 is no longer on a par with 2012 and 2016. The difference increased to 212 and 961 km3, respectively, and 2019 is now firmly in 3rd place.Here's how the differences with previous years have evolved from last month:On Wipneus' version of the PIOMAS graph, you can see the 2012 trend line catching up with 2019, up until the last few days of November: As was to be expected, the anomaly trend line on the PIOMAS volume anomaly graph has returned to positive territory: During November, extent increased more slowly than volume did, relatively speaking, and so average thickness went up a bit faster than 2012 and 2016 (when you divide volume by extent to crudely calculate average thickness): And as often is the case, the same can be seen on the Polar Science Centre average thickness graph: If you accept that the situation with regards to Arctic sea ice is pretty extreme and has been for quite a while, you could say that nothing is out of the ordinary, right now (thankfully). I even have some very positive news in this respect: The top 3 warmest monthly temperature series has come to an end! After an unprecedented seven months of being in the top 3, November 2019 was only 9th warmest on record:

Biosphere Collapse? - Five years ago: Nations of the world met in Paris to draft a climate agreement that was subsequently accepted by nearly every country in the world, stating that global temperatures must not exceed +2C pre-industrial. Global emissions must be cut! Fossil fuel usage must be cut! Today: Following Paris ’15, global banks have invested $1.9 trillion in fossil fuel projects. Not only that, global governments plan to increase fossil fuels by 120% by 2030, including the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, Canada, and Australia. Additionally, over that past 18 months China has added enough new coal-based power generation (43GW) to power 31 million new homes. China plans on adding another 148GW of coal-based power, which will equal the total current coal generating capacity of the EU. India increased coal-fired power capacity by 74% over the past 7 years. The country expects to further increase coal-generated capacity by another 22% over the next 3 years. China is financing 25% of all new worldwide coal plant construction outside of its borders, e.g., South Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Meantime, China, kissing goodbye to its commitment to cut emissions, cuts renewable power subsidies by 30%. Meanwhile in America’s most northerly town, Barrow, Alaska is experiencing an unprecedented “massive spike in methane emissions” ongoing for the past 4 months, as monitored by Dr. Peter Carter (see more below). And, in Madrid, COP25 (Conference of the Parties25) was underway Dec. 2nd-13th with 25,000 participants from countries of the world gathered to hammer out the latest details on global warming/climate change. The question arises whether the conference had “legs.” By all appearances, it did not. Rather, it was another repeat climate sideshow. Making matters even more surreal, because of the above-mentioned death-defying global plans to accelerate fossil fuels by 120% to 2030, the Stockholm Environment Institute claims the world is on a pathway to 3C pre-industrial, probably “locked-in” because of fossil fuel expansion across the globe. But caution-caution-caution, the IPCC has already informed the world that 2C brings the house down, not only that, scientists agree 1.5C is unbearably unlivable throughout many regions of the planet. In short, the world is on a colossal fossil fuel growth phase in the face of stark warnings from scientists that emissions must decline to net zero. Otherwise, the planet is destined to turn into a hot house. As things stand today, it appears “Hot House” is baking into the cake. And, Hot House implies too much heat disrupting, and destroying, too many ecosystems for the planet to support 7.8 billion people.

Climate Change: US Denounced as ‘Threat to Humanity’ as COP25 Ends Without Deal on Big Polluters’ Responsibility to Frontline Nations - Climate action advocates who had spent two weeks demanding strong commitments from the COP 25 climate summit emerged from the conference  Sunday stunned and angry over its conclusion, which was deemed a “lost opportunity” by the United Nations secretary-general.  Because of the refusal of some of the world’s wealthiest countries to commit to more ambitious targets to reduce their climate-warming carbon emissions, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and finance to tackle the climate crisis.”  As Common Dreams reported Saturday, the summit was intended to wrap up Friday but negotiations lasted two extra days as delegations debated provisions for carbon markets. The final deal acknowledged there was a “significant gap” between countries’ pledges to reduce their carbon emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and government’s ability to achieve that reduction.  Countries were urged in the final text to honor their emissions-reduction commitments, but high-polluting countries including China, India, and the U.S. arguedthey saw no need to set more ambitious reduction plans for themselves.  In the final hours of negotiations, Papua New Guinea’s climate envoy, Kevin Conrad, toldEuronews, “90% of the participants have not been involved in this process.” Developing countries especially took issue with a language that the U.S. successfully stonewalled, which would have addressed how the U.S. should be held liable to island nations for the damage the climate crisis has already caused to them, thanks in part to the activities of the world’s biggest carbon emitter historically. The Tuvalu delegation reportedly said Sunday that the United States’ refusal to compensate other countries for loss and damage “could be considered a crime against humanity.”

UN climate talks end with limited progress on emissions targets - Climate talks in Madrid have ended with a partial agreement to ask countries to come up with more ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions in order to meet the terms of the 2015 Paris accord. Few countries came to this year’s talks with updated plans to reach the Paris goals, though the EU finally agreed its long-term target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. Experts say more ambitious emissions cuts are needed globally if the Paris pledge to hold global heating to no more than 2C is to be met. This year’s round of annual UN talks focused on narrow technical issues such as the workings of the global carbon markets, a means by which countries can trade their successes in cutting emissions with other countries that have not cut their own emissions fast enough. By midday on Sunday, more than 40 hours after the talks deadline, agreement on that was still far off and the issue will have to be resolved next year. There were fears that the more substantive issue of future emissions cuts would also be sidelined, but a “high ambition coalition” made up of the EU and many smaller developing countries pressed for a resolution to ask all governments to formulate stronger national plans on cutting carbon. They partially succeeded, and they will now hope to put political pressure – from within the talks, in behind-the-scenes meetings in world capitals, and in the outside world from civil society – on all governments to recommit to the 2015 Paris accord in 2020 through updates to their national climate plans. That will be a difficult task, judging by the scenes at the two-week-long Madrid conference. No major breakthrough had been seriously expected at this year’s meeting, known as COP25, but observers had at least hoped to see a spirit of cooperation and a willingness to press ahead with the Paris agreement goal of holding temperature rises to no more than 2C. Both were lacking as the talks moved into the early hours of Sunday. Poor countries grew angry at what they saw as intransigence on the part of some richer nations, while the EU and a coalition of developing countries urged others to come forward with more ambitious plans to combat climate breakdown.  In the final hours, weary negotiators wrangled over the wording of provisions for “loss and damage”, by which developing countries are hoping to receive financial assistance for the ravages they face from climate breakdown. The US was blamed for refusing to agree to developing countries’ demands under what is known in the UN jargon as the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM).

Disappointment as marathon climate talks end with slim deal — Marathon U.N. climate talks ended Sunday with a slim compromise that sparked widespread disappointment, after major polluters resisted calls for ramping up efforts to keep global warming at bay and negotiators postponed debate about rules for international carbon markets for another year. Organizers kept delegates from almost 200 nations in Madrid far beyond Friday’s scheduled close of the two-week talks. In the end, negotiators endorsed a general call for greater efforts to tackle climate change and several measures to help poor countries respond and adapt to its impacts. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “disappointed” by the meeting’s outcome. “The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation and finance to tackle the climate crisis,” he said. “We must not give up and I will not give up.” The final declaration cited an “urgent need” to cut planet-heating greenhouse gases in line with the goals of the landmark 2015 Paris climate change accord. But it fell far short of explicitly demanding that countries submit bolder emissions proposals next year, which developing countries and environmentalists had demanded. The Paris accord established a common goal of keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. So far, the world is on course for a 3- to 4-degree Celsius rise, with potentially dramatic consequences for many countries, including rising sea levels and fiercer storms. After two nights of fractious negotiations, delegates in Madrid decided to defer some of the thorniest issues to the next U.N. climate summit in Glasgow in November. Chile’s Environment Minister Carolina Schmidt, who chaired the meeting, said she was “sad” no deal had been reached on the rules for international trading in carbon emissions permits. “We were on the verge,” she said, adding that the goal was to establish markets that are “robust and environmentally sustainable.” Economists say putting a price on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, and allowing countries or companies to trade emissions permits, will encourage the shift to away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy. Some observers welcomed the failure of a deal on carbon markets, though, and the European Union and developing countries had said beforehand that no deal was better than a bad one.

 Crowds Cheer As Greta Thunberg Vows To “Put World Leaders Against The Wall” - Teenage environmental activist Greta Thunberg told a crowd of protesters that she would “put world leaders against the wall’ if they do not take immediate action on climate change. These comments startled many people who read about it in the news this morning, as “putting leaders up against the wall,” could be interpreted as executing them by fire squad. The comments were made while addressing a cheering crowd at a Fridays for Future protest in Turin, Italy this week. Her speech was bleak and pessimistic, as she suggested that she believed that world leaders are attempting to run away from their responsibilities. She said that climate activists must do everything in their power to ensure that these leaders are held accountable. Thunberg framed the issue as a generational struggle, in which the older people are living like there is no tomorrow, leaving a massive mess for the young people to clean up. After her comments about “putting world leaders against the wall” were widely reported in the international media, Thunberg made a post on her Twitter page to clarify her remarks, saying that she was merely saying that leaders should be held accountable. She said that her comments were misunderstood and misinterpreted by reporters. 

Greta Thunberg apologizes for 'put leaders against the wall' comment - Greta Thunberg has apologized for saying world leaders should be "put against the wall" in a speech. The teenage climate activist made the comment while addressing a Fridays For Future protest in Turin, Italy. In English the phrase is associated with execution by firing squad, but Ms Thunberg said it had a different meaning in her native language Swedish. "That's what happens when you improvise speeches in a second language," she added on Saturday. Ms Thunberg was speaking in Turin after attending the UN climate summit COP25 in the Spanish capital Madrid. She said she feared the summit alone would not lead to adequate climate action, and that activists should continue to take world leaders to task. "World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that," she said. "We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures."

The 2010s Killed Off the Polite Climate Change Conversation  - As we lurched into the 2010s, you wouldn't have been crazy for thinking that a solution for the climate emergency was within reach. It seemed it could even be accomplished without profound economic change. All we had to do, the prevailing early Obama-era political logic went, was bring together people of opposing viewpoints (Democrats and Republicans, environmentalists and oil companies), hash out a plan to apply the appropriate tweaks on our economy, and voila, watch as capitalism took care of the rest. But a decade of GOP climate denial, fossil fuel industry obstruction, mounting climate disasters, and the cataclysmic election of Donald Trump pushed the climate fight into a much more radical and confrontational mode, so much so that the optimism of 2010 now seems bizarre, if not delusional. The young leaders demanding an economy-transforming Green New Deal, people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Sunrise Movement's Varshini Prakash, along with social movements they help represent, take it as a given that capitalism is not the solution to impending climate doom, it's what's feeding the crisis. The policies held up as solutions in 2010 are today regarded by many as insufficient half-measures, and more people think drastic, society-altering moves are the only way forward. Here's how we arrived at this point.

Jane Fonda on the urgency of climate action: ‘This is it, folks. This is the time’ - — Jane Fonda is losing her voice after weeks as a human megaphone for change at outdoor climate rallies on Capitol Hill. Despite intermittent hoarseness, the message the Oscar-winning actress, activist and fitness guru delivered indoors Tuesday afternoon was strong, clear and firm: “I beg people to ratchet up their action on climate,” she told a sold-out, rapt audience at the National Press Club. “This is it, folks. This is the time.” The Californian has basically moved to the nation’s capital for four months to lead Fire Drill Fridays. Demonstrators at the recurring event are demanding that political leaders address what they define as a climate emergency roiling the planet. Civil disobedience is the focus on Fridays. Thursdays are dedicated to teach-ins on climate-related topics such as human health, forests and holding fossil fuel corporations accountable. Fonda delivered a sobering speech on the perilous state of a planet pumped to the breaking point with carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases. But she also sprinkled humor and reasons for hope into her half-hour talk and a follow-up question-and-answer session. For instance, it was the bravery of teenagers such as Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, just named Time magazine’s person of the year, that motivated Fonda to come to Washington at all. Millions have marched for climate action since Thunberg began a lone protest at her home country’s parliament last year. Fonda said her idea jelled in early September when she spent time at the iconic Big Sur in California with friends and actors Catherine Keener and Rosanna Arquette. She was shaken by the devastating wildfires in her home state and by reading an early copy of Naomi Klein’s book, “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.” “I decided it was time for me to do more,” she said, adding that she lost sleep trying to find words to galvanize people to act and “understand that it’s too late for moderation.”

Goldman Sachs investing $750B toward fighting climate change - Goldman Sachs announced Monday that it plans to invest $750 billion over the next decade toward fighting climate change. The bank committed to working with their clients as they navigate sustainability by funding “sustainable growth themes” for climate transition and inclusive growth finance for underprivileged people, according to a press release. The billions of dollars will go to five areas of sustainable development to assist companies in climate transition, including clean energy, sustainable transport, food and agriculture, waste and materials, and economic systems. Within the inclusive growth realm, the money will fund efforts to obtain accessible and innovative health care, reach financial inclusion, obtain accessible and affordable education, and improve communities. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon unveiled the plan in a Financial Times editorial in which he said he wants the bank to play a role in combating climate change. “There is not only an urgent need to act, but also a powerful business and investing case to do so,” he wrote. “That gives me hope for what we can achieve and conviction that financial institutions can play a critical role.” The bank’s release of the plan followed a two-week United Nations conference centered on climate talks that ended Sunday.

Green QE is about more than buying climate-friendly bonds - The recent declarations of new European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde on the possible role of her institution in the fight against climate change have revived pushbacks from central bankers and financial commentators against “green quantitative easing”. However, the critics have often misrepresented what campaigners actually want. Positive Money and other advocacy groups adopted the phrase “green QE” as a campaign slogan since 2015 - the same year that the ECB began purchasing bonds as part of its monetary policy operations. Yet one recurring misinterpretation of Green QE is that central banks should restrict their asset purchases solely to green bonds. Take Fabio Panetta, candidate for the ECB’s Executive Board, who recently pointed out, given the small size of the green bond market, the ECB would very quickly “swallow-up” the entire available pool of green bonds if it were to focus its purchase on them. This objection is valid in the sense that the market for green bonds is indeed small for an institution that has so far bought more than €2.6tn in debt. It is also irrelevant as no-one is advocating that central banks should only purchase green bonds.In defence of our opponents, the absence of a precise definition of “Green QE” thus far has made the debate somewhat confused and prone to disagreements. So what we want to do here is correct that by spelling out what we have in mind.There are two points we want to make here.The first is that doing QE does not have to involve a fundamental rewrite of the ECB’s rules. When Positive Money started campaigning with this slogan back in 2015, the message was that QE was an opportunity for governments to benefit from this massive monetary policy stimulus to step up green investment plans. This could be accomplished, for example, by establishing a large green investment programme led by the European Investment Bank, which the ECB could indirectly support by purchasing EIB bonds (as it already does to some extent under QE in its current guise). Unfortunately, the EU and member states did not take advantage of using the low interest rates provided by the ECB’s policy to scale up energy transition investments. The opportunity has so far been wasted, but it is not too late. The ECB should already commit to extending and scaling up its purchases of EIB bonds issued to fund projects designated as green by the upcoming EU standards. In practice, the ECB could do this by operating a “green twist” in its balance sheet: it would gradually sell its €480bn of private-issued bonds (or simply allow them to run off) in exchange for long-term green bonds issued by the EIB. Importantly, this would not require more QE -- and should therefore not rankle with members of the council who have opposed the bond buying programme. In fact, the ECB could even shrink QE while maintaining a significant proportion of EIB bonds within its balance sheet.

Exxon, Chevron face new round of shareholder climate resolutions - (Reuters) - An activist group is increasing the pressure on five big U.S. and European oil companies with shareholder resolutions urging them to meet the Paris climate goals and cut carbon emissions. Dutch group Follow This is targeting U.S. giants ExxonMobil, Chevron and their European rivals Royal Dutch Shell, BP and Equinor with climate resolutions ahead of next year’s annual general meetings (AGMs) scheduled for the first half of 2020. Follow This owns minor stakes in the companies which enables it to file shareholder resolutions. The Exxon and Chevron resolutions are vaguer than the European text, underscoring an Atlantic divide over companies’ approach to climate change. The U.S. version calls on the Exxon and Chevron boards to “align its strategy with emission levels compatible with the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement”, which aims to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. The European companies, which all agreed in recent years on various emission reduction targets, are however urged to set and publish clear long-term targets to meet the Paris goals. The resolutions urge all companies to include all types of emissions in their climate strategies, including those from fuels and products sold to customers, known as Scope 3 emissions, which are 6 to 8 times bigger than emissions from the companies’ operations. Follow This first filed a climate resolution with Shell in 2016 but last year it expanded its efforts to other companies as the climate debate gathered momentum. Its resolutions have always been opposed by the companies’ boards and have never won a majority support, but they have often led to debates during annual meetings.

Bill Gates and Richard Branson agree this is one way billionaires can help counter climate change - As the self-made billionaires behind two of the world’s most recognized companies, there are a few things entrepreneurs Bill Gates and Richard Branson have in common. But now there’s one more to add to a list: Their response to climate change. And more specifically, the role billionaires can have in countering its effects. In a recent blog post, the Virgin Group founder said he and Gates met last week and discussed their shared view on investing in “long-shot” ideas that aim to combat the problem. “Not all ideas will work but if we back enough of them, then the more likely it is that there will be a handful that can have a huge impact,” Branson wrote. The pair were in Paris for the One Planet Summit – a meeting designed to address the challenges of climate change – during which Gates announced the expansion of his Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC). It has never been more pressing to find clean energy innovations that can change the world. The BEC is a group of high net worth investors who have made commitments to funding $1 billion worth of “next-generation” energy technologies globally. The coalition, spearheaded by Gates, features high profile business figures including Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg and Branson himself. So far, the project has invested in a variety of ambitious energy solutions, including businesses developing solar energy grids and electric vehicle batteries, as well as a biotech company developing new ways to grow sustainable, edible protein. “As a partner in the project, I agree with Bill that it has never been more pressing to find clean energy innovations that can change the world,” Branson wrote. The initiative is close to Branson’s heart, not least because of the links climate change is said to have had to the 2017 hurricanes that wreaked havoc on the British Virgin Islands, including Branson’s own Necker Island.

Elizabeth Warren releases $10.7 trillion plan to create 10.6 million green jobs - Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a $10.7 trillion plan Friday that would rebuild the economy using “100% clean energy” and create 10.6 million union jobs.“To support the millions of skilled and experienced contractors we will need to plan and execute large construction and engineering projects in the new clean economy,” her plan says.The plan would “support the first responders, healthcare workers, social workers, and other public and private employees who respond to climate-induced disasters,” by committing to “investments in retraining, joint labor management apprenticeships, and creating strong career pipelines to ensure a continuous supply of skilled, available workers.” Here are the key planks in Warren’s plan. according to her website:

• Investing $10.7 trillion to yield “10.6 million green new jobs” in energy, transportation, construction and water infrastructure
• Expanding job training by investing $20 billion in apprenticeships over the next decade
• Imposing new rules that favor workers’ rights on companies seeking federal contracts
• Pushing for 100% carbon-neutral power by 2030 and 100% emissions-free electricity supply by 2035

To fund the plan, Warren would establish a “Green Bank” that “will open up new markets for greater investment by working alongside existing federal authorities through direct spending, grants, and loans.” Her administration would also issue a green bond backed by the U.S. Treasury Department to give Americans “the opportunity to own a piece of the climate solution.”

Ship industry proposes $5 billion research fund to help cut emissions - (Reuters) - Shipping associations have proposed creating a research fund with $5 billion raised by the industry to develop technology to help the sector meet U.N. targets on cutting emissions. The global shipping fleet, which accounts for 2.2% of the world’s CO2 emissions, is under pressure to reduce those emissions and other pollution. About 90% of world trade is transported by sea. International shipping associations called on Wednesday for a mandatory contribution of $2 per ton on fuel used by ships to raise money for a research fund to help develop cleaner technology for the industry. U.N. shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), aims to cut the industry’s greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from 2008 levels by 2050, a target that will require the swift development of zero or low emission fuels and new ship designs using cleaner technology. Simon Bennett, deputy secretary general of the International Chamber of Shipping, one of the industry bodies backing the fund, said a $2 per ton fuel contribution would raise about $5 billion over 10 years, based on fuel consumption by the world’s fleet of about 250 million tonnes a year. “We can’t exaggerate the pressure we are under if we are going to meet the IMO 2050 targets. We really have very little time,” Bennett told Reuters. “Ship owners are increasingly realizing that we have to really get on with this now.”

Halting climate change means a world without fossil fuels—not merely curbing emissions - A new study by two University of Toronto researchers is proposing a different way to think about tackling climate change—one that shifts focus away from emissions reductions in favor of eliminating fossil fuel energy altogether. The research is published in the journal Nature Climate Change. "Focusing only on emissions reductions can potentially miss—and mischaracterize—the more important challenge of decarbonization," says Matthew Hoffmann, a professor of political science at U of T Scarborough who co-authored the study. "We need a new way to think about the decarbonization challenge and a new means to explore policies and practices that can begin deep, meaningful decarbonization efforts." Hoffmann (left) says the challenge with decarbonization is carbon lock-in. There are technological, economic, political and social forces that make the use of fossil energy natural and taken for granted by households, cities, provinces and countries. "Any efforts at decarbonization really need to take into account how carbon lock-in is a very similar problem at multiple levels, and they all tend to reinforce one another," he says. Case in point: efforts to replace coal-fired energy with natural gas. While burning natural gas has much lower emissions than burning coal, there's no change in dependence on fossil energy—it's just swapping one fossil fuel for another. "Politicians and governments spend so much political capital on these steps that they think are in the right direction, but then they're resistant to further change," says Hoffmann. "Unless you think about the politics of how to ratchet these policies up over time, it's not going to result in decarbonization."

Biodiesel and wind tax credits extended, as Congress prepares to vote on spending- Tax credits for biodiesel and wind energy were extended under a deal struck by Republicans and Democrats late Monday night, according to sources close to the discussions. Those and other measures are part a $1.4 trillion spending package that will fund the U.S. government through next September. The House is expected to vote later today, and President Donald Trump indicated he would sign the legislation. The deal comes after a days long negotiation, in which Democrats and Republicans struggled to come to agreement on wide range of energy tax credits, ranging from Native American coal plants and biodiesel to electric cars and solar panels. But then "there was a breakthrough late in the night," said Paul Winters, a spokesman for the trade group National Biodiesel Board. According to draft legislation circulating Tuesday morning, the tax credit for biodiesel, which expired in 2017, would be extended through 2022, a boon for farmers and oil refineries. And the tax credit for wind turbines, which is currently winding down, will get extended for another year, giving projects begun before the end of 2020 a tax credit worth 40 percent of that awarded to existing turbines. The deal also extends until the end of next year 26 additional tax credits that had expired in 2017 and 2018 , as laid out in bipartisan legislation introduced earlier this year. Among those on the list were geothermal energy, electric scooters and motorcycles, coal plants owned by Native American tribes and energy efficient homes. Energy lobbyists had spent months trying to get their respective industry’s tax credits expanded or extended as Congress debated next year’s federal spending. House Democrats had pushed to expand credits for electric cars, which are currently capped at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer — a limit Tesla and General Motors have already hit. At the same time, they were pushing to extend tax credits for wind and solar energy, both of which are scheduled to wind down in the years ahead, while creating a new tax credit for energy storage such as large-scale batteries. With time winding down on final hour amendments, Solar Energy Industries Association President Abigail Hopper said Tuesday it did not appear the solar tax credit, which currently reimburses 30 percent of installation costs, would be extended.

US Lawmakers Stiff Solar Power, Wind Power Gets Modest Victory in Tax Deal -- After months of lobbying, the clean energy industry secured minimal tax credit extensions in the $1.37 trillion end-of-year deal U.S. lawmakers eked out this week to fund the government in 2020. Of the possible clean energy tax extensions that could have been stuffed into the spending bill, wind was the only winner, and the industry secured just one extra year of incentives. If the full deal wins congressional passage, as is expected, wind developers can now qualify for the production tax credit through 2020 — a year longer than anticipated. Developers qualifying projects in 2020 will receive 60 percent of the PTC if they bring those projects online by the end of 2024. Projects qualified in 2019 will still receive only 40 percent of the incentive. That will benefit onshore wind developers at a time when their market would otherwise be under pressure. However, offshore wind developers, who typically opt for the Investment Tax Credit, would not get the same boost. Meanwhile, lawmakers left solar— the industry that most aggressively fought for an extension of its ITC — and electric vehicles out of the deal. Storage, which lawmakers had sought incentives for in legislation like the November GREEN Act, will continue without credits. Industry groups, apart from wind, widely decried the spending agreement. Clean energy boosters view tax credits, which generally enjoy bipartisan support, as common-sense policy to fight climate change in a political environment where Democrats and Republicans are at odds on long-term solutions. Gregory Wetstone, president and CEO at the American Council on Renewable Energy, called the deal “deeply disappointing” and a “squandered opportunity,” in a statement.

Wind and biofuels win in tax deal that snubs storage, solar and EVs -- A last minute Congressional deal to extend a variety of expiring and expired tax breaks as part of government funding bills delivered wins for biodiesel producers even as solar generators were left out.  Here are a few of the energy winners and losers in the tax extenders package, which lawmakers hope to attach to a must-pass spending bill this week.

• Wind producers : Wind power developers won an extra year of the production tax credit, which pays them for 10 years for each kilowatt-hour produced. Under a deal struck by the Senate in 2015, the PTC was supposed to terminate at the end of this year at 40 percent of its original value.  The value of the credit also would rise to around 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for projects that start construction next year, up from the 1 cent per kilowatt-hour available for projects this year.
• Biofuel producers: The package reinstates a $1-per-gallon credit for blending biodiesel into regular diesel until 2022. Blenders can also retroactively claim the credit, which expired in 2017. In addition, producers of cellulosic biofuels and algae-based fuels would see their 46-cent-per-gallon producers credit for advanced ethanol extended through the end of next year. The agreement also extends a special allowance for biofuel plant property.
• Energy efficiency: Credits for residential and commercial energy efficiency improvements, a deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings and the "non business energy property" credit, which also applies to improvements for homes.
• Electric vehicles: Power companies had been pressing hard to get Congress to raise a 200,000 vehicle cap on the electric vehicle tax credit, but they were left out of the deal. GM and Tesla have now both sold more than the maximum, meaning their customers can no longer access a $7,500 tax credit.
• Solar producers: The package does not give the solar industry a hoped-for extension of the investment tax credit, which is set to decline in value next year. House Democrats had hoped to get the tax credit extended to give the industry a boost in the face of the withdrawal of the Clean Power Plan, which would have regulated carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants, and the Trump administration's tariffs on solar panels. The 30 percent tax credit will fall to 26 percent at the start of next year, and by 2022 it will be worth only 10 percent.
• Energy storage projects: Energy storage developers failed to get independent access to the investment tax credit. Under current law, battery investments can claim the ITC if they're associated with a solar project, but not if they are stand-alone. Storage advocates had hoped to get this changed so they could invest more in independent storage projects

How the White House Killed Clean Energy Tax Credits - The decision to leave tax credits for solar energy and electric vehicles out of this week’s $1.37 trillion spending deal came from the White House on Monday night, according to six sources with knowledge of the negotiations. Though advocates say they won legislative backing for clean energy tax benefits, the White House rejected incentives including a short extension of the solar Investment Tax Credit and the federal EV income tax credit during its review of the package. A congressional aide confirmed that the White House eliminated these provisions. The full package of clean energy incentives, including credits for energy storage and offshore wind, was understood to be in play going into the final stages of budget talks on Monday night. Several sources noted that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had signed off on a plan that included the green tax provisions, but that talks ultimately broke down under pushback from the White House. The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment. President Trump’s opposition to the electric vehicles credit was known, per reporting from Bloomberg, but sources are still trying to determine the exact source of the administration’s resistance on other clean energy credits. Both advocates and lawmakers said they were surprised by the abrupt shift in negotiations. “We were really on the doorstep of a deal,” said Robert Cowin, director of government affairs for the climate and clean energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. In the end, wind was the only clean energy technology to win, with a temporary extension of the Production Tax Credit. Supporters of the solar and storage credits, which lawmakers have backed in several bills including the November draft GREEN Act from House Ways and Means Committee Democrats, will now look to 2020. “It’s unfortunate the White House crushed it at the last minute,” said Stephen Irvin, president and CEO at Amicus Solar, a solar co-operative with 55-local installer member-owners. But alongside executive opposition, Irvin also attributes the snag to shaky bipartisan consensus. In July, Sen. Cortez Masto unveiled the Renewable Energy Extension Act — a bill Amicus lobbied for in Congress — with only Democratic sponsors, for instance.

White House says it is sticking with 2020 biofuel plan, despite farmer objections - (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to stick with its proposed 2020 biofuel blending requirements, the White House said on Wednesday, despite anger among farmers that the plan does too little for corn growers.   The decision could undermine President Donald Trump’s support among farmers, an important constituency in the November 2020 election. Some U.S. farmers have already been hurt by the United States’ prolonged trade war with China. “The Administration is moving forward to finalize the 2020 RVO (Renewable Volume Obligations) in line with the agreement that the President made this fall,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said. Deere confirmed he was talking about a proposal unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency in October, which was intended to compensate the biofuel industry for the administration’s expanded use of refinery waivers, but which the industry has largely panned as insufficient. Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners are required to blend some 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol into their gasoline every year, but small facilities can be exempted if compliance would hurt them financially.

Climate change and public lands: A new House bill would zero out emissions by 2040 - House Democrats on Tuesday introduced an expansive new climate change bill that aims to zero out greenhouse gas emissions from public lands while supporting workers in the transition toward clean energy. It’s one of the most aggressive climate bills that’s been introduced in the current Congress, and by targeting coal, oil, and gas production on public lands and their downstream consumption, it would take a bite out of nearly one-fifth of US carbon dioxide emissions. “It is a new idea and a new paradigm for how fossil fuel energy would be developed on federal lands,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, senior director for environmental strategy at the Center for American Progress. The 640 million acres of America’s public lands are home to unique wildlife and natural treasures. And beneath them are coal, oil, and natural gas deposits that can contribute to climate change as they are extracted and burned. The bill, called the American Public Lands and Waters Climate Solution Act, aims to make federal public lands a net-zero source of emissions by 2040. It raises the price tag via royalties for fossil fuel extraction in these regions and channels the added revenue to provide economic aid to parts of the country that depend on mining and drilling. Tallied in the public lands total isn’t just emissions associated with fossil fuel extraction, but downstream uses of fuels such as burning coal for electricity or gasoline in cars.

Tidal energy project in Canada gets green light from authorities - A Scottish tidal energy business has been issued with a permit to develop a project in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. In an announcement earlier this week, Nova Innovation said a total of 15 tidal stream turbines would be installed by the year 2023. The project, according to the firm, will produce enough electricity to power 600 homes. In its own statement on Wednesday, Nova Scotia’s Department of Energy and Mines said the scheme would be up to 1.5 megawatts (MW) in size. Electricity produced by the turbines will be sold to Nova Scotia Power for 50 Canadian cents (38 cents) per kilowatt hour. The department added that the five-year permit was renewable if Nova Innovation was able to meet performance standards, community engagement conditions and environmental requirements. The European Commission has described “ocean energy” as being both abundant and renewable. It’s estimated that ocean energy could potentially contribute roughly 10% of the European Union’s power demand by the year 2050, according to the Commission.

Palm Beach County 2030: More power will come from solar energy - Florida Power & Light Co.‘s fleet will transition from producing less than 2 percent of its electricity from solar to a projected 20 percent from its solar energy centers. Larger solar battery storage systems will come online and extend the solar facilities’ energy production by a few hours each day.“It’s going to have a lot of solar, that’s for sure, with 30 million panels by 2030,” FPL CEO and President Eric Silagy told the Palm Beach Post. “I will be disappointed if we don’t do more than that.”The total of 10,000 megawatts of new solar will make Florida a global leader in solar, Silagy said. The expansion will add roughly 100 solar plants, reducing emissions by 67 percent. Laid end-to-end, 30 million solar panels would wrap around the Earth one and a half times.

Eastern US grid connection queues for 2020 have 19,013 MW of renewables, storage — The US Northeastern ISO power markets have 19,013 MW of renewable energy and energy storage resources expected to come online in 2020 according to grid interconnection queue data, compared with a total of 153,488 MW in the interconnection queues for all years. Multiple states served by wholesale power markets in PJM Interconnection, the New York Independent System Operator and ISO New England territory have mandated regulation and enacted legislation to promote renewable energy as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, not all projects get built as conditions change and companies cancel, delay and remove projects from the queue for various reasons. According to ISO NE, almost 70% of proposed new megawatts in the queue have ultimately been withdrawn. However, the data provides a view of which resource types show interest in supplying the grid and it provide a sense of how future power generation mixes could look. The PJM queue for resources listed as connecting to the grid in 2020 is led by solar power, with 7,226 MW as of December 13. That is followed by 4,783 MW of onshore wind and smaller but increasing volumes of energy storage resources, which are increasingly being paired with generation like solar power. There are 398 MW of solar plus storage projects and 699 MW of stand-alone energy storage capacity seeking to connect to the grid in 2020. Longer term, based on data for the PJM queue for all years, there are 6,160 MW of stand-alone storage and 9,881 MW of solar plus storage listed. Renewable energy capacity growth in the NYISO's markets based on interconnection queue data is dominated by onshore wind and solar power projects in 2020 at 1,460 MW and 1,296 MW, respectively. That is followed by 472 MW of energy storage capacity listed in the queue as connecting in 2020. Similar to PJM, the interconnection queue for all years has large volumes of offshore wind power capacity. This reflects New York's target of installing 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035 from 0 MW installed currently. That compares with 5,110 MW of onshore wind listed in the queue for all years. The power generation fuel mix in southern New York State is currently dominated by dual fuel resources that burn natural gas, with a secondary source like oil as a backup. New England's power grid is set to receive 1,665 incremental MW of solar power in 2020, according to ISO-NE's interconnection queue. That is followed by 789 MW of hydropower and 214 MW of onshore wind power queued to connect in 2020. The hydropower projects involve upgrading a facility in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, and adding battery storage to a hydropower plant in Penobscot, Maine, according to the queue.

PJM approves $134M in grid upgrades - PJM has authorized nearly $134 million in electric transmission system upgrades to the Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP). The upgrades are designed to enhance reliability for the 65 million people PJM serves. The RTEP determines the needs of the regional transmission system. PJM is a regional transmission organization (RTO) that coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia. Of the $134 million investment, $58.6 million will be used to rebuild 20 miles of the East Towanda-North Meshoppen 115 kV line and adjusting relay settings in the Penelec Transmission Zone in Pennsylvania. Further, $24.7 million will be invested to rebuild the Michigan City-Trail Creek-Bosserman 138 kV line in MISO’s Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) Transmission Zone in Indiana. Also, $22 million will go toward the creation of a line terminal at Belle Haven Delivery Point and the installation of a 21-mile line from the Kellam substation to the new Bayview substation in the ODEC Transmission Zone in Virginia.

 NY budget watchdog's climate recommendations reflect priorities of corporations and lobbyists on its board - Eyes on the Ties - The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC), a New York State fiscal watchdog group, issued a report last week blasting the clean energy goals of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), a major piece of environmental legislation, as “infeasible” due to the law’s ambitious timescale. The CBC called on New York to embrace natural gas as a “bridge fuel” and advocated for extending nuclear power subsidies.  While holding itself out as a “nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization,” the CBC board of trustees is dominated by real estate executives, lobbyists, and other members of New York’s corporate elite. CBC’s Energy Policy Committee, which wrote the group’s report on CLCPA, includes several executives and lobbyists for fossil fuel companies and energy utilities – most notably, Consolidated Edison and National Grid – that have opposed CLCPA and are pushing to expand fossil fuel infrastructure in New York.  The CBC does not oppose climate action altogether or even the CLCPA specifically. However, the organization’s recommendations reflect the corporate interests of the CBC’s board of trustees and Energy Policy Committee members. CBC begins its report by diminishing expectations that the state can reach the decarbonization goals set out in the CLCPA. The goal of reaching 70% renewable electricity by 2030 is “infeasible” according to the group, because it would require a rapid deployment of renewable energy projects and because specifying that New York must use renewable resources for electricity is “undermining the opportunity for competition to offer innovative solutions.” CBC characterizes New York’s recent rejection of several natural gas pipeline projects as “counterproductive.” The group calls out Williams Companies’ Northeast Supply Enhancement Project and Constitution Pipeline as well as National Fuel’s Northern Access Pipeline as three pipeline projects it believes New York should approve. The report cites recent moratoria on new gas hookups by National Grid and Consolidated Edison as evidence of the need for more gas infrastructure.

California’s high-voltage battle between utilities and rooftop solar could impact electric bills - Utilities say rooftop solar customers aren’t paying their fair share. Advocates say power providers are trying to undermine clean energy. A battle over where California will get its renewable power is poised to heat up in coming months — as the thriving rooftop solar industry faces off with the state’s most powerful electric utilities. At stake is the extent to which solar power will be generated atop homes and businesses, as opposed to using massive solar arrays in the desert and other remote locations. Experts say the outcome could dramatically influence the cost of power in the state — and, by extension, the speed at which residents adopt electric appliances and cars. Ratcheting up the tension, private purchases of solar panels have outpaced expectations over the last decade. Former governors Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrated this week the installation of a million solar roofs across the state. “We always have big goals here in California, and we go after it and build it,” Schwarzenegger said Thursday at a press event in the Central Valley. Advocates said the milestone has come despite escalating efforts by utilities to undermine rooftop solar installations. They said those attacks include everything from hefty fees on ratepayers to calling for dramatic cuts to the credits residents receive for generating energy from the sun.Electricity providers across the state, from San Diego Gas & Electric to Redding Electric Utility, have said that they are not against rooftop solar in principle. However, power companies have acknowledged their efforts to claw back money from residents with solar panels — arguing that the state’s program to compensate owners of rooftop solar, known as net metering, has resulted in higher rates for everyone else.

California Governor Newsom Nixes PG&E Bankruptcy Plan - California Governor Gavin Newsom rejected  PG&E’s plan to exit bankruptcy in a letter to the company Friday.  As the NYT reports in California Governor Rejects PG&E’s Restructuring Plan: A law the California Legislature passed this year gave Mr. Newsom the authority toapprove any restructuring plan PG&E submits to the United States Bankruptcy Court. Mr. Newsom’s letter indicates that the company will have to engage in further negotiations with the governor before it can end its bankruptcy and participate in a state wildfire fund.…On Thursday, PG&E filed an amended reorganization plan with the federal Bankruptcy Court, after reaching a $13.5 billion settlement with wildfire victims. The utility needed to reach that deal to escape bankruptcy by a state imposed deadline of June 2020 in order to participate in the wildfire fund. According to the WSJ, California Governor Threatens to Block PG&E Bankruptcy Exit:California Gov. Gavin Newsom is demanding changes to PG&E Corp. ’s plan to pay wildfire victims and exit bankruptcy, saying the company’s current proposal “falls woefully short” of a law outlining requirements that would allow the utility to receive state assistance.In a letter Friday to PG&E, the Democratic governor said the company’s plan “fails to address most of the issues we previously raised,” including a transformed corporate board and sufficient financial stability to make major safety investments.PG&E has until Tuesday to respond and make changes to the plan, under a deal it struck last week to settle claims with wildfire victims for $13.5 billion  Newsom wants PG&E to restructure its board to include more directors with extensive safety experience, and a majority of Californians. The company overhauled its board earlier this year, to include a majority of directors with Wall Street experience, according to the WSJ, California Governor Threatens to Block PG&E Bankruptcy Exit: Mr. Newsom also raised concerns that the reorganization plan, which contemplates issuing a substantial amount of debt to pay billions of dollars in wildfire claims, would restrict the company’s ability to raise capital and invest in safety improvements.  As the LA Times reports in PG&E’s future is in doubt after Newsom rejects bankruptcy plan:  In order to access the wildfire fund, Assembly Bill 1054 requires PG&E to exit bankruptcy by June 30, 2020, satisfy wildfire claims, preserve its efforts to meet the state’s climate goals and establish a governance structure that prioritizes safety.

California governor rejects PG&E’s bankruptcy settlement, demands token reforms - In a letter sent Friday night to William Johnson, the CEO of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), California Governor Gavin Newsom rejected a bankruptcy settlement proposal submitted the previous week by the utility company. PG&E’s proposal entailed slight adjustments to the company’s structure, as well as a $13.5 billion settlement reached with lawyers of victims of the worst fires caused by PG&E equipment from 2015–18, which collectively killed 145 people and destroyed over 25,000 buildings. PG&E requires the approval of Newsom’s office for its plan to exit bankruptcy by June 30, 2020, to enable the company to qualify to draw money from a state wildfire fund established last summer through Assembly Bill 1054. The fund, promoted and signed into law by Newsom, will provide upwards of $21 billion to the various regional utility monopolies in California, to bail them out of expenses related to future wildfires for which they are found to be responsible.  In his letter to Johnson, Newsom demands token reforms that will do nothing to fundamentally change the corporation. The main provisions outlined are for the replacement of the current board of directors, with a new board approved personally by Newsom himself, whose vague qualifications include “extensive safety experience” and which must be comprised of “a majority of Californians.” In addition, Newsom demands that PG&E implement new unspecified, company-determined safety and operational metrics. In another section of his letter, Newsom stresses that following bankruptcy, PG&E’s “capital structure must be stable, flexible, and position the company to attract long-term capital.” He worries that their plan “leaves the company with limited ability to withstand financial and operational headwinds.” Despite claims to the contrary, this section indicates that Newsom’s rejection of the PG&E restructuring proposal is in part due to pressure from the company’s bondholders, who have emerged as competitors with the shareholders for control over the company. Last week, the bondholders submitted a detailed appeal to Newsom to reject the shareholders’ proposed plan. PG&E has until Tuesday to decide whether it will comply with Newsom’s demands or proceed with the $13.5 billion settlement without Newsom’s stamp of approval. If they accede to Newsom’s demands, the company’s board will simply be changed from Wall Street vultures to financial parasites from California, with whom Newsom has made the closest connections over his entire political career.

Publicly owned utilities ‘not a panacea’ but can produce customer benefits - As wildfires sparked by downed Pacific Gas and Electric wires have burned across California in recent years, so has public outrage with the private utility giant. Critics say PG&E has prioritized profits over system maintenance. A federal judge found the company increased investor dividends instead of removing trees that could pull down wires, while an audit found the company diverted $123 million earmarked for burying lines underground over the last 10 years. Gov. Gavin Newsome said the company had “been caught red-handed over and over again, lying, manipulating or misleading the public.” The revelations are fueling calls for municipalization of the beleaguered utility. City leaders in San Jose and San Francisco are already exploring how to take over PG&E’s grid. Among those pushing for a statewide public system is Loretta M. Lynch, the former president of the California Public Utilities Commission, who recently told the Los Angeles Times, “Public power is generally cheaper, safer, cleaner — with some exceptions — and more reliable.” Similar proposals, in some cases for entirely different reasons, are also moving forward in Boulder, El Paso, Pueblo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Maine and elsewhere. The experience of communities where public utilities already exist suggests the model isn’t a panacea, but federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Association (EIA) does show municipal utilities generally are more reliable and have lower rates. Some in the industry, though, say they haven’t necessarily moved toward renewables or enacted more progressive policies faster than investor-owned utilities. Still, supporters argue that public utilities are inherently better for ratepayers because they remove profit-driven investors from the equation. The model, therefore, is structurally geared toward the needs of the community it serves, which is why so many find it appealing

How ethanol plant shutdowns deepen pain for U.S. corn farmers - (Reuters) - When the U.S. ethanol industry was booming, Indiana farmer Paul Hodgen made good money selling about a quarter of his crop to a local facility that produced the corn-based fuel. Now that plant has stopped churning out ethanol and has instead converted to a grain elevator for storage, Hodgen still sells his corn there, but for a fraction of the price. Hodgen’s troubles reflect the increasing difficulties faced by America’s corn farmers as a meltdown in the ethanol industry hits the corn market – adding strains to farmers already facing poor weather and the U.S. trade war with China. Some 13 ethanol plants have shut since November 2018, roughly 4.4% of the nation’s capacity, in a decline the biofuel industry blames on the Trump administration’s expanded use of waivers to exempt oil refineries from blending ethanol into gasoline. Several other ethanol plants temporarily reduced production during that time. (Graphic on ethanol plant shutdowns: here) The issue could test the Farm Belt’s support for President Donald Trump in next year’s election: farmers that have largely forgiven the administration for the dire impacts of the trade war are less forgiving when it comes to its biofuel policy.“That was really felt as a betrayal,” Hodgen said.“All of us knew that China was going to have to be dealt with. It hurt but it needed to be done,” said Jeff Gormong, another Indiana farmer. “The small refinery exemptions are benefiting the petroleum industry at the expense of the ag industry.”Under the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard, oil refiners are required to blend some 15 billion gallons of ethanol into their gasoline every year, but small facilities can be exempted if compliance would hurt them financially.The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the RFS, has handed out roughly four times more exemptions to small refiners than Obama’s EPA.

EPA finalizes ethanol rule to chagrin of producers, oil industry - The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday finalized a controversial rule on ethanol, cementing a proposal that has been heavily criticized by the nation’s ethanol producers and the petroleum industry mandated to add the corn-based substance to their fuels. The proposal, announced with a press release headlined “EPA Fulfills Another Trump Administration Promise,” was designed to quell backlash from farmers who revolted after the EPA issued 31 waivers that exempted oil refiners from blending ethanol into their product. But after the initial rule was proposed, each industry made clear it felt it was betrayed by an administration eager to appeal to both sides of what President Trump views as his base. “Agency officials had a chance to finally make things right with this final rule — but they blew it,” Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, said in a release. “EPA’s rule fails to deliver on President Trump’s commitment to restore integrity to the RFS, and it fails to provide the market certainty desperately needed by ethanol producers, farmers, and consumers looking for lower-cost, cleaner fuel options,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Renewable Fuel Standard policy that requires ethanol use. Trump had promised farmers in a June meeting that he would review the waiver process used by oil companies to skirt ethanol blending. News broke in August that it was Trump himself that directed the EPA to issue more waivers. “The president has heard from all sides and in the end he has had enough of it. He called [EPA Administrator Andrew] Wheeler and gave him the green light,” a source familiar with the matter told Reuters at the time. Under heavy pressure from corn growers in 2020 battleground states like Iowa, the administration again promised a fix for farmers who complained of the sting from not only shrinking ethanol markets, but an unfavorable trade market following Trump’s trade deals. The solidified rule intends to close a key loophole in the eyes of farmers. Smaller refineries will still be allowed to obtain waivers. However, larger refineries will be obligated to blend in the gallons smaller facilities don’t, in theory maintaining a level 15 billion gallons of ethanol the oil industry as a whole must use.

Exelon: Class-action lawsuit filed against ComEd parent company over lobbying investigation -  Exelon faces a potential class-action lawsuit over its entanglement in a federal investigation of its lobbying practices. A lawsuit filed this week by Joshua Flynn accuses the ComEd parent company of making false and misleading statements this year about the investigation, which repeatedly led to losses in its stock price. Exelon disclosed in July it and ComEd had received a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago seeking information about its lobbying activities in Illinois. Then, in early October, it disclosed that the companies had received a second grand jury subpoena seeking information about “certain individuals,” including state Sen. Martin Sandoval. On Oct. 15, it then issued a press release announcing the departure of Exelon Utilities CEO Anne Pramaggiore. That prompted Exelon’s stock price to fall 4.57% on Oct. 16, according to Flynn’s lawsuit. On Oct. 31, Exelon disclosed an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into its lobbying activities, prompting Exelon’s stock price to drop 2.51%, according to Flynn’s lawsuit. The lawsuit complains that “Exelon left specific details concerning the lobbying investigation undisclosed,” and that its statement on Pramaggiore’s retirement “offered no reason for her departure, but analysts began to speculate that the criminal subpoenas and Pramaggiore’s abrupt resignation were related.” Officials from Exelon declined comment Tuesday.

Energy Regulator's Order Could Boost Coal Over Renewables, Raising Costs for Consumers - Federal energy regulators issued an order Thursday that likely will tilt the market to favor coal and natural gas power plants in the nation's largest power grid region, stretching from New Jersey to Illinois.  Critics say that it effectively creates a new subsidy to prop up uneconomical fossil fuel plants and that it will hurt renewable energy growth and, ultimately, consumers.The new rules, approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, are designed to counteract state subsidies that support the growth of renewable energy and use of nuclear power. The rules involve what are known as "capacity markets," where power plants bid to provide electricity to the grid. The change would require higher minimum bids for power plants that receive such subsidies, giving fossil fuel plants an advantage. The FERC order, passed 2-1, is a response to complaints from operators of coal and natural gas power plants who say that state subsidies have led to unfair competition in the grid region managed by PJM Interconnection. Richard Glick, the panel's lone Democrat, cast the dissenting vote and said during the commission meeting that his Republican colleagues were trying to "stunt transition to a clean energy future that states are pursuing and consumers are pursuing." In his written dissent, he called the order "illegal, illogical and truly bad public policy."Environmental groups and clean energy advocates have long criticized PJM for rules that provide an economic lifeline to old fossil fuel plants, which produce greenhouse gases that drive climate change. "Today's order erects a major new barrier to clean energy, undercutting efforts by states to slash pollution and address climate change," Tom Rutigliano, a senior advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council's Sustainable FERC Project, said in a statement. "Federal regulators are forcing customers to pay for dirty power they don't want or need."

Coal demand to remain stable amid climate concerns: IEA - The demand for coal will remain steady over the next four years due to demand from Asia, which comes despite fears of the climate crisis, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Tuesday. Coal remains a major source of power across Southeast Asia, where breakneck economic development has spurred soaring energy demands—but at a cost to the environment. Coastal areas across Southeast Asia have already seen major floods and seawater incursion linked to climate change. "Global coal demand has rebounded since 2017," the IEA said in a report. "Although it will probably decline in 2019, we expect it to remain broadly steady thereafter through 2024," the Paris-based agency said. Coal is the primary source of energy used to generate electricity and accounts for more than 40 percent of energy-related CO2 emissions. It is also widely used to produce steel and cement. Europe and the United States are becoming less reliant on coal, but its use is increasing in Asia—especially in India and China which are the world's largest coal producers and users. "Coal-fired power plants in Asia are young—12 years old on average. So they could still run for decades," said IEA executive director Fatih Birol. He said it will be necessary to have access to technologies such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects—a costly technology which captures and stores CO2 to prevent it from being released into the atmosphere. For the moment, there are few CCUS projects in operation.

Global coal demand to remain stable up to 2024: IEA -  (Reuters) - Global coal demand is expected to remain stable until 2024 as growth in Asia offsets weaker demand from Europe and the United States, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. The IEA report is being published just after negotiators from more than 190 countries met in Madrid over the last two weeks to try to thrash out rules to meet the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which demands a virtual end to coal power by 2050. “Despite the growth in low-carbon fuels in recent decades, the reality is coal remains a major fuel in global energy markets ... the world consumes 65% more coal today than in the year 2000,” the report by the Paris-based agency said. World coal demand is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 0.5%, reaching 5,624 million tonnes of coal equivalent (Mtce) in 2024, the IEA said. A drop in coal consumption in Europe and the United States due to coal power phase-out plans in Europe and an increase in the use of gas in the United States, will be offset by growth in a number of fast-growing Asian economies, the report said. An increase is predicted for India, with demand rising by 4.2% a year to 748 Mtce in 2024 from 585 Mtce in 2018, boosted by a rise in coal-fired power output, the IEA said. Coal consumption in China is projected to rise slightly over the next few years and plateau around 2022. Exactly how Chinese demand evolves will largely depend on what is presented in the country’s five-year plan to cover 2021-2025,

Michael Bloomberg pledges to "end coal" by 2030, if elected President.  — While on the campaign trail in Alexandria, Virginia, Michael Bloomberg pledged to shut down all remaining 251 coal plants across the nation. Approximately 7 coal-fired power plants exist in West Virginia, with the Mountain State serving as the second-largest coal provider in the nation. During his speech, the democratic presidential hopeful expressed that closing coal plants is necessary to combat “man-made” global warming. “The president refuses to lead on climate change, so the rest of us must. I’ve been all-in on this fight for more than a decade – and having helped close more than half the nation’s dirty coal plants, having cut New York City’s carbon footprint by 14 percent, having led a coalition of cities, states, and businesses committed to the Paris Agreement, I know that we can win,” he stated. Presently, Bloomberg only has 5 percent of Democratic support.

Judge’s ruling affects coal ash landfill permits in Chatham, Lee counties  — Environmental groups are praising a decision on permits for coal ash landfills in Chatham and Lee counties.On Friday, a judge ruled the Department of Environmental Quality exceeded its authority and failed to use proper procedure by issuing permits for the Brickhavenand Colon mine sites, according to the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League.The ruling comes after environmentalists voiced concerns over groundwater contamination from coal ash, the powdery substance that remains after burning coal. The initial lawsuit was brought in 2015 by BREDL and other local groups, including Chatham Citizens Against Coal Ash Dump and EnvironmentaLEE. In June, the DEQ issued a letter about groundwater contamination to Charah, the company hired to dump Duke Energy's coal ash at the Brickhaven site. The letter mimicked concerns the community and environmental groups had for months.Such groups believe coal ash should be disposed of above ground and isolated from the environment on utility company land.Laura Leonard, a spokeswoman for DEQ, said the ruling doesn't revoke any permits but does require some modifications."This ruling does not affect any of the areas where coal ash has been used as structural fill at the Brickhaven site. No coal ash has been added as structural fill at the Colon (Lee County) site," Leonard said in an e  mail.Charah spokeswoman Ashley Simmons said coal ash isn't being used for "beneficial reuse purposes" at either location.

EPA Signs Off On Georgia's Plan To Regulate Coal Ash - The state of Georgia has the go-ahead from the federal government to regulate coal ash, a byproduct from burning coal for electricity that can contain contaminants such as chromium, boron and mercury. The Environmental Protection Agency rolled out national coal ash rules in 2015, after disastrous spills in North Carolina and Tennessee. Before those federal rules, coal ash, described by the EPA as one of the largest types of industrial waste in the country, was unregulated. Utilities would mix the ash with water and store it in large open pits, often without any lining between it and the ground beneath it. The federal rule allows states to develop and enforce their own coal ash regulations, as long as they are as or more stringent than the national ones. Georgia becomes the second state in the nation to get sign off on its rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, following Oklahoma. Tens of millions of tons of coal ash are in Georgia. Georgia Power, the state’s biggest utility, is working to close all 29 of its coal ash ponds and move or keep the ash in place in dry storage.

Residents ask Illinois EPA to not allow Pond Creek Mine to dump water into Big Muddy - — Illinois Environmental Protection Agency had a hearing on allowing a Williamson County Mine to pump wastewater into the Big Muddy River and Pond Creek on Wednesday night. Williamson Energy LLC and its parent company Foresight Energy filed an application for a NPDES (National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System) permit to allow Pond Creek Mine to discharge between 2.5 and 3.5 million gallons of water per day into the Big Muddy River. In July, IEPA made a “tentative determination” to approve the request. The original public comment period on the application closed in August. Due to public interest, a hearing was scheduled for Dec. 18 to allow for additional public comment. The hearing opened with comments from the Illinois EPA officials attending. Christine Zeival acted as hearing officer. More than 50 people signed comment cards requesting to speak at the hearing. Zeival gave some basic rules for the hearing, including a time limit. She told the audience that comments could only be made on the permit application and the issues related to that application. Representatives of Williamson Energy gave comments but would not answer questions. Few questions were addressed by Illinois EPA. The audience was told questions would be answered in the document prepared at the end of the comment period, which is Jan. 17. Written comments will be accepted until that date in the Illinois EPA office in Springfield and will be given the same weight as oral comments. The water would be pumped through pipeline 12.5 miles to the Big Muddy River in Franklin County. The mine would be required to monitor chloride and sulfate levels in the discharged water and the river and report those levels to the IEPA.  Clayton Cross of Williamson Energy told the crowd the mine could be in operation another 50 years at its current level of production.  He said they face two issues: increasing amounts of groundwater that could block ventilation and escape tunnels along with the chemicals in that groundwater. The company believes releasing the water into the Big Muddy won’t have any effect on aquatic life and little effect on river levels.

Coal train forces climate protesters off tracks in West Boylston - — Nobody was hurt, but a group of protesters were forced from the tracks while trying to stop a train from delivering coal to a New Hampshire power plant Monday night. “The train actually did not stop,” said Marla Marcum, co-founder and director of Climate Disobedience, one of the groups affiliated with the protest. “A group of people that we had worked with had stopped a train in West Boylston a week ago, but this train did not stop ... the train refused to stop and people got off the tracks.” The latest incident occurred around 9:30 p.m. Monday off Temple Street in West Boylston, said West Boylston police Sgt. Anthony Papandrea. It involved a train resupplying the Merrimack Generating Station in Bow, New Hampshire, one of the last remaining coal plants in New England. Papandrea said an officer noticed a vehicle that seemed “out of place” and then found 15 to 20 protesters in the woods by the train tracks. Marcum said some protesters were standing on the tracks. She said a protester had called Pan Am Railway’s emergency line notifying them of the disturbance. She also said that protesters waved flags at several points before the blockade to warn the train to stop. But the train continued along at a low speed, blaring its horn. Protesters were eventually forced from the tracks. Marcum said activists were protesting the use of coal power plants.

4 Things To Know About The N.H. Coal Plant Targeted By Climate Protesters  -- A power plant in Bow -- the largest coal-burning plant left in New England -- has been the target of protests and civil disobedience in recent weeks. This month, activists from across New England have twice attempted to block trains carrying shipments of coal to the plant. Protests on the train tracks and at the plant have so far resulted in dozens of arrests.   The activists say Merrimack Station should close. Its owners argue that criticism is misplaced.  Here's what you should know about the protests and the plant's role in the regional power grid.

• 1. Merrimack Station is the largest of the three coal-fired power plants left on the New England grid.  New England has never been as heavy a user of coal as are regions that sit closer to coal reserves – like Appalachia and the Midwest. But the Northeast did at one point have several big coal plants supplying round-the-clock power – including Merrimack Station, built in the 1960s. But a lot has changed since then. Big nuclear plants like Seabrook Station came online in the 1970s; air pollution and emissions rules grew tighter over time; and cheap natural gas boomed in the 1990s and 2000s. As a result, over the past 20 years, amid a growing sense of urgency about combating climate change, all of New England’s biggest coal plants have shut down.
• 2. The power plant now runs more rarely than ever – though "rare" is relative.  Merrimack Station was built as a “baseload” plant – one that supplies a large, steady supply of power regardless of conditions on the grid. These days, it’s become what’s known as a “peaker” – a resource that only comes on when the grid is stressed and in need of extra electricity.
• 3. The plant is not the only front in New England where climate activists are protesting. The president of Merrimack Station’s parent company, Jim Andrews, says he believes activists’ focus on the plant is misplaced.  He points out that home heating and automobiles are far bigger, more entrenched sources of fossil fuel emissions in the region than what Merrimack Station is contributing.
• 4. Almost everyone agrees it's inevitable that the region will transition off of coal and oil. The big questions are when and how.  Jim Andrews, the president of Merrimack’s parent company, says New England is well on its way toward a future without these legacy fossil fuels. He sees his plant as a bridge to getting there, and says they may even build energy storage systems on site in the future. Those systems could be used, like the plant itself, to provide a back-up source of cheap energy when demand or prices get too high.  But protesters who have targeted the plant don’t want to wait. They say they’re going to spend this winter calling for the plant to close – and they have promised to risk arrest again in the coming months, attempting to delay or disrupt every shipment of coal the plant receives by rail.

Two Decades Of Resistance: Coal River Mountain Watch Takes Stock At 20 -Coal River Mountain Watch’s history of resistance to mountaintop coal mining is plastered across the wood-paneled walls of the group’s modest office in Raleigh County, West Virginia.Framed photos, many of demonstrators being handcuffed, dot the walls. In the back of the building, a floor-to-ceiling length tapestry depicts the “true cost of coal” as envisioned by an activist volunteer group that created it. Pollution spews from a coal-fired power plant. A stream runs dirty. Anthropomorphic creatures take the place of humans.

Conservation Groups Concerned About Cleanup Costs For Bankrupt Blackjewel Coal - Environmental groups sparred with coal company Blackjewel Tuesday over damage left behind in the coal company’s ongoing bankruptcy. The group is calling attention to numerous environmental violations by Blackjewel and its related companies and urging the federal bankruptcy judge to prioritize the environment as the bankruptcy continues. The groups identified more than 400 instances when regulators found Blackjewel mines out of compliances in Kentucky alone, and more than 200 of the more serious violations in which the company was ordered to cease operations. The groups say some of those could pose serious risks to drinking water, tourism destinations and residential properties. The environmental groups include the Sierra Club, Appalachian Voices, Appalachian Citizens Law Center, and the Wyoming-based Powder River Basin Resource Council. “There may be as many as 40 permits that just have no buyer,” said Appalachian Voices program director Erin Savage. Blackjewel admitted to 57 in its response. The groups are concerned some permits may not be sold. In that case, they wrote, “They will eventually be abandoned, leaving serious questions about abatement of these violations and reclamation of these mines.” Reclamation costs for most Blackjewel mines are secured by third-party surety companies, but it is unclear whether those bonds will cover the total cost of reclamation. Companies that purchased mines in the Blackjewel bankruptcy process will in most cases assume responsibility for mine cleanup once the permits are transferred. But for the 57 mines that don’t sell, reclamation costs fall to insurance companies. Those companies can then choose to reclaim the mine land themselves using bonded funds, or to pass those bond funds to the relevant state government, which then assumes responsibility for cleanup. “Basically, we don’t have good estimates for how much these mines will actually cost to reclaim,” Savage said.

Bipartisan bill to promote coal-derived products introduced - U.S. Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) introduced a bipartisan legislation on Friday to advance research and promote coal-derived carbon products. According to a press release from Manchin's office, some of the coal products include carbon fiber, graphite and carbon foam. Manchin and Capito were joined by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY). “The National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown, West Virginia is leading research to develop high-value products from coal feedstock. The Coal TeCC Act will help promote coal innovation in the industrial, defense, agriculture, medical and pharmaceutical industries," Manchin said. "Coal will continue to play an important role in the economy and this important research will ensure we are getting the most value from this important natural resource. As the Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure it becomes law,” “Coal-to-materials manufacturing is a growing high-tech market for coal and its byproducts,” Capito said. “This legislation will advance research and development, as well as commercial deployment for technologies like graphene and carbon fiber. Research and expertise at West Virginia University and NETL in Morgantown put West Virginia at the forefront of this industry in Appalachia.” The Creating Opportunities and Leveraging Technologies for Coal Carbon Act, or COAL TeCC Act, establishes a program within the Department of Energy focused on advancing the research and promotion of coal-derived carbon products, according to Manchin's office. Passage of this will enhance ongoing work at DOE that is being carried out through NETL to utilize coal as a precursor for value added products for alternative, advance uses.

Coal Backer Manchin Comes Out Against Mountaintop Removal Mining -

• Manchin reverses position, says he no longer thinks mountaintop removal is ‘useful’
• Senator also seeks resumption of abandoned National Academies health study

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a past supporter of mountaintop removal mining, said Dec. 17 he’s changed his mind about the practice. “I have come around on utilizing mountaintop removal mining methods and I think the method has exceeded its useful life,” said Manchin, top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and a staunch coal industry advocate, during a confirmation hearing for Lanny Erdos to become the next director of the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Manchin wasn’t immediately available for comment after the hearing.

A Coal Baron Funded Climate Denial as His Company Spiraled Into Bankruptcy - The New York Times— As his coal mining company hurtled into bankruptcy, Robert E. Murray, the former chief executive, paid himself $14 million, handed his successor a $4 million bonus and earmarked nearly $1 million for casting doubt on man-made climate change, new court filings show.The company, Murray Energy, filed for bankruptcy protection in October, reporting $2.7 billion in debts and more than $8 billion in obligations, in large part to pension and health care plans for workers. But those debts appear to have done little to scale back the spending habits of Mr. Murray, a prominent supporter of President Trump who helped engineer dozens of climate change and environmental rollbacks over the past three years.  The 79-year-old coal executive has been a vocal denier of the established science that human activities like the burning of coal are causing climate change and once warned that his dying industry must receive subsidies from the federal government “to make sure grandma doesn’t die on the operating table.”According to filings made public this week, Mr. Murray paid himself $14 million for one year’s wages as chairman of Murray Energy while his then-president, Robert D. Moore, who has since become chairman, earned $9 million annually in addition to his retention bonus.He also funded an array of conservative political action committees as well as groups that deny the existence of climate change and have worked to revoke former President Barack Obama’s regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming emissions. The company gave $300,000 to Government Accountability & Oversight, a group focused on countering organizations that oppose Trump administration environmental rollbacks. An additional $200,000 went to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that maintains that scientists have not proven that human activity is the main cause of rising emissions. And $130,000 was given to the Heartland Institute, which has sponsored climate-change deniers to speak at United Nations climate change conferences.

U.S. Senate passes McConnell bill protecting coal miner pensions (WKYT) – The United States Senate has passed the Bipartisan American Miners Act of 2019, introduced by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY,) Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV,) and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV.) “I personally told President Trump and my Congressional colleagues that this was a top priority for me and for thousands of Kentuckians in need,” said Majority Leader McConnell. “I’m proud the Senate approved legislation today including our Bipartisan American Miners Act to help Kentucky coal miners, retirees, and their families.” The bill secures funding for the 1974 Miner Pension Plan to prevent its insolvency. It also expands health care benefits provided under McConnell’s HELP for Coal Miners Health Care Act of 2017 to the orphaned coal miners whose benefits have been put in jeopardy due to recent coal company bankruptcies. These actions will secure the pensions of 92,000 coal miners and protect health care benefits for 13,000 miners. The bill now heads to President Trump for his signature.

A floating nuclear power plant has started to produce electricity in a remote region of Russia - A floating nuclear power plant has been connected to the grid and has commenced electricity production for the first time in a remote region of Russia. In a statement Thursday, Russia’s state-owned nuclear company Rosatom said the Akademik Lomonosov had started to produce electricity in the “isolated Chaun-Bilibino network” in the port of Pevek, Chukotka, which is located in the Far East area of Russia. Described by Rosatom as the planet’s “only floating power unit,” it’s envisaged that the Akademik Lomonosov — which set sail from the Russian port of Murmansk in August — will become an important part of the Chukotka area’s power supply. It has two KLT-40C reactors which have a capacity of 35 megawatts each. While Rosatom describes the facility as a “first of a kind”, the history of floating power plants stretches back decades: the U.S. converted a ship called the STURGIS into a floating nuclear power plant during the 1960s. Rosatom says the floating nuclear power plant is suited to remote areas and “island states” which need stable and in its own words, “green,” sources of energy. Interest in the technology has come from North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, it claims. Rosatom has previously said that it is already working on second-generation floating power units that will be constructed in a series and available for export.

Columbia Gas planning $135 million pipeline project for central Ohio-- Columbia Gas is proposing construction on a new $135 million pipeline to be built in central Ohio. The company says a new supply of gas is needed in order to keep providing reliable service to old and new customers in the region. The project, which is called the Columbus Northern Loop project, is designed to bring natural gas from pipelines east of where supplies are plentiful to areas north and west of Columbus. The company says several other recent projects have already been finished, which have set the stage for the Northern Loop project. A company spokesperson says the project will cost $135 million, but could not offer any further breakdown regarding exact costs, stating that the project is in the early planning stages. The final phase is currently in the planning stages and will run from southern Delaware County to southwest Union County, where it will connect to the existing gas distribution system. Another part of the initiative, called the Marysville Connector project, is designed to bring natural gas to Union County. Columbia Gas says it will meet with property owners, public officials and other community members during the construction. Crews are planning to conduct land surveys and meet with property owners to gather information regarding where the new line could be located. The company says it hopes to have approval for the complete project secured by 2021. Construction would start in 2022 and the gas lines would go into service sometime during that same year.

Exxon Well Blast Caused Huge Methane Leak in Ohio, Study Shows --An Exxon Mobil Corp. natural gas well in Ohio released more methane into the atmosphere during a blowout in 2018 than some countries do in a year, according to a team of American and Dutch scientists.  Using data from satellites, the researchers found that a well explosion in Belmont county on Feb. 15 of that year discharged the potent greenhouse gas at a rate of about 80 tons an hour and lasted for nearly 20 days. The end result was more methane in the air than the oil and gas industries of France, Norway and the Netherlands emit over a 12-month period, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We deeply regret the event occurred and have instituted systematic well design and monitoring procedures to prevent it from happening again,” Exxon said in response to questions. Methane is 84 times more conducive to global warming than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. All the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, including Exxon, have pledged to reduce methane emissions, which they see as an Achilles Heel for the industry.Satellites are beginning to track large accidental emissions that until recently remained undetected. A similar study this year unveiled a giantmethane plume in Asia. “Our work demonstrates the strength and effectiveness of routine satellite measurements in detecting and quantifying greenhouse gas emission from unpredictable events,” the scientists said in the study. “In this specific case, the magnitude of a relatively unknown yet extremely large accidental leakage was revealed.”

 A Methane Leak, Seen From Space, Proves to Be Far Larger Than Thought - The first satellite designed to continuously monitor the planet for methane leaks made a startling discovery last year: A little known gas-well accident at an Ohio fracking site was in fact one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the United States.  The findings by a Dutch-American team of scientists, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark a step forward in using space technology to detect leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, from oil and gas sites worldwide.  The scientists said the new findings reinforced the view that methane releases like these, which are difficult to predict, could be far more widespread than previously thought.   “With a single observation, a single overpass, we’re able to see plumes of methane coming from large emission sources,”  Scientists also said the new findings reinforced the view that methane emissions from oil installations are far more widespread than previously thought. The blowout, in February 2018 at a natural gas well run by an Exxon Mobil subsidiary in Belmont County, Ohio, released more methane than the entire oil and gas industries of many nations do in a year, the research team found. The Ohio episode triggered about 100 residents within a one-mile radius to evacuate their homes while workers scrambled to plug the well. At the time, the Exxon subsidiary, XTO Energy, said it could not immediately determine how much gas had leaked. But the European Space Agency had just launched a satellite with a new monitoring instrument called Tropomi, designed to collect more accurate measurements of methane. The satellite’s measurements showed that, in Ohio in the 20 days it took for Exxon to plug the well, about 120 metric tons of methane an hour were released. That amounted to twice the rate of the largest known methane leak in the United States, from an oil and gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, Calif., in 2015, though that event lasted longer and had higher emissions overall.

New satellite technology reveals Ohio gas leak released 60K tons of methane - A new report revealed that the first satellite designed to monitor the earth with a new instrument called TROPOMI for methane leaks discovered that an accident at a fracking site in Belmont County, Ohio, in February 2018 resulted in one of the worst methane leaks ever recorded in the US. The methane released into the atmosphere from the Ohio fracking site exceeded the annual output of all but three European countries.The findings were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists from the EDF, SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research, and Utrecht University.The article is titled, “Satellite observations reveal extreme methane leakage from a natural gas well blowout.”  Methane is a potent human-made greenhouse gas that is responsible for more than 25% of global warming. The oil and gas industry is the largest source of methane. In the first two decades after its release, methane is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide.As the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) reports, “Emissions from the Ohio event would have totaled about 60,000 tons. That figure is comparable to one-quarter of the entire state of Ohio’s reported annual oil and gas methane emissions.”The EDF continues: For example, a five-year series of studies organized by EDF recently concluded that emissions from the US oil and gas sector were a full 60% higher than EPA estimates. These factors underscore the importance of regular, widespread monitoring and measurement, and explain the rapidly growing interest in space-based instruments, which have the potential to provide comprehensive estimates of methane emissions, how much, and where.  TROPOMI provides a more accurate way to track methane leaks. And bravo to the Dutch and American scientists for uncovering the truth about the extent of the Ohio leak’s damage. The bad news: This leak was incredibly damaging to the environment. Further, the fact that emissions from fossil fuels turned out to be much worse than we originally thought, in general, is extremely alarming.

Scientists Say Blowout At Ohio ExxonMobil Site Was Worst Methane Leak In US History - Details are finally being revealed about a terrible blowout that occurred last year at a natural gas site in Ohio. The incident happened at a site owned by an ExxonMobil subsidiary known as XTO Energy, and was reportedly one of the largest leaks of its kind in the history of the country.The full extent of the blowout was never reported by the company but was discovered later by a group of scientists looking over satellite data of the area. A team of 15 Dutch and American researchers found that a blowout occurred on Feb. 15, 2018, at a natural gas well in Belmont County, Ohio. The leak that caused the blowout was reportedly the result of controversial fracking practicing at the well. The data showed that the methane emission rate of the leak was about 120 ± 32 metric tons per hour, which is twice the emission rate of the largest accidental methal leak in United States history, the Aliso Canyon event that took place in California in 2015.At the time of the leak, over 100 residents who were within a mile of the site were forced to evacuate their homes as workers rushed to get the situation under control. Meanwhile, XTO Energy did their best to downplay the severity of the situation, and insist that it was not possible for them to calculate exactly how much methane was leaked.Steven Hamburg, EDF’s chief scientist and one of the new study’s co-authors told the New York Times that these types of incidents probably occur on a regular basis, and researchers are hoping to be able to better understand precisely when they do happen so they can form a better opinion about whether or not fracking natural gas is safe and environmentally friendly. “Is this a once a year kind of event? Once a week? Once a day? Knowing that will make a big difference in trying to fully understand what the aggregate emissions are from oil and gas,”Hamburg said.

A Fracking Explosion In Ohio Created One Of Worst Methane Leaks In History – WOSU - In February 2018, an explosion at a fracking site in Belmont County, near the Ohio-West Virginia border, forced residents within a 1-mile radius to evacuate their homes for several weeks. A study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed that the accident resulted in one of the largest methane leaks ever recorded in the U.S. Powhatan Point fire chief Tom Nelms was among the first to respond after the explosion. "At that time, that day, there were probably 50-80 people," Nelms said. The fire lasted for three days, but some people weren't able to return to their homes for weeks. Nelms says he knew the methane leak was a big deal, but at the time no one really understood the magnitude of it. Until now. A satellite designed to monitor Earth for methane leaks revealed that accident was one of the largest leaks recorded in the U.S.“The blowout and the period of time it was occurring contributed 60,000 tons of methane to the atmosphere, and it represents in the case of Ohio one-quarter of the annual emissions coming from the oil and gas industry,” says Steven Hamburg, one of the study authors and the chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund.In fact, the Belmont County incident released more methane than the reported emissions of oil and gas industries of entire European countries.“Methane is responsible for one-quarter of the warming that we’re currently experiencing,” Hamburg says. “It’s a very potent but short lived green house gas, so reducing those emissions will have the biggest impact on slowing the rate of warming.” He says because of the nature of the odorless, colorless gas, it’s really hard to know when a leak has occurred. “None of us pay attention to that which we can’t see or measure,” he says. “We’re giving the tools to be able to measure and quantify emissions around the globe which we didn’t have before.” The fracking site is owned by Exxon Mobil subsidiary XTO Energy. In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman for Exxon says they “regret the incident occurred, and have instituted systematic well design and monitoring procedures to prevent it from happening again.” Hamburg says this satellite can be used not just to hold companies like Exxon accountable, but also to help them reduce their methane emissions. That, he says, is in everyone’s best interest.

Gulfport Energy Corporation Announces Divestiture of Non-Core Assets for a Total Value in Excess of $100 Million and Provides an Update on Accretive Debt Repurchases -- Gulfport Energy Corporation announced today that the Company has entered into agreements to divest certain non-core assets and provided an update on the continuation of discounted debt repurchases.   Gulfport recently entered into a definitive agreement to divest its water infrastructure assets across its SCOOP position to a third-party water service provider. Gulfport expects to receive $50 million in cash upon closing and has an opportunity to earn potential additional incentive payments in excess of $50 million over the next 15 years, subject to Gulfport’s ability to meet certain thresholds which will be driven by, among other things, the Company’s future development program and future water production levels. The agreement contains no minimum volume commitments. The Company anticipates closing the transaction during January 2020. Scotiabank served as financial advisor to Gulfport on the divestiture of its water infrastructure assets. Separately, Gulfport also recently entered into an agreement to divest certain non-operated interests in the Utica Shale for approximately $29.0 million in cash. The Company anticipates closing the transaction prior to year-end 2019.    In addition, the previously announced sale of certain overriding royalty interests associated with assets Gulfport held in the Bakken closed on December 11, 2019 and, net of purchase price adjustments, Gulfport received approximately $7 million of total proceeds.

The Plastics Pipeline: A Surge of New Production Is on the Way - - As public concern about plastic pollution rises, consumers are reaching for canvas bags, metal straws, and reusable water bottles. But while individuals fret over images of oceanic garbage gyres, the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are pouring billions of dollars into new plants intended to make millions more tons of plastic than they now pump out. Companies like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Saudi Aramco are ramping up output of plastic — which is made from oil and gas, and their byproducts — to hedge against the possibility that a serious global response to climate change might reduce demand for their fuels, analysts say. Petrochemicals, the category that includes plastic, now account for 14 percent of oil use, and are expected to drive half of oil demand growth between now and 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The World Economic Forum predicts plastic production will double in the next 20 years.“In the context of a world trying to shift off of fossil fuels as an energy source, this is where [oil and gas companies] see the growth,” said Steven Feit, a staff attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, an advocacy group. And because the American fracking boom is unearthing, along with natural gas, large amounts of the plastic feedstock ethane, the United States is a big growth area for plastic production. With natural gas prices low, many fracking operations are losing money, so producers have been eager to find a use for the ethane they get as a byproduct of drilling.“They’re looking for a way to monetize it,“ Feit said. “You can think of plastic as a kind of subsidy for fracking.”America’s petrochemical hub has historically been the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, with a stretch along the lower Mississippi River dubbed “Cancer Alley”because of the impact of toxic emissions . Producers are expanding their footprint there with a slew of new projects, and proposals for more. They are also seeking to create a new plastics corridor in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, where fracking wells are rich in ethane. Shell is building a $6 billion ethane cracking plant — a facility that turns ethane into ethylene, a building block for many kinds of plastic — in Monaca, Pennsylvania, 25 miles northwest of Pittsburgh. It is expected to produce up 1.6 million tons of plastic annually after it opens in the early 2020s. It’s just the highest profile piece of what the industry hails as a “renaissance in U.S. plastics manufacturing,” whose output goes not only into packaging and single-use items such as cutlery, bottles, and bags, but also longer-lasting uses like construction materials and parts for cars and airplanes.

Environmentalists Question Future Gas Storage Hub In Light Of Federal Spending Language - Language included in the federal spending deal Congress passed this week could imperil a major natural gas storage project planned for the Ohio Valley that is seeking a $1.9 billion federal loan guarantee, according to environmental advocates. In June, an amendment by Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar from Minnesota and Pramila Jayapal of Washington, sought to clarify requirements for the Department of Energy’s Title XVII Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program. The program was designed to finance clean energy and advanced technology projects. The amendment stipulates the program should only be used “for projects that avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases and employ new or significantly improved technologies as compared to commercial technologies in service in the United States upon issuance of the loan guarantee.” Language from the amendment was included in the guidance document, or manager’s report, associated with the $1.4 trillion spending package snaking its way through Congress this week. The newly-passed spending package, which the president is expected to sign, provides $29 million to the Title XVII program. A screenshot of the manager's report associated with the 2020 federal spending bill package, H.R. 1865. Some environmental groups argue the new language makes it clear the so-called Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub, a fossil fuel storage project, should not qualify. The project, which has been in the works for nearly a decade, would provide underground storage for natural gas liquids like ethane, which are used to make plastics and other products. It has the support of West Virginia's Congressional delegation and Justice administration. Project developers are currently seeking a federally-backed $1.9 billion loan under the Title XVII program.

Pennsylvania correlates natural gas fracking with quakes –  Pennsylvania environmental regulators say there‘s a likely correlation between a natural gas company‘s fracking operation and a series of minor earthquakes in western Pennsylvania last year. The state‘s Department of Environmental Protection revealed its findings Friday. The quakes were recorded in April in Lawrence County, about 50 miles north of Pittsburgh and three-quarters of a mile from a natural gas well owned by Houston-based Hilcorp Energy Co. They were too weak to be felt by humans and no damage was reported. Fracking is a method to extract gas or oil from underground shale rock. It has been tied to earthquakes in neighboring Ohio and other states, but never in Pennsylvania, the nation‘s No. 2 natural gas-producing state. Hilcorp stopped fracking at the well pad after the quakes.

Pa. rule to tackle air pollution from oil and gas wells advances — A proposed rule to cut down on air pollution released by Pennsylvania’s thousands of existing oil and gas wells is expected to eliminate tens of thousands of tons of methane emissions each year — but it won’t target the greenhouse gas directly nor will it require leak surveys at the vast majority of the state’s older wells.The state’s environmental rule-making board voted to advance the proposal on Tuesday for a period of public comment that will open early next year.The long-anticipated rule was promised by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2016 as part of a broader strategy to shrink the amount of climate-warming gases wafting out of both new and existing equipment used for producing Pennsylvania’s oil and gas.Instead of directly curbing methane, the regulation builds on a federal rule that targets smog-forming gases called volatile organic compounds released from tanks, pumps, compressors and leaky parts.Natural gas is mostly methane — a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more damaging at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide in the first two decades after it is released. Tamping down methane leaks from the oil and gas sector is seen as a relatively quick, cheap and effective step among more dramatic shifts in energy use that will be necessary to avoid the worst effects of climate change.“The new regulations will help identify and prevent leaks from existing wells and infrastructure, while protecting the environment, reducing climate change and helping businesses reduce the waste of a valuable product,” Mr. Wolf said. Unprocessed gas from Marcellus and Utica shale wells in Pennsylvania can range from 75% to 98% methane and from 0.1% to 10% volatile organic compounds by volume, according to state Department of Environmental Protection data.Volatile organic compounds are building blocks for ground-level ozone pollution, or smog, “a public health and welfare hazard that contributes to asthma and other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis,” DEP Secretary Patrick McDonnell said.DEP says the proposed controls will reduce volatile organic compound emissions by about 4,400 tons per year and methane emissions by about 75,600 tons per year.The annual methane reductions are the greenhouse gas equivalent of taking 364,000 passenger vehicles off the road for a year.

Pa. DEP and major oil companies agree: Trump administration shouldn't roll back methane rules - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Several groups that often are at odds over environmental rules are on the same side when it comes to easing methane regulations at oil and gas sites.The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection joined major oil and gas companies, environmental groups and lawmakers from both parties last week in urging the Trump administration not to go through with itsproposal to eliminate methane control requirements from well sites and pipelines across the country.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to roll back rulesadopted in 2016 that require companies to identify and stop methane leaks from new and modified oil and gas production, pipeline and storage equipment.The agency said existing controls on a separate class of chemicals that is also present in oil and gas — called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs — make direct regulation of methane redundant and unnecessary.The agency is also proposing an alternate rule to exempt the oil and gas storage and transmission sector from both the methane and volatile organic compound regulations.But major companies that would see restrictions lifted on their operations if EPA finalizes the rule — including Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Equinor and Canonsburg-based Equitrans Midstream — wrote that they want national rules directly targeting methane. Several of the companies said that easing methane regulations will erode public confidence in natural gas as a cleaner fossil fuel at a time when addressing climate change is an international priority. Comments on the proposals were due last week.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns of 'catastrophic' consequences of a potential fracking ban in Pa. - A new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns that Pennsylvania could lose as many as 600,000 jobs if the state ever moved to ban fracking, the controversial practice used to extract natural gas from the earth.Such a policy would have “catastrophic” consequences, according to Marty Durbin,president of the chamber’s Global Energy Institute.The study, which does not take into account climate or public health concerns, concluded Keystone State would lose 65,000 oil and natural gas jobs alone between 2021 and 2025, and take a $261 billion hit to the state GDP. That’s roughly a third of the state’s current GDP, according to federal data.The document also looked at a number of other oil and gas-producing swing states that will play a critical role in the 2020 elections.  Nationally, the study predicted higher energy prices, a $7.1 trillion GDP hit, and 19 million jobs lost by 2025, if the U.S. banned the industrial process.   The numbers include both direct and indirect effects.  “In 2016, the notion was considered an extreme position, but today unfortunately we’ve seen many mainstream presidential candidates join in,” Durbin said in a press call.

DEP Sounds Alarm Over Revised Climate Change Predictions  - In a new sobering report on climate change, the state Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday suggested the impact of rising seas could be much more dramatic along the New Jersey coast than previously projected, and twice as severe as elsewhere on the globe. The study, commissioned by DEP and prepared by Rutgers University and leading climate-change experts, portrayed a scenario that might force state policymakers to take more aggressive actions to deal with rising ocean levels. Whether that includes potential limits on building in coastal areas — as advocated by some conservation groups — remains to be seen. But the increasing likelihood coastal areas will be flood-prone in the future may boost those prospects. ‘’New Jersey has much to lose if we do not act quickly and decisively to adapt to the realities of climate change,’’ said DEP Commissioner Catherine McCabe. “These projections now serve as important baselines for developing policy directions, including changes to land use regulation that New Jersey adopt to address these challenges.’’ The report examines a variety of scenarios, based on differing greenhouse-gas emission rates. The highest — consistent with current global greenhouse gas-emission scenarios — projects a rise in sea levels ranging from 2.3 feet to as much as 6.3 feet by 2100, under the most aggressive carbon-pollution scenario. Perhaps more worrying, McCabe suggested so much greenhouse gas has already been spewed and baked into global warming predictions that severe effects by mid-century are inevitable.

Permanent ban on fracking proposed - A bill introduced Friday by Sen. Jennifer Metzger, D-Middletown, in the state Senate would permanently ban horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and gelled propane hydraulic fracturing in New York state. New York is home to the Marcellus Shale, a source of oil and gas that also lies beneath much of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania. Roughly 18,700 square miles of the shale formation are in New York state. Metzger’s legislation also bans a practice called gelled propane fracturing, which uses propane gas because it is heavier than air.Metzger writes in her legislative justification that the legislation codifies the findings of the state DEC’s 2015 State Environmental Quality Review act findings statement on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Metzger said since 2015, there have been additional studies that show public health harms related to hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, including increased hospitalization rates, respiratory illness, reproductive risks including low birth weight and preterm births and dangers to at-risk populations. “The evidence is clear: Horizontal drilling and HVHF pose significant and unacceptable risks to New York’s drinking water, air quality, environment, climate, and public health,” Metzger wrote.“The legislative ban on Horizontal Drilling and High-Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF) and Gelled Propane Hydraulic Fracturing (GPHF) aligns with New York’s long tradition of pioneering leadership on environmental protection, public health, and climate change.” Metzger also cites the 2016 EPA report, “Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources in the United States,” as evidence of environmental issues. In 2010, Congress asked the EPA to investigate the safety of hydraulic fracturing. A draft report was issued in 2015 followed by the final report in 2016.

U.S. denies N.Y. rehearing request on Constitution natgas pipe permit -  (Reuters) - U.S. energy regulators have denied New York’s request for a rehearing on its decision that state environmental regulators waived their authority to issue or deny a water quality certification for Williams Cos Inc’s Constitution natural gas pipeline: * The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week reaffirmed its prior decision, which New York had challenged. FERC had ruled that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYDEC), because it took more than a year to reach a decision, waived its authority under section 401 of the U.S. Clean Water Act. * Officials at the NYDEC and Williams were not immediately available for comment. * Analysts at Height Capital Markets in Washington, D.C., said “the project still has a long road ahead given New York’s resistance to fossil fuel infrastructure development.” * Constitution and other gas pipelines into New York have been stuck in a nationwide battle between energy companies seeking more pipelines and environmental groups and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who favor boosting investment in energy efficiency and renewables. * In addition to Constitution, other gas pipelines have also been held up due to state opposition, including National Fuel Gas Co’s Northern Access from Pennsylvania to New York and Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement from Pennsylvania to New Jersey and New York. * Constitution is designed to transport 0.65 billion cubic feet per day of gas 125 miles (201 kilometers) from the Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania to New York. In 2018, New York state consumed about 3.7 bcfd of gas, up from 3.4 bcfd in 2017, according to federal energy data.

Fracking ban: Massive win or missed opportunity? -  Tuesday marked five years since Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration first said it would ban large-scale hydraulic fracturing, the controversial method used to free gas from underground rock formations like the Marcellus Shale that stretches across the Southern Tier and Catskills. New York’s decision made it the first shale-bearing state to back a ban. And it put an end to a remarkable six-year period of debate, study and protest, where activists, landowners and gas companies clashed everywhere from small-town board meetings in the Southern Tier to the halls of power in Albany. The announcement — slowly unveiled at the state Capitol during a two-hour meeting of Cuomo’s cabinet a month after he was re-elected — was a huge victory for environmentalists and activists who galvanized across the state to fight for a ban. They warned the chemicals injected deep underground in the fracking process, as well as the associated boost in truck traffic and industrial activity, had the potential to wreak havoc on the state’s pristine waters, air and landscape. This is the story of how a single governmental decision five years ago has helped shape energy policy in New York and continues to affect the landowners, activists, regulators and energy industry representatives who spent years working to make their case.

U.S. natgas futures rise 2% on cold forecasts for this week and in January - U.S. natural gas futures rose 2% on Monday on forecasts confirming cold weather and high heating demand this week, despite an outlook showing next week will be warmer than previously expected. Traders noted the latest weather forecast also called for a likely return of cold in January. Front-month gas futures for January delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) rose 4.5 cents, or 2.0%, to settle at $2.341 per million British thermal units, the highest since Dec. 5. For the year, the front-month was on track to drop about 20%, which would be its third annual decline in a row and its biggest fall since 2017, when the contract lost about 21%. Meteorologists projected the weather in the U.S. Lower 48 states will turn from colder than normal from Dec. 17-19 to warmer from Dec. 21-29 before turning colder again on Dec. 31. That is much warmer than last week, when the outlook was for colder from Dec. 17-22 and Dec. 27-28. With the weather expected to moderate, Refinitiv predicted demand in the Lower 48 states, including exports, would fall from an average of 127.0 billion cubic feet per day this week to 121.4 bcfd next week. That is much lower than Refinitiv’s forecast on Friday of 127.4 bcfd for this week and 127.6 bcfd for next week. Gas flows to liquefied natural gas (LNG) export plants rose to 8.0 bcfd on Sunday from 7.9 bcfd on Saturday, according to Refinitiv data. That compared with an average of 8.0 bcfd last week and an all-time high of 8.2 bcfd on Dec. 8 with the ramp-up of new liquefaction trains at Freeport LNG’s plant in Texas and Cameron LNG’s plant in Louisiana. Separately, Kinder Morgan Inc’s Elba Island LNG export plant in Georgia sent out its first cargo over the weekend. Pipeline flows to Mexico, meanwhile, eased to 5.0 bcfd on Sunday from 5.1 bcfd on Saturday, according to Refinitiv data. That compares with an average of 5.4 bcfd last week and an all-time daily high of 6.2 bcfd on Sept. 18. 

Warmer Weather Hits Natural Gas Prices Again --The natural gas market did well in shrugging off warmer changes in the weather forecast since last week, but yet another day with a lowering of projected weather demand finally sent prompt month prices back under the 2.30 level, at least as of this writing.   Daily warmer forecast adjustments have been a common theme recently, with last night's weather models making no exception to this "rule". Last night's forecast demand profile from the GEFS and ECMWF EPS, compared to 24 hours prior:  All of the warmer changes now have us projecting this December's total demand (GWDD count) to be very close to the warm December one year ago.  This has been quite the change from the anomalous cold seen back in November, but the warming was something we had alerted clients to even back in early November, as the cold pattern was in full stride.  With less than two weeks left in December, and the holidays looming, attention is now on January, and whether cold makes a triumphant return to give a boost to natural gas prices, or if warm continues to win out.

US natgas production projected to slow considerably - The just-released EIA December Drilling Productivity Report (DPR) forecasts natural gas production from the U.S.’s seven most productive basins/plays will rise just 77 million cubic feet per day from December to January – a month-to-month increase that in previous reports neared 1 billion cubic feet per day. Total gas production from the seven basins/plays in January will creep up to 85.60 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), from 85.52 Bcf/d in December, the Energy Information Administration’s monthly projection shows. (All numbers are rounded.) The oil and gas industry slowdown manifests itself in another jaw-dropping way within the new DPR, Kallanish Energy reports. Gas production in Appalachia (the Marcellus and Utica Shale plays combined) is expected to actually drop 74 Mmcf/d from December to January. Total production will slide to 33.43 Bcf/d, from 33.51 Bcf/d. Other basins/plays seeing production dialed back from December to January include the Anadarko, down 132 Mmcf/d, to 7.52 Bcf/d, and the Eagle Ford Shale play, down 69 Mmcf/d, to 6.78 Bcf/d in January. The Permian Basin’s natural gas production during the December-to-January timeframe is projected to increase by 213 Mmcf/d, to 17.08 Bcf/d, from 16.86 Bcf/d in December. The Haynesville Shale is expected to rise 123 Mmcf/d from December to January, to 12.09 Bcf/d, from 11.96 Bcf/d. The Niobrara gas production is projected to increase 13 Mmcf/d, to 5.59 Bcf/d, from 5.58 Bcf/d. Bakken natural gas production should barely move, according to the new DPR, increasing just 3 Mmcf/d, to 3.12 Bcf/d in January from 3.12 Bcf/d in December.

US working natural gas in underground storage decreases by 107 Bcf: EIA — US working natural gas volumes in underground storage dropped by 107 Bcf last week, which was more than market expectations, as NYMEX Henry Hub futures made only modest gains following the announcement. Storage inventories fell to 3.411 Tcf for the week ended December 13, the US Energy Information Administration reported Thursday morning. The pull was more than an S&P Global Platts' survey of analysts calling for a 93 Bcf draw. Responses ranged for a draw of 80 Bcf to 102 Bcf. The withdrawal was below the 132 Bcf pull reported during the corresponding week in 2018, as well as the five-year average draw of 112 Bcf, according to EIA data. As a result, stocks were 619 Bcf, or 22.1%, above the year-ago level of 2.793 Tcf and 9 Bcf, or 0.3%, below the five-year average of 3.420 Tcf. The balance-of-winter NYMEX Henry Hub strip continues to reflect an oversupplied market, although historically the market has been quick to rebalance when prices move too much in either direction. Between last week and this week, prices got as high as $2.31/MMBtu Monday, but quickly retreated on mild weather forecast updates. The draw was more than the 73 Bcf pulled from working gas in storage reported for the week ended December 6. US supply-demand fundamentals for the week ended December 13 were roughly 3.4 Bcf/d tighter than the week before as colder weather boosted demand from the residential and commercial and power sectors while LNG feedgas demand continued higher, according to S&P Global Platts Analytics. Balances moved much tighter on a rise in weather-driven heating demand. Total supplies are up 0.7 Bcf/d on the week to an average 96.6 Bcf/d, with much of the increase driven by a rise in net Canadian imports to meet higher demand. Downstream, total demand is up 7.4 Bcf/d on the week at an average 116.8 Bcf/d, with gains driven primarily by higher home heating demand and a roughly 1.6 Bcf/d increase in power plant deliveries, according to Platts Analytics. LNG feedgas demand hit new highs in recent weeks on increased deliveries in the Gulf Coast region, setting a record of 8.5 Bcf/d Wednesday. LNG feedgas demand is up 0.1 Bcf/d for the week ending December 20 compared with the week prior. A Platts Analytics forecast calls for a massive draw of 143 Bcf for the week ending December 20, which would be more than 40 Bcf stronger than the five-year average.

EIA's 107 Bcf Storage Draw Trims Losses for Natural Gas Futures - The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Thursday morning reported a massive 107 Bcf withdrawal from natural gas storage for the week ending Dec. 13.The reported draw was far above consensus estimates of a pull in the low 90s Bcf and was even several Bcf above the highest projection in market surveys. However, the 107 Bcf withdrawal was still far below the 132 Bcf withdrawal EIA recorded in the year-ago period and several Bcf below the 112 Bcf five-year average draw.Nevertheless, the triple-digit pull took the natural gas market by surprise, with prices responding immediately to the latest EIA data. About five minutes before the 10:30 a.m. ET report, the January Nymex gas futures contract was trading at $2.257, down 2.9 cents from Wednesday’s settle, as weather models extended the coming span of mild temperatures further into January. As the EIA print crossed trading desks, however, the prompt month strengthened to trade less than penny lower at $2.278. February was also nearly flat at $2.261. By 11 a.m., the January contract was just two-tenths of a cent lower at $2.284. February was up fractionally to $2.266. “A massive draw. Way beyond expectations,” Ahead of the report, a Reuters poll of 16 analysts estimated withdrawals ranging from 68 Bcf to 102 Bcf, with a median draw of 92 Bcf. NGI expected to see a draw of 86 Bcf.Broken down by region, the Midwest reported the largest withdrawal of 40 Bcf, and the East came in second with a 29 Bcf pull, according to EIA. The South Central withdrew 26 Bcf out of storage, including a stout 24 Bcf pull from nonsalt facilities and a 2 Bcf pull from salts.“The South Central is the biggest miss here,” said independent weather forecaster Corey Lefkov. “Don’t mess with Texas.”Total working gas in storage as of Dec. 13 stood at 3,411 Bcf, 618 Bcf higher than the year-ago period and 9 Bcf below the five-year average, according to EIA.Looking ahead, the combination of low cash prices, max power burns and record liquefied natural gas demand could make for some volatile days ahead. However, “if we torch up the first two weeks of January, my view is that weather always wins in wintertime,” Paltrinieri said.NatGasWeather meteorologist Rhett Milne agreed and said although weather models are starting to tease at colder air arriving in early January, it’s “going to be a painful stretch of weather to get through during the next 10-12 days.”

Elizabeth Warren’s Massachusetts Loves Natural Gas – Forbes  - Elizabeth Warren has pledged to ban fracking when she becomes president of the United States. This would cause real problems for her home state. The Massachusetts economy depends on imported natural gas. In a single year, methane supplies around 465 trillion Btu of energy, or some 50% more than second place gasoline. Massachusetts, however, produces no natural gas itself, making energy imports as integral to the state’s functioning as anywhere.  Since the 1970s, Massachusetts has seen a steady shift to heating with natural gas in households, from a greater reliance on heating oil. Especially in the shale revolution era since 2008, natural gas is cheaper, less volatile, and has lower greenhouse gas emissions. Over 1.5 million homes in Massachusetts use gas as the primary source of heating.Mass.gov reports that over 50% of Massachusetts households use gas for heating, with 15% using electricity, which is becoming more gas-based as well. Oil though still supplies 27% of heating, meaning that there is room for more gas when it is cold outside, via both gas heating and electricity heating. Natural gas is surely a beloved product in The Bay State: on average per capita, Massachusettsans use 64,000 cubic feet of gas each year. Up from 50% a decade ago, natural gas supplies almost 70% of Massachusetts’ electricity, one of the highest gas reliances in the country and nearly double the national average of 38% (heck, gas producing juggernaut Texas is only at 50%!). This extension of gas power’s share in Massachusetts, however, has nicely helped reduce the state’s power sector CO2 emissions by 45% since 2010. Eight of the top 10 generation plants in Massachusetts are gas-based. In contrast, wind supplies less than 1%, with solar at 15%. And officials in Massachusetts have outlined a goal to end the sale of gasoline vehicles in the state by 2040. The goal for more electric cars, for instance, could surge the state’s gas power demand by 40-50%.

Natural Gas And Oil Industry Stalwarts Fueling Biden Campaign - Former Vice President Joe Biden, 77, has a multitude of people tied to the oil and gas industry on his campaign staff, according to a new report by Real Sludge. Heather Zichal, the climate advisor for the Biden campaign, used to be a board member at Cheniere Energy, a natural gas company. Andrew Goldman, a former adviser to Biden and a current fundraiser, is the co-founder of natural gas company Western LNG. And Unite the County, the SuperPac that is supporting him, has a former gas lobbyist on its board, Sludge said.  But the most dangerous connection to the gas and oil industry is Biden’s campaign co-chairman Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond. Richmond has been a steady vote in favor of the expansion of the production and exporting of natural gas and oil. He voted in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline and “voted in favor of a bill from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) that would undermine the environmental review process for natural gas pipelines by stating that all pipelines that transport 0.14 billion cubic feet per day or less should be immediately approved,” Sludge reported. Richmond also voted for bills to exempt cross-border pipelines from environmental review, reverse the crude oil export ban, expand offshore drilling and block the EPA from regulating the disposal of toxic coal ash. “This is all deeply concerning,” Stephen O’Hanlon, the communications director of Sunrise Movement told Sludge. “No presidential candidate is going to get taken seriously on climate change if they’re funded by and taking advice from current and former fossil fuel executives, and choosing to take cues from members of Congress who’ve put the interests of oil and gas donors above the health and well-being of their constituents.”

Joe Biden's Campaign Co-Chair is a Big Oil and Gas Booster - Former Vice President Joe Biden has surrounded himself with people tied to the natural gas industry for his 2020 presidential campaign. His climate adviser, Heather Zichal, is a former board member of natural gas company Cheniere Energy, while one of his fundraisers is a cofounder of natural gas company Western LNG. In addition, the super PAC supporting his candidacy has a former gas lobbyist on its board.  But there is another Biden campaign figure whose oil and gas industry connections have not been examined: Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond, whom Biden selected in May to serve as his campaign co-chairman. Despite representing a low-lying Louisiana district that could be one of the areas in the U.S. most immediately impacted by climate change, Richmond has voted reliably in favor of expanding production and exports of natural gas and oil. His voting record is one of the most fossil fuel industry-friendly of all Democrats in Congress.  In 2015, Richmond was one of 28 House Democrats to vote in favor of approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. Last year, he voted in favor of a bill from Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) that would undermine the environmental review process for natural gas pipelines by stating that all pipelines that transport 0.14 billion cubic feet per day or less should be immediately approved. Richmond, a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, has voted in favor of many Republican bills opposed by environmentalists over the years, including Rep. Markwayne Mullin’s (R-Okla.) bill to exempt cross-border pipelines from environmental review, Rep. Joe Barton’s (R-Texas) billto reverse the crude oil export ban, Rep. Doc Hastings’ (R-Wash.) bill to expand offshore drilling, and Rep. David McKinley’s (R-W.V.) bill to block the Environment Protection Agency from regulating the disposal of toxic coal ash.

 EQT Head Tells W.Va. Lawmakers Natural Gas Drillers May Need Some ‘Help’ - The head of natural gas driller EQT Corporation told members of the West Virginia Legislature the company intends to ramp up the size of drilling projects to hedge against projected low natural gas prices. To accomplish that, the company may need help from lawmakers when it comes to "fractured mineral interests." Toby Rice, EQT’s new president and CEO, testified Monday to the Joint Committee on Natural Gas Development and Joint Standing Committee on Energy. “Gas prices are down. It has a big impact, the difference between $2.75 gas and $2.50 gas,” he said. “A lot of this development doesn’t work as well at $2.50 gas.” EQT is one of the largest natural gas producers in the country, with a focus in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. Rice told lawmakers the company is moving toward “combo development,” or the practice of drilling multiple wells on multiple well pads adjacent to one another. “This allows us to do economies of scale in terms of low gas prices,” he said. Rice argued larger natural gas developments will ultimately be less disruptive to local communities because multiple wells will be drilled simultaneously. He said EQT sees “room for a lot more development in West Virginia.” But to accomplish that, Rice told the Legislature that EQT and other natural gas drillers may need “help at some point.” Large-scale development may require the company to sign deals with up to 1,000 landowners, instead of a few hundred. In West Virginia, often rights to the surface of a property and minerals below it have been severed and do not belong to the same person. Mineral rights are sometimes owned by multiple people. In 2018, the Legislature passed a co-tenancy bill that lessened the burdens on drillers by allowing companies the ability to enter into leases with co-tenants owning 75 percent of the interest in the minerals. Rice said he expects fractured ownership could be an issue to the company’s larger development strategy in some cases, “and maybe co-tenancy doesn’t get us there.”

Lack of Safety System Led to Fatal West Virginia Blasts, CSB Says

• Safety board’s report points to reactive chemical hazards
• Federal rules don’t require comprehensive safety management system

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board blames the lack of an effective safety management system for a pair of explosions that killed three workers at a Midland Resource Recovery facility in Philippi, W.Va., in 2017. The CSB released its final investigation report Dec. 17 on the two pressure vessel explosions that occurred at the natural gas odorization contractor. Midland’s founder and president was one of the workers killed in the explosions, which also injured a worker employed by another contractor. Midland performs odorant work on client sites, transports odorant and odorant equipment, and decommissions and removes obsolete odorization equipment from client sites.

Dominion still sees U.S. Atlantic Coast natgas pipe online in 2022 despite Morgan Stanley's doubts - (Reuters) - Dominion Energy Inc said on Monday it was confident it will complete the proposed $7.3-$7.8 billion Atlantic Coast natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to North Carolina by early 2022, in response to a prediction by investment bank Morgan Stanley that a court decision would likely scuttle the project. “We remain committed to completing the project for the good of our economy and the environment,” Dominion spokesman Aaron Ruby said, noting the company expected to complete construction in late 2021 with final in-service in early 2022. Dominion made its comments after Morgan Stanley said in a report that “Atlantic Coast will likely not be completed given the Fourth Circuit’s likely (in the bank’s view) rejection, for the third time, of a newly issued Biological Opinion and Incidental Take Statement that we expect to come by the first quarter of 2020.” In July, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) second Biological Opinion because the court found the agency’s decisions were arbitrary and would jeopardize the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee and other endangered species. Federal agencies use Biological Opinions when authorizing projects that could adversely affect threatened or endangered species or critical habitats, and issue take statements to limit the number of those species that could be harmed. Ruby said Dominion expects the FWS will issue a new Biological Opinion in the first half of 2020. Dominion suspended construction of the 600-mile (966-kilometer) project in December 2018 after the Fourth Circuit stayed the FWS’ second Biological Opinion. Dominion and its partners, Duke Energy Corp and Southern Co, are also working through a dispute over where the pipeline can cross the Appalachian Trail. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take up the Appalachian Trail case, which is also important for the construction of EQM Midstream Partners LP’s Mountain Valley gas pipe from West Virginia to Virginia. Analysts at Height Capital Markets said they expect the Supreme Court will issue a ruling in May or June 2020. Analysts at Morningstar said they expect the Appalachian Trail dispute will be resolved by a favorable Supreme Court decision or an administrative or legislative solution.

Dominion seeks permits to build new power plant in Chesterfield - Dominion Energy has filed an air permit application with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to build a $600 million combustion turbine peaking power plant in Chesterfield County near Dutch Gap. The four proposed natural gas peaking units – also known as peakers – would only produce electricity during periods of high demand. The plant would generate nearly 1,000 megawatts, enough to power 250,000 homes, and would be built in two phases. The first phase would be operational by spring 2023 and the second phase would be operational by spring 2024. According to Dominion officials, the new plant is necessary to supplement energy produced by renewable resources during periods when energy usage is highest, such as the early morning and early evening hours. For example, solar photovoltaic energy is generated while the sun is shining, but drops off as electricity demand peaks in the evenings when people return home from work and use electric appliances. As the utility company moves toward renewable energy and shutters coal-fired units, officials say peaking units are needed to augment the power generated by renewable resources – those that essentially have an endless supply, such as wind, solar and geothermal – when there’s a lack of sunlight or low wind speed. .

Kalamazoo County parks ban oil, mineral and other natural resource extraction - -- After Kalamazoo County Park Commission was approached by an oil company with an interest in geotechnical exploration at Scotts Mill County Park last year, the county took a look at what preservation policies were needed to protect the future of the parks. On Tuesday, Dec. 17, the county commissioners unanimously approved an 11-point list of preservation efforts outlined by an oil and gas subcommittee and Parks Director David Rachowicz. “For them [the board] to give us clear direction and then empower us to go out and do it and support us along the way, I think we’re going to end up with something that is really a great thing for Kalamazoo County," Rachowicz said. The county has never allowed exploration, production, or extraction of natural resources in parks, Rachowicz said. However, being approached by the oil company brought attention to potential future threats to preserving that county land, and prompted action from commissioners like Vice Chairperson Tracy Hall. “Our parks are our crown jewels and we need to protect them as best we can,” Hall said. The county commissioner said she was surprised with how forward-thinking the policy could be, rather than functioning solely as an immediate solution to oil proposals. Hall and Rachowicz agreed that the policy was designed to make sure there were no unintended consequences in the future that would compromise the park system.

 What a Line 5 shutdown could mean for Michigan energy - If a state lawsuit succeeds in shutting down Enbridge Energy Co.’s controversial Line 5 oil pipeline, Michigan consumers could experience price hikes for fuel, natural gas and propane while increasing the risk of a spill on land, industry experts said. Fuel industry officials and independent experts estimate closing the dual pipelines beneath the Straits of Mackinac would cut off not only thousands of gallons of propane a day in the Upper Peninsula but also light crude shipments to Detroit, Toledo and Sarnia, Ontario, refineries that convert the oil into gas, diesel and jet fuel. The 66-year-old pipeline has been targeted for shutdown by environmentalists who fear the implications of a spill in the Straits of Mackinac could be similar to the 2010 oil spill near the Kalamazoo River in Marshall. Enbridge ended up paying $1.2 billion for the cleanup and restoration of the southern Michigan area that experienced the largest inland oil spill in U.S. history. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's lawsuit seeking the shutdown of Line 5 is pending before an Ingham County circuit judge. In the meantime, Enbridge continues pre-engineering work on a planned $500 million tunnel to house the controversial pipeline, saying it would take four years to build and nearly eliminate any environmental impact of a potential rupture. A cutoff of the Straits segment would likely have an unknown impact on regular unleaded gas prices in Michigan depending on market conditions, according to industry experts. But it would be more likely to spike the price of propane, which many residents in the Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan rely on for heat during the six-month-long cold season. Such a shortage would require a flotilla of trucks to replace the 540,000 barrels-a-day capacity of Line 5, a logistical nightmare that would drive up costs and increase the likelihood of an oil spill on Michigan roads, Enbridge and independent energy analysts said. The price increase for Michigan consumers likely would depend on other circumstances in the industry and the timing of a potential shutdown, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service, an energy consulting firm based in Rockville, Maryland. Environmental groups have questioned the dire industry predictions, arguing that Line 5 is not critical energy infrastructure and could be replaced easily by a handful of extra trucks or rail cars. The shutdown would have a minimal effect on cost, they contend. “While you don’t want to see any oil and gas spill, if a truckload spills, it’s limited to one truckload,” said Sean McBrearty, state legislative and political director for Clean Water Action. Relative to a pipeline spill in the Straits, he said, “one truck spill is orders of magnitude smaller."

'We could get by' — U.P. considers alternatives to Line 5 propane - Tribal nations, Michigan’s governor and environmental groups are all calling for a shutdown of Line 5: the pipeline that carries oil underneath the Straits of Mackinac. They say the pipeline, which is 60-plus years old, poses too great a risk of rupturing. The pipeline doesn’t just carry oil — its liquid mix includes propane that is delivered to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. So, what would happen to U.P. households using propane if Line 5 shut down? The majority of households in the Upper Peninsula heat their homes with natural gas, but it’s often not available in rural areas, like where James Ball lives. About 18 percent of U.P. households heat primarily with propane. Some of those are summer cottages or hunting camps, but many are not. It isn’t unheard of for a family to spend $2,000 filling their propane tanks over a winter. Ball says one winter a few years ago, there was a propane shortage in the U.P. Many states in the Midwest declared propane emergencies in the winter of 2013-14. Farmers needed a lot of propane for crop drying during the harvest season of 2013. There were also infrastructure issues, and it was just a really cold winter. “When I called to order propane, they said that there was a possibility that it would not be available by the time that my tank ran out,” says Ball. It concerned him so much that now, he only uses propane as a last resort. He put a wood pellet stove in his basement, and he also has a standard wood stove in his living room. The bags of pellets weigh 40 pounds each, and he has to haul them to the basement. Ball is worried about how that will work for him as he gets older. “There'll come a time when I'll no longer be able to cut wood,” he says. “There's costs. Pellets are fairly expensive. You have to transport those and haul them in.” He might have to rely on propane again, and he’s concerned about anything that might change its price. That includes a possible shutdown of Enbridge’s Line 5, which delivers propane to a facility just a few miles from his house.

Public forum in Duluth on Enbridge Line 3 - Minnesota regulators will hold a forum in Duluth on Thursday for members of the public to comment on additions to the state’s environmental review for Enbridge Energy’s plan to replace its Line 3 crude oil pipeline across northern Minnesota. The update became necessary after the Minnesota Court of Appeals declared in June that the previous version was inadequate because it failed to specifically address the potential impacts of a spill into the Lake Superior watershed. The state Commerce Department then conducted additional modeling, and concluded that there’s no serious threat to Lake Superior if crude oil ever leaks from the pipeline. Line 3 carries Canadian crude from Alberta to Enbridge’s terminal in Superior, Wisconsin. The replacement would double the capacity of the existing line, which was built in the 1960s and is increasingly subject to cracking and corrosion. Environmental and tribal groups that have been fighting the project plan to make their opposition heard at the meeting,  The Public Utilities Commission has imposed strict security protocols to try to prevent disruptions.

Pre-filed bill aims to ban offshore drilling for good from S.C. coast - Offshore drilling has become a big topic on the state, local and national levels, and one South Carolina state senator has taken a step to keep offshore drilling far away from our coastline. South Carolina state Sen. Chip Campsen (R) said after working in the Gulf of Mexico for many years, he believes people don’t understand the reality of having offshore drilling along our coast and what this could do to the communities near the beach. “That if you’re going to have offshore drilling, your coast is going to be industrialized. There is a massive amount of onshore infrastructure that is needed to support offshore drilling,” Campsen said. Campsen believes this type of growth would harm the $17 million tourism industry, which is the main source of revenue for the coastal areas of the state. “Refineries and tank farms and oil spills don’t go well with the vacationers on the Grand Strand beaches. Louisiana, Texas, and parts of Alabama decided we’re going to dig for oil. They don’t have the tourism, the coastal tourism, we have, they don’t have the coastal real estate values we have because that oil industry affects all of that," Campsen said. Earlier this year, a provision was passed by the state Senate, preventing the Department of Health and Environmental Control or local government entities to use funds to approve licenses or permits associated with offshore drilling or for seismic testing. This bill was passed on a year-to-year basis.

Deepwater Gulf enters next phase of growth - For the first time since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy of a decade ago, the British oil major BP will ship a major oil platform to the Gulf of Mexico, where it will operate in some 4,500 feet of water nearly 200 miles south of New Orleans.The Argos platform, which will reach its destination in the fall of 2020, is part of the next wave of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico as companies learn to reduce costs while operating with new technologies in more complex, deeper waters. Even as the onshore shale boom starts to slow and companies cut back onshore, global deepwater spending is back on the rise for oil and gas producers.That has driven a mini-resurgence in the Gulf, where mix of legacy production and the development of new mega projects has offshore platforms pumping out record volumes of oil to the tune of about 2 million barrels a day.“There’s quite a bit of potential in the ultra-deepwater,” said George Laguros, a senior analyst the global research and consulting firm IHS Markit.On HoustonChronicle.com: As energy world focuses on Permian, Gulf makes its own comebackJust this month, Chevron authorized the $5.7 billion first phase of the Anchor project, which is considered the first ultra-high-pressure development in the Gulf. Anchor, located in the ultra-deepwater Lower Tertiary region about 140 miles off the coast of Louisiana, would be the first project to use subsea equipment and technology capable of withstanding pressures of 20,000 pounds per square inch — enough to crush concrete — compared to the previous highs of roughly 15,000 pounds per square inch.Other companies plan to follow with their own projects at similar pressures in the Lower Tertiary area, including the French energy major Total, which is doing engineering work for the North Platte field, and the Louisiana company LLOG Exploration, which is buying equipment for its Shenandoah project — both about 200 miles southwest of New Orleans.

Coast Guard responding to crude oil discharge near New Orleans - The Coast Guard is responding to a crude oil discharge near New Orleans today. Authorities received a report shortly before 7:30 a.m. on Saturday that approximately 1,050 gallons of crude oil discharged into Garden Island Bay from the Whitney Oil and Gas Garden Island Bay Tank Battery 49 facility due to mechanical issues. The source of the spill has been secured after personnel at the facility shut down the pump and isolated the line, according to the Coast Guard. The discharge is all within previously placed containment boom, and caused a 180-foot by 60-foot dark black sheen on the water's surface in Garden Island Bay. Whitney Oil and Gas hired OMI Environmental Solutions as the oil spill response organization. OMI has two skimmers, two boats, and personnel currently working on active recovery of the product, with 420 gallons of oily water mixture recovered. Sector New Orleans deployed two incident management division personnel to the site with personnel from Whitney Oil and Gas and Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinators Office. The cause of the discharge is under investigation.

Freeport LNG Train 2 ships first commissioning cargo - Freeport LNG has shipped the first commissioning cargo on Train 2 of its liquefaction plant on Quintana Island, Freeport, Tex. McDermott International Inc., along with partners Chiyoda International Corp. and Zachry Group, reported production of LNG from Train 2 on Dec. 6 (OGJ Online, Dec. 6, 2019). First cargo is a precursor to substantial completion of Train 2. The project includes three pretreatment trains, a liquefaction plant with three trains, a second loading berth, and a 165,000-cu m full-containment LNG storage tank. Zachry Group, as the joint-venture lead, engaged McDermott for the pre-front-end engineering and design in 2011, followed by FEED. Chiyoda joined the partnership later and the joint team provided engineering, procurement, and construction, as well as commissioning and initial operations for the project. Freeport LNG anticipates adding a fourth train by 2021, bringing total plant capacity to more than 20 million tpy. Freeport LNG Trains 2 and 3 remain on schedule with Train 3 initial production of LNG scheduled for first-quarter 2020.

US was net energy exporter in November, new API statistics say - The US became a net energy exporter for the first time in 60 years during November and produced a record 12.9 million b/d of crude oil, the American Petroleum Institute said Dec. 19 as it released its 2019 fourth quarter industry outlook and latest monthly statistical report. “Never before has a major energy-consuming nation also become a top global exporter of total energy – usually it’s the other way around,” API Chief Economist Dean Foreman said. “The fact that US production has been able to simultaneously satisfy strong domestic demand and supply continued international demand for US exports while maintaining relatively low and stable prices is remarkable and historic in magnitude.” With solid productivity and expanded pipeline infrastructure, the nation is in a position to continue its oil and gas production growth in 2020 as predicted by the US Energy Information Administration, the quarterly industry outlook said. It found that US energy exports have continued to grow despite trade frictions. “Nationwide, natural gas demand for electricity generation increased 5.65 year-to-year so far in 2019, reflecting its cost competitiveness,” the outlook indicated. Domestic petroleum demand remained near record peaks throughout 2019, it said. The US refining system is well-positioned to meet 2020 International Maritime Organization (IMO) sulfur reduction requirements due to its relatively complex plant, access to attractive crude feedstocks, abundant and inexpensive natural gas, and the best refining workers globally, API’s latest quarterly industry outlook said. “Motor gasoline and diesel fuel prices have generally moved with crude oil, and EIA expects limited impact from IMO 2020,” API’s latest quarterly industry outlook said. “Since 2000, US distillate stocks have remained above 100 million bbl with an increasingly interconnected supply chain and pipeline network.”

Whistler Pipeline moves forward with three public meetings - A pipeline project to move natural gas from the Permian Basin of West Texas to Corpus Christi is moving forward with three public meetings in Odessa, Uvalde and Alice.Developers of the Whistler Pipeline held a public meeting for the project on Tuesday evening at the Odessa Marriott in Odessa. A second public meeting is planned for 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Herby Ham Activity Center in the Hill Country town of Uvalde. The third meeting is planned for Thursday at the Alice Country Club in the South Texas town of Alice, the Texas Condemnation Rights website reported. Spanning some 475 miles, the proposed 42-inch pipeline will move 2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day from the Waha Hub in the Permian Basin to the Agua Dulce Hub of South Texas. The Whistler Pipeline is being developed as a joint venture between Ohio-based MPLX LP, Austin pipeline operator WhiteWater Midstream, New York private equity firm Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners and Midland pipeline operator West Texas Gas.Developers announced that they had made a final investment decision on the project in June. An open season for booking capacity on the pipeline ended on Monday. If approved by regulators and supported by the market, the pipeline is expected to be in service by the third quarter of 2021.

Hazardous Liquids Training for First Responders Available in Texas -- ExxonMobil is teaming up with the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX) to provide a hazardous liquids emergency response training course for firefighters. A $200,000 grant from the oil giant funded development of the course and participation of 150 firefighters at sessions in August and October. A third session is set for January 11-12, and 50 firefighters have already signed up to participate. Nicolas Medina, public and government affairs manager for ExxonMobil Pipeline, is hoping to see firefighters from West Texas participate in the January session or additional sessions in 2020. The company’s support of the course is part of its commitment to the communities where it operates, he said. In addition to the $200,000 grant that funded the development of the program, ExxonMobil will make another $200,000 grant for the program next year. Municipal and volunteer firefighters “do an awesome job at what they do, they are well-trained for what they do, which is primarily house fires, car fires, rescues like that,” said John Burge, director of the industrial firefighting program at TEEX. But training for large plant fires such as at Port Neches recently, or tank battery fires or pipeline fires costs more than their budgets allow he said. The funding from ExxonMobil will allow municipal and volunteer firefighters to receive that training, he said. “They pay for everything – hotel rooms, meals, the training, the fuel used in the training, that’s very expensive, the foam used in the training, that’s very expensive,” Burge said in a phone interview.

Emissions Soar As Permian Flaring Frenzy Breaks New Records - The flaring and venting of natural gas in the U.S. continues to soar, reaching new record highs in recent months. The volume of gas that was burned or simply released into the atmosphere by oil and gas drillers reached 1.28 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) in 2018, according to the EIA, up from 0.772 Bcf/d in 2017. The practice is a disaster on many levels. It is wasteful, it worsens air quality and it exacerbates climate change. Venting gas is much worse than burning it since it releases methane into the atmosphere, a potent greenhouse gas.The New York Times documented several “super emitters” in the Permian, using infrared cameras to visually capture the epidemic. The NYT even recorded an oil worker walking into an invisible plume of leaking methane.  But shale drillers continue the practice and regulators have shown little interest in regulating them. Even though venting is off limits in North Dakota and restricted in Texas, flaring has largely gone unchecked while methane leaks at virtually every stage of the extraction process. In the third quarter of 2019, the Permian basin alone vented and flared 752 million cubic feet of natural gas per day, up sharply from 661 mcf/d in the first quarter, according to Rystad Energy. “This represents a new all-time high. Oil production in the Permian Basin is growing at an accelerated pace again, and we observe high, sustained levels of flaring and venting of associated gas in the basin,” Artem Abramov, head of shale research at Rystad, said in November.   “It’s a black eye for the Permian basin,” Pioneer Natural Resources Chief Executive Officer Scott Sheffield said earlier this year. “The state, the pipeline companies and the producers -- we all need to come together to figure out a way to stop the flaring.” One thing that could be done would be for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the industry in the state, to deny permits to companies that allow them to flare. But the Railroad Commission has not denied a single request from an oil producer for a flaring permit in years, despite the spike in flaring. The number of permits granted has shot up from around 500 in 2010 to 5,500 in 2018, according to the EIA. There is essentially no cop on the beat.  The situation reached absurd levels a few months ago when the Texas Railroad Commission approved a company’s request to flare even though the company had pipeline access readily available. One of the main reasons that flaring has reached astronomical levels is because pipeline capacity has not kept up with the surge in gas production. Because the industry is really chasing oil, all of the gas is surplus. And because there is nowhere to put it, they flare it..

Report: As TCEQ Sits Idle, Polluters Double Illegal Air Pollution in 2018 - The oil and gas industry in Texas is largely responsible for doubling the amount of illegal air pollution in the state last year, according to a reportreleased Wednesday. The Texas Petroleum Chemicals (TPC) plant in Port Neches—the same facility that caught fire last month, injuring three and prompting multi-day evacuations—was listed as a major emitter of butadiene, a known human carcinogen. That and other emissions, innocuously referred to as “upset events,” lead to the premature deaths of 42 Texans and $241 million in health care costs each year.Last year, approximately 270 companies, including Chevron, Dow Chemical, and ExxonMobil, reported 4,590 unauthorized emissions incidents in the state, according to the report from advocacy group Environment Texas. Those resulted in 135 million pounds of illegal air pollution, double the amount emitted in 2017. Contaminants spewed into the sky include human carcinogens butadiene and benzene; smog-forming nitrogen oxides; and particulate matter, which can cause heart attacks, strokes, and congestive heart failure.The biggest release occurred on August 29, 2018, when the Beaumont Gas to Gasoline Plant belched 53 million pounds of carbon dioxide over five days. The event made up the lion’s share of the 63.9 million pounds of air pollution in the Beaumont region, the most polluted area in Texas that year. TheMidland region, which is the locus of the state’s fracking boom, saw 39.5 million pounds of air pollution, the second most in the state. “Texans are sick and tired of oil refineries and petrochemical plants catching fire, exploding, and pumping out harmful pollution,” said Catherine Fraser, an air pollution fellow at Environment Texas. “The data show the problem is getting worse, not better. We need our state leaders to crack down on illegal pollution, and stop putting the interests of polluters over the rest of us.” The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has a laissez-faire approach to enforcing federal air pollution laws, especially when dealing withmonied rulebreakers. According to the report, the agency fined companies in only 1.2 percent of illegal emission events, a rate Fraser called “shockingly low.” On Wednesday, she and other environmental activists and Beaumont-area residents gathered in front of TCEQ’s offices in North Austin to demand stricter enforcement. They took particular issue with TPC’s massive butadiene release in 2018, for which TCEQ proposed fining the company a paltry $22,000.

Industry, enviros contrasting accounts over flaring - Environmentalists and the natural gas industry have issued contrasting accounts about flaring, the practice of burning off excess natural gas in the Permian Basin and other shale plays across the United States. Over the past week, the Washington, D.C.-based environmental group Earthworks and the industry-funded group Texans For Natural Gas released online statements that offer contrasting viewpoints of the issue. In a public letter, Earthworks criticized the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state's top environmental agency, as being lax on enforcement and "uncooperative" in response to citizen complaints about the issue. Texans For Natural Gas posted a Tuesday morning report stating that methane emissions intensity, the amount of methane vented or flared for each barrel of oil equivalent produced, has fallen in the United States over the past seven years and remains at rates far below other nations such as Russia.With natural gas viewed as a byproduct of drilling for much more valuable oil, companies that don't have their wells connected to natural gas pipelines can receive permits to either release it into the atmosphere in practice known as venting or burn it off on site in another practice known as flaring.Oil companies vented or flared a record 1.28 billion cubic of natural gas per day during 2018, a recent report from the Energy Information Administration shows. At the current market prices, that's roughly $1 billion worth of natural gas burned off or wasted per year.Texas oil wells accounted for 51 percent of the flaring and venting activity while oil wells in North Dakota accounted to 31 percent. Vented and flared natural gas increased to 1.25 percent of overall U.S. production from 0.84 percent reported in 2017.  In its public letter, Earthworks criticized TCEQ for failing to follow up on citizen complaints regarding flaring and venting in the Permian Basin and elsewhere across the state. The environmental group vowed to step up its pressure on the agency and that it would be attaching more videos and scientific information with future complaints. Working with two partner organizations, the report released by Texans For Natural Gas went nation by nation comparing the amounts of natural gas vented or flared compared to crude oil production. Smaller nations with considerably smaller crude oil production such as Syria, Yemen and Mozambique had the worst rates.

 US oil, gas rig count rises for second straight week: Enverus— The US oil and gas rig count rose for the second straight week, according to energy researchers Enverus' drilling statistics released Thursday, on what analysts say may be a final push to spend the last bit of 2019 drilling budgets at WTI prices that have cracked the $60/b mark. The domestic rig count totaled 860, up five for the week ended December 18 following an unusually large 15-rig jump the previous week, Enverus said. As a result, the US gained 20 rigs in the past two weeks, a reversal of the past year's general southward direction. Since mid-November 2018, when the recent US rig count peak totaled 1,237, industry has lost 30% or nearly 400 rigs. This week's land rig count totaled 831, up by four but down from 1,144 this same week in 2018, Enverus' data show. Evercore is forecasting the US land rig count to fall 10% in 2020 year on year, which is greater than its US capex spending forecast decline of 7% for next year. The rig count gains are likely traceable to year-end drilling here and there as needed, possibly fueled by higher oil prices that finally mounted the $60/b milestone not seen in months, observers said.  This week's total rig count gains came from oil-directed rigs, which moved up 10 to 695. Conversely, natural gas-oriented rigs moved down six to 160. In addition, a one rig rise came from basins classified as neither oil nor gas. As a result, drilling ticked up in two of the largest domestic oil basins — the Permian in West Texas/New Mexico, and Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas as each added several rigs. The biggest boost came from the Eagle Ford, which rose by four rigs to 77 week on week while the Permian was up three to 404. But the Bakken Shale in North Dakota/Montana fell by three rigs, leaving 50, while the SCOOP-STACK plays of Oklahoma and the Denver-Julesburg Basin remained static week on week at 41 and 23, respectively. In gas basins, the Haynesville Shale in East Texas/northwest Louisiana dropped four to 47 while Appalachia — the Marcellus Shale, mostly found in Pennsylvania and the Utica Shale mostly in Ohio — declined two rigs, leaving 49. That basin comprises the Wet Marcellus which lost one rig for a total of 19; the Utica, which also fell by a rig, leaving 12; and the Dry Marcellus, which was unchanged week on week at 18.

U.S. shale oil output to rise 29,000 bpd to record 9.14 million in January (Reuters) - U.S. oil output from seven major shale formations is expected to rise about 29,000 barrels per day (bpd) in January to a record 9.14 million bpd, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a monthly forecast on Monday. Output at the largest formation, the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, is expected to rise 48,000 bpd to a new record 4.74 million bpd, the smallest increase since July. Production from North Dakota and Montana’s Bakken region is expected to rise by about 3,000 bpd to a fresh peak of about 1.53 million bpd. That would be the smallest increase since production from the region declined in September, the data showed. The agency forecast production declines in the Eagle Ford and Anadarko basins. The Permian and Bakken regions have been the biggest drivers of a shale boom that has helped make the United States the biggest oil producer in the world, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Russia. However, the rate of growth has slowed as independent oil producers cut spending on new drilling and completions and focus more on earnings growth. The oil rig count, an early indicator of future output, has already declined for a record 12 months in a row. Separately, U.S. natural gas output in the big shale basins was projected to increase to a record 85.6 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) in January. That would be up less than 0.1 bcfd over the December forecast, its smallest monthly increase since January 2019 when production in the big shale basins declined. Growth was slowing as the number of rigs in each region has declined since the start of the year.

Permian Drillers Are Struggling To Keep Output Flat - Newer wells in the Permian see their oil and gas production declining much faster than older wells, and operators will need to drill a large number of wells just to keep current production levels, an IHS Markit analysis showed on Thursday.   IHS Markit has analyzed what it calls the “base decline” rate, calculating the actual or expected production of all the operating wells at the start of the year and tracking their cumulative decline by the end of the year. Over the past decade, the base decline rate of the more than 150,000 producing oil and gas wells in the Permian has “increased dramatically,” according to the analysis.“Because of the large increases of recent years, the base decline production rate for the Permian Basin has increased dramatically, and we expect those declines to continue to accelerate. As a result, it is going to be challenging, especially for some companies with cash constraints, just to keep production flat,” Raoul LeBlanc, vice president of Unconventional Oil and Gas at IHS Markit, said in a statement.“Now that capital markets have closed for many companies and investors are requiring returns, a critical objective for these companies is to slow production growth, significantly moderating their base declines,” LeBlanc said.Last month, IHS Markit said it expects U.S. production growth to be 440,000 bpd in 2020, “before essentially flattening out in 2021.”“Going from nearly 2 million barrels per day annual growth in 2018, an all-time global record, to essentially no growth by 2021 makes it pretty clear that this is a new era of moderation for shale producers,” LeBlanc said in early November. With capital discipline required by investors and WTI Crude prices expected to average around US$50 in 2020 and 2021, IHS Markit expected in November capital spending for onshore drilling, and completions to have fallen by 10 percent to US$102 billion this year, by a further 12 percent to US$90 billion next year, and by another 8 percent to US$83 billion in 2021.

From Boom To Bust: Permian Shale Towns Face Exodus -Perhaps it’s not evident to anyone who is not an oil-worker living in America’s biggest shale towns, but signs of the shale slowdown predicted by many analysts, and the EIA itself, are already surfacing in the form of vacant hotels, a dip in home prices, a noticeable reduction in overtime hours for oil workers, and a change in standards for hiring. Texas’ Permian basin lost 400 jobs in the first 10 months of this year, according to the Dallas Morning News, and fracking contractor Superior Energy Services Inc. alone announced in late November that it had cut 112 jobs from its Permian Pumpco unit. This is in stark contrast to the first 10 months of 2018, when the Permian added 16,700 jobs. According to the Dallas Federal Reserve’s “Permian Basin Economic Indicators” from November 27 this year, oil production reached a new high in September, though the rig count slipped and drilling has dropped to its lowest level in nearly two years. Not only are frack crews for well completions in the Permian down more than 20% this year, according to the Dallas Morning News, citing Primary Vision Inc., but oilfield services companies are firing people--from National Oilwell Varco to Halliburton and RPC. The Greater Houston Partnership said in a December report that Houston is facing a situation that is “eerily similar to what it faced after the 1980s bust -- an oversaturated real estate market, a bleak outlook for oil and gas, and the need for innovation to drive the economy forward”. 

U.S. energy chief shrugs off Permian oil slowdown as a ‘pause’ -The golden age of U.S. shale is far from over, with an expected slowdown in the Permian Basin likely to be temporary, according to the new U.S. Energy Secretary. The shale boom helped transform the U.S. into a net exporter of crude and petroleum products in September from a major importer a decade ago. Even as growth is set to slow next year in the Permian and elsewhere as drillers respond to investor demands for capital restraint, Dan Brouillette said the shale boom has further to run. “Maybe there are some folks who -- for whatever reason -- thought they could make some quick money in this and they are learning that production is not as easy as you might think,” Brouillette said Tuesday in an interview in Washington. “You may see some of them go by the wayside.” Brouillette, who replaced Rick Perry at the beginning of the month, said improvements in drilling technology meant companies are better equipped to respond to price fluctuations than in the past. And prices are less volatile than they used to be, given the new status of the U.S. as a major producer. “The recent events in Saudi Arabia, the recent events with OPEC -- none of those had any sort of dramatic or extraordinary move of the market associated with them,” he said. “We’re just not subject to the same types of price shocks that we used to be subjected to.” According to Brouillette, one risk to the growth of U.S. production and exports comes from Democratic presidential candidates including Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who have promised to ban hydraulic fracturing, the process by which shale rock is broken apart to release oil and gas.

House Dems propose halt to drilling on public lands in broad climate bill -- House Democrats introduced sweeping climate legislation Tuesday that would halt fossil fuel production on public lands for at least a year as the nation prepares to drastically cut climate-warming pollution from its own land holdings. The bill from the House Natural Resources Committee requires the Department of the Interior to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions on public lands by 2040. “The Trump administration is handing out drilling and coal mining leases like candy, and no thought is ever given by this administration to the climate change impacts,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) a sponsor of the bill as well as chair of the committee. “Our bill is about what’s right for the whole country and not just polluting industries,” he added. Grijalva said the yearlong moratorium on fossil fuel production would be meant to give Interior time to assess how to meet the 2040 goal of net-zero emissions, though the bill also sets targets in five year increments that the department must meet. The department would be barred from issuing new leases until they came into compliance with the targets. The plan would ratchet up the royalties paid by fossil fuel companies that drill and mine on the nation’s more than 600 million acres of public land, raising fees from roughly 12 percent to 18 percent. That increased cost of doing business would be used to create a transition fund to help communities that are largely dependent on the fossil fuel industry.

 Residents pack Boulder County forum in search of tips to implement fracking ban – The Denver Post - Three grassroots groups in Boulder County cohosted a public forum Thursday night to discuss what could be done to extend the county’s moratorium on fracking, which is set to expire in the spring.During “The Fracking Threat to Boulder County: What We Can Do About It,” speakers from 350 Colorado, The Lookout Alliance and Colorado Rising discussed the sunset date of a countywide fracking moratorium on March 28, and the signing of Senate Bill 181, which allows local governments more authority to regulate oil and gas. Speakers cited the 6-month-old law as a tool for implementing a ban on fracking and they urged the more than 100 people who packed a room at Unity of Boulder Church to help them on that mission. In the wake of recent fracking site fire in Weld County that hospitalized seven, and many seeing the operations crop up near schools and neighborhoods, those in the audience seemed largely in favor of an outright ban. Gabrielle Katz, a member of Lookout Alliance, walked forum participants through some background and fracking numbers, citing Weld County as the site of 88% of the state’s oil production and 35% of gas production. Since 2000, she said gas production has doubled in the state. With 55,000 wells across the state and 6,000 permits pending before the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission that trend is likely to continue, she said. With it, comes increased health risks, threats to the environment and accelerating climate change with the mass release of carbon dioxide and methane, Katz said.“This unconventional oil and gas development is now colliding with neighborhoods like my own, Broomfield, Erie, all around us, where we have people living on top of these oil an gas reserves,”  Katz also addressed two projects proposed for eastern Boulder County, including Crestone Peak Resources’ seeking to drill 140 wells north of Erie. A company called 8 North also is seeking to set up a fracking operation in Erie. Boulder County Commissioners filed lawsuits against both oil and gas operations. While claims for both were shot down in Boulder County District Court, the county plans to appeal the rulings in an effort to the prevent large-scale operations.

South Dakota governor plans revision of riot-boosting laws (AP) — South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is planning to have another try at so-called riot-boosting laws next year, despite previously drawing criticism for supporting such laws ahead of protests related to the Keystone XL pipeline. The Republican governor has written to lawmakers with proposed changes to laws passed earlier this year that were later blocked by a federal judge. The state eventually settled a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union by agreeing not to enforce parts of the laws. Noem is proposing changes in the law to repeal parts that the judge deemed unconstitutional and change the definition of “incitement to riot” to meet constitutional protections of free speech, according to her memo. It would charge people with “incitement to riot” if they “urge” three or more people to force or violence. The proposed law defines “urging” as “instigating, inciting, directing, threatening, or other similar conduct,” but excludes oral and written advocacy that does not urge force or violence. Noem drew criticism from Native American tribes in the state for pushing the laws last year ahead of expected protests on Keystone XL pipeline construction. The Oglala Sioux Tribe banned her from tribal lands after Noem signed the legislation.

Tribes: Oil companies should pay for pipeline spills (AP) — South Dakota lawmakers are proposing legislation that would require oil companies to pay for cleaning up any pipeline spills or leaks as plans are being made to construct the Keystone XL pipeline in the state. The State-Tribal Relations Committee on Wednesday agreed to sponsor the bill in the 2020 legislative session at the request of South Dakota Native American tribes. Crow Creek Tribal Chairman Lester Thompson Jr. said the bill would hold pipeline companies accountable. “As a citizen of South Dakota, I really hate to see our local farmers, ranchers, tribal members, just the common citizen who doesn’t make that big dollar like that company does, be hung with a bill for clean up that isn’t their fault,” Thompson said. The bill would require companies to contribute to a state fund based on the pipeline’s length with a cap of $100 million, the Argus Leader reported. Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline point to a recent spill in northeastern North Dakota in raising concerns about management of the pipeline. Crude began flowing through the $5.2 billion pipeline in 2011. It’s designed to carry crude oil across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, Canada and through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri on the way to refineries in Patoka, Illinois and Cushing, Oklahoma.

North Dakota oil output growth to improve moderately on OPEC+ cuts: state regulator — The OPEC+ decision to deepen output cuts will cause "slow to moderate" growth in Bakken production, North Dakota's top oil and gas regulator said Friday. Without a deeper cut, North Dakota production, which set a record of 1.52 million b/d in October, would likely have "flat lined" throughout 2020, Lynn Helms, director of North Dakota's Department of Mineral Resources, told reporters Friday. Helms said that the decision will likely lead to an increase in capital available to producers. "It was going to be a struggle just to match this 1.5 million b/d," Helms said. The OPEC+ decision "should result in small increments of production growth through the year 2020." Last week, OPEC, Russia and nine other allies announced last week that they will deepen collective output cuts by 503,000 b/d to 1.7 million b/d from January through March. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook Tuesday, the US Energy Information Administration said, assuming the cuts stay in place through 2020, global liquids fuel supply from non-OPEC sources will increase by 1.5 million b/d, offsetting OPEC's decline in production. North Dakota's oil output in October was up more than 74,500 b/d from September and more than 37,300 b/d from August, when the previous monthly record was set. Roughly 72% of oil produced in October was shipped out of the state by pipeline, 16% was shipped out by rail, 6% was trucked or railed to Canada, and 6% was refined in state, the North Dakota Pipeline Authority said Friday. The state reported that there were 126 well permits issued in October, up from 92 in September and 885 wells are waiting on completion, down from 916 in September. Helms said that statewide, breakeven prices averaged $12/b in Q3 2019, unchanged from Q2, averaging $12/b in McKenzie, Dunn and Mountrail counties and $16/b in Williams County. Nearly all of North Dakota's active rigs are in those four counties. Statewide breakeven prices have fallen by $10/b, a roughly 45% decline, since Q2 2017, according to the agency. Helms has called the state's breakeven estimates a "pure breakeven," which only accounted for recovering drilling and completion costs and did not consider return on investment.

State, tribe to develop Dakota Access pipeline spill plan (AP) — North Dakota will work with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to help develop a response plan for a potential spill of the Dakota Access pipeline, a state official said Monday. State Emergency Services Director Cody Schulz said tribal leaders recently requested a response plan and resources to prepare for a spill near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the south-central part of the state. Schulz told a committee of state and tribal leaders headed by Gov. Doug Burgum that his agency would be happy to either “participate or facilitate” a training exercise. The state also would work with the tribe to obtain federal grant money for planning and equipment. Standing Rock Chairman Mike Faith, who sits on the panel, said oil spill response training would be “awesome” and that he appreciates the state’s effort to work collaboratively with the tribe. The cooperation comes as Texas-based Energy Transfer wants to double the capacity of the line to as much as 1.1 million barrels daily to meet growing demand for oil shipments from North Dakota. The $3.8 billion pipeline was subject to prolonged protests and hundreds of arrests during its construction in North Dakota in late 2016 and early 2017 because it crosses beneath the Missouri River, just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. The tribe draws its water from the river and fears pollution. Energy Transfer insists the pipeline and its expansion are safe. The pipeline has been moving North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to Illinois for about three years. Schulz said in an interview that the state has limited resources and personnel to deal with a major spill of the pipeline at present. Schulz, who also serves on the Morton County Commission, said the prolonged protests cost the county about $38 million for law enforcement, infrastructure repair, cleanup and legal costs. The state reimbursed the county for most of the cost. Schulz said his agency participated with railroad officials and others during a exercise to coordinate a plan if a train derailed and spilled oil in the Missouri River near Bismarck.

Truck crash spills 840 gallons of produced water; creek impacted - Bismarck Tribune staff Dec 13, 2019 A truck transporting produced water crashed in McKenzie and spilled about 840 gallons of the liquid. Produced water is a mixture of saltwater and oil that can contain drilling chemicals. The crash happened on an icy road about 9 miles southeast of Watford City on Thursday, according to the state Department of Environmental Quality. Truck operator Blackshirt LLC reported it the same day and estimated about 20 barrels of produced water were released, impacting a small unnamed creek on U.S. Forest Service property. The unnamed creek discharges into Elkhorn Creek about 4 1/2 miles downstream of the incident. State officials are inspecting the site and will continue to monitor the investigation and remediation.

Fine pending for TC Energy's oil spill that contaminated 4.8 acres of land outside Edinburg - — TC Energy has not yet been fined for the Keystone Pipeline oil spill outside Edinburg in October, but it will be, a North Dakota Department of Environmental Quality official said. The Oct. 29 Keystone Pipeline spill released about 383,000 gallons of crude oil and is estimated to have contaminated about 4.8 acres of land. The cause of the spill remains under investigation. DEQ Director Dave Glatt said that, because the spill came into contact with a wetlands area, it resulted in an automatic notice of violation. Penalties for oil spills are determined on a case-by-case basis and Glatt said he expects the process to take a couple months. DEQ Spill Investigations program manager Bill Seuss said a number of factors are taken into account before the amount of a fine is determined, including how much oil was spilled, how much damage it caused, how quickly the company reported the spill and responded to the scene and how fast the spill was contained. Glatt said past spills in North Dakota have resulted in fines ranging from a couple thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars, but Suess said, at this point in the process, it's difficult to know where in that range the Edinburg spill might fall. "Every spill is unique," Suess said. "Everything has its own set of conditions and that, to compare it to anything, it's hard to say that anything was similar." Now that DEQ has notified Canada-based TC Energy of the violation, Glatt said the company has about a month to respond to the allegations. From there, DEQ officials will sit down with TC Energy officials to discuss enforcement until a penalty is agreed upon. Glatt underscored that, while not every oil spill results in a fine, spills that come into contact with water are automatically fined. He added that the chance of contamination to the groundwater in the Edinburg spill is very low, however. "I don't see that as being a concern, because they got to it quickly, or quickly enough, and they dug out the contaminated soil," he said.

Rising Bakken gas production displacing western Canadian gas on pipes. -The run-up in crude oil production in western North Dakota brought with it huge increases in the production of associated gas — that is, the gassy brew of natural gas and mixed NGLs that emerge from Bakken wells with the crude. Oil & Gas Division stats show that, in October 2019, Bakken gas production (green area in right graph in Figure 1) averaged more than 3 Bcf/d for the first time ever (3.03 Bcf/d, to be exact); it’s up a whopping 106% from December 2016, in part because many of the most prolific wells for producing crude oil have high gas-to-oil ratios (GORs). But of that 3.03 Bcf/d of gas produced, nearly 530 MMcf/d (yellow line in right graph), or 17%, was burned off or flared, mostly due to a lack of sufficient gas processing capacity.  We’ve written about gas flaring in the Bakken many times, most recently in Hard to Handle, when we said that bringing it under control has been akin to breaking in a wild horse: just when you start to think you’ve accomplished the task at hand, the bronco’s bucking again and you’re holding on for dear life. The way to rein in gas flaring, of course, is to put in place the infrastructure — gathering systems, gas processing plants, and gas and NGL takeaway pipelines — needed to handle all the associated gas that’s emerging from wells. The problem has been that while Bakken producers and their midstream-company partners may have been trying their best to anticipate what their upcoming gas-related infrastructure requirements will be, they’ve generally been behind the curve in adding gas processing capacity during the 2010-14 and 2017-19 boom periods. Now, they finally appear to be catching up.As shown in Figure 2, gas processing capacity in the Bakken has been increasing by fits and starts through the first two-thirds of this decade, from less than 500 MMcf/d at the end of 2010 to more than 2.0 Bcf/d at the end of 2016. But with the big slow-down in crude oil and gas production in 2015-16, plans for a number of additional processing plants were scrapped or delayed, and when production growth took off again in 2017, midstreamers once more were forced to play catch-up. Only 107 MMcf/d of new gas processing capacity was added in 2017, and another 215 MMcf/d came online in 2018. 2019 turned out to be the biggest year yet for new processing capacity in the Bakken: a record 710 MMcf/d has started up in the past 11 and a half months (yellow bar segment within dashed orange oval), giving the region a total of nearly 3.2 Bcf/d — seemingly enough to handle all the gas that the play produces.

  Federal decision on fracking review reopens 1.2 million acres in California to oil leasing - After years of studying the environmental impacts of fracking, a decision this week by Bakersfield's office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management allows federal officials to resume leasing 1.2 million acres of public land in Kern and other parts of California for the purposes of oil and gas production. The move, which was immediately criticized by climate-change activists, followed the release earlier this fall of an environmental review concluding the controversial well-completion technique also known as hydraulic fracturing poses no impacts that cannot be blunted by mitigation efforts. The review fulfilled the BLM's pledge in 2017 to take another look at the consequences of fracking. Environmentalists say the practice endangers air and groundwater quality. The oil industry says there is no evidence of that happening in California. No new public lands were opened to oil production or fracking as a result of the BLM's decision. BLM has not conducted a lease auction on the subject properties since at least 2016. The agency noted that such leases sustain about 3,500 jobs and generate $200 million per year in economic benefits. California gets half of the 12.5-percent royalty the BLM collects on oil and gas royalties in the state, while the other half goes to the U.S. Treasury.

Fuel-guzzling California threatens Trump administration over fracking plan | Fox News - California leads the nation in the consumption of gasoline and jet fuel. The oil and gas industry provides more than 360,000 jobs and fracking helps the sector to pump annually into the state economy more than $55 billion in tax revenues. Yet, today, state officials are threatening legal action after the Trump administration opened 1.2 million acres of federal land to drilling after a six-year moratorium. “The Trump Administration’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) wants to expose more than a million acres of public land in Central California to drilling and fracking using a patently deficient environment impact study,” said Attorney General Xavier Becerra. “That’s not how we do things in California. We’re prepared to do whatever we must to protect the health and safety of our people. We intend to be good stewards of our public lands.” Unlike drilling on private or state lands, the federal government collects a 12.5-percent royalty on every barrel of oil and gas produced on federal lands, providing billions to programs Congress approves. The BLM says drilling on the newly approved lands could generate $200 million annually and create 3,500 jobs in the Central Valley. “This is a good thing, it gives California an opportunity to produce more of its own oil," said Bob Poole, of the Western State Petroleum Association."Currently, California uses 2 million barrels a day. Of those two million, we import over a million every day. This gives us the most opportunities available for us to produce our own energy under the most stringent environmental regulations.”

BP to pay penalty to EPA for inadequate insurance - The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that BP Exploration Alaska has agreed to pay a $125,100 penalty related to violations of its federal hazardous waste permit for activities on Alaska’s North Slope.BP, a major Alaska oil producer that’s asking regulators to approve the $5.6 billion sale of its Alaska assets to Hilcorp Alaska, in part did not “maintain adequate insurance for bodily injury and/or property damage to third parties” from the company’s storage and handling of hazardous waste, the EPA alleged in a statement to media Monday. Megan Baldino, a spokeswoman with BP in Alaska, said the company “worked closely with EPA to resolve its concerns with the insurance it had obtained for this facility.” She said BP is in compliance with the order. The penalty stems from a 14-page consent agreement between the federal agency and the oil company.It comes at a time when many Alaskans are asking regulators to pay close attention to whether BP and Hilcorp have provided adequate financial assurances that they can pay for future cleanup costs once the oil fields are abandoned and infrastructure must be dismantled. They also want financial guarantees that Hilcorp, a smaller, private company, can pay for an unexpected disaster, such as an oil spill. The EPA found that BP’s third-party liability coverage was inadequate over five years beginning in 2014, the consent agreement shows. The penalty followed an EPA inspection in June 2018 of a hazardous waste storage facility at Prudhoe Bay.The EPA said in its statement that it allows BP to store more than 200,000 pounds of hazardous waste, such as flammable and toxic byproducts from oil exploration, on leased state lands. BP must maintain a dedicated pool of funds so third parties can receive compensation for losses related to the storage or handling of the company’s hazardous waste. EPA describes the amount BP must maintain as “$1 million per occurrence with an annual aggregate of at least $2 million," through insurance policies or other means. The EPA said federal law requires this pool of funds to be kept separate from coverage for legal defense and cleanup costs. The protection is required so third parties can receive “compensation for losses related to the storage or handling of BPXA’s hazardous waste,” the EPA said.

Alaska turns focus to oil, gas infrastructure after spill - Alaska officials say they are going to take a look at Cook Inlet‘s aging infrastructure to get a better handle on oil and gas operations there following the recent discovery of an oil leak. The spill between two production platforms owned by Hilcorp Alaska LLC was spotted Saturday. The company removed all oil from the 8-inch (20.3-centimeter) diameter pipeline by Sunday. The state has yet to determine how much oil was dumped into the ocean, but Hilcorp has said it was less than three gallons. The leak is the second in Cook Inlet this year for Hilcorp Alaska. Processed natural gas continues to spew into the inlet from an underwater pipeline that supplies four other production platforms after the leak was discovered in February. Company officials estimate it has been leaking since mid-December. Kristin Ryan with the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation said the state will compile a report on the inlet‘s oil and gas activity over the next year. The state may then decide to make regulation changes, Alaska‘s Energy Desk reported (http://bit.ly/2oAWTmk).  State regulators will conduct the review to "try to have a better record of what pipes are where, who owns them, how old are they, what‘s their inspection frequency," said Ryan, director of the department‘s Division of Spill Prevention and Response. Much of the oil and gas infrastructure in Cook Inlet was first installed in the 1960s, although various pieces of equipment have been updated over the years. Hilcorp Alaska, a subsidiary of Houston-based Hilcorp, declined to comment on both the gas leak and the oil leak.  Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles (290 kilometers) from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage and is home to an endangered population of beluga whales. It is also habitat for humpback whales, the western population of Steller sea lions and northern sea otters. Harbor seals, killer whales and porpoise use the inlet.

Goldman Sachs Is First U.S. Big Bank to Divest From Arctic Oil and Gas -- Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, gave a minor victory to the divestment movement by declaring that it will not fund an new arctic oil explorations, as CNN reported. Citing the importance of the Arctic's fragile ecosystem and its importance to indigenous populations, the investing giant said it will decline investing in any oil exploration in the Arctic, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "Oil development in the Arctic Circle is prone to harsh operating conditions, sea ice, permafrost coverage, and potential impacts to critical natural habitats for endangered species," Goldman Sachs said in itsEnvironmental Policy Framework. "The unique and fragile ecosystems of the Arctic region also support the subsistence livelihoods of indigenous peoples groups that have populated certain areas in the region for centuries."Goldman Sachs also said in its policy framework that it would not finance any new thermal coal mines or anymountaintop removal projects. It added that where it has already invested, it would work with companies to diversify their strategies and reduce their carbon emissions."Companies' diversification strategy and carbon emissions reduction initiatives will be a key consideration in our evaluation of future financings with the goal of helping their transition strategy," the Environmental Policy Framework says. "We will phase out our financing of thermal coal mining companies that do not have a diversification strategy within a reasonable timeframe."Goldman Sachs follows a dozen global banks, based largely in Europe and Australia, that pledged not to finance Arctic oil and gas development in the arctic. Several of the policies mention Arctic National Wildlife Refuge specifically, as NPR reported. Goldman is the first U.S. headquartered bank to make the same promise, as CNN reported.

Shell share price dips after warning Q4 income will be hit by impairment charges  - Shares of Royal Dutch Shell dipped 0.7% in trade Friday after the firm announced that it will book additional charges against its income in the fourth quarter. The Anglo-Dutch energy giant said it expects to log a fourth-quarter impairment charge ranging between $1.7 billion and $2.3 billion after tax. Details on the impairment were not provided. Swiss bank UBS described the range as “relatively small,” although noted other charges which, when added on, would depress fourth-quarter earnings by around $3 billion in total. Capital expenditure expectations is also being trimmed and is now expected to sit close to around $24 billion from October to the end of December. Production of oil and gas is expected to rise from the third quarter. Upstream oil production is forecast to sit between 2,775 and 2,825 thousand barrels of oil per day. Royal Dutch Shell has two classes of share listed in both London and Amsterdam. On Friday, its ‘B’ share listing on the Amsterdam exchange had slid almost 1% from its Thursday closing price. Over 2019, the same class of share is higher by about 1.37%. Shell highlighted “materially lower” margins in its chemicals division and also warned on returns from liquified natural gas. The firm is due to publish fourth-quarter results on January 30.

Exxon and Chevron Targeted by Follow This-- The Dutch activist fund that has filed shareholder resolutions pressuring major oil companies in Europe to take action on climate change has set its sights on the U.S. Investor advocacy group Follow This has filed requests for shareholder votes at Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp.’s annual meetings for the first time, asking the companies to align their plans with the Paris climate accord. It has also filed resolutions for Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and Equinor ASA. Big Oil has come under increasing pressure from investors and environmental groups to invest in cleaner fuels as part of a wider energy transition. While Follow This resolutions have so far been defeated, the group has gained public support from investors such as Dutch insurer Aegon and M&G Investments. “We believe change comes from a small number of progressive investors, not the majority,” Follow This head Mark Van Baal said in a phone interview. Chevron said it was too early to comment and that its board would review all proposals. “We have established greenhouse gas emission intensity reduction goals for upstream oil and natural gas, methane and flaring,” spokesman Sean Comey said. “All shareholder proposals will go through the proper process in advance of the annual meeting,” said Exxon spokesman Casey Norton. Earlier this year, Exxon shareholders were denied a vote on publishing targets to align its business with the Paris climate agreement after the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled against a resolution brought forward by the Church of England and New York State. The SEC said that Exxon’s public disclosures “compare favorably” with its guidelines. Follow This’s Van Baal said that by substituting the word “targets” for “strategies” the resolution is less likely to be blocked on the grounds of micromanaging. Follow This buys shares in oil companies in order to press them over emissions. Its resolutions ask companies to align their investments with the 2016 Paris accord, which seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels. The group also says scope 3 emissions -- those produced by consumers of oil companies’ products -- should be included in targets. In May, BP investors voted in favor of the company reporting in greater detail how its investments are compatible with the Paris agreement. A second, more stringent filing proposed by Follow This was not successful.

How Much Oil Does The $1.5 Trillion Fashion Industry Use? - Chances are, Greta Thunberg is getting ready to push her ‘flight-shaming’ campaign into the realm of fashion, because this $1.5-trillion global fashion industry is said by some to be producing more CO2 than international flights and shipping. That’s because the fashion industry has turned its catwalk into a wildly fast and overproducing monster that emits some 1.7-billion tons of CO2 per year, or 10% of all man-made carbon emissions.  It also ranks as the second-largest consumer of the global water supply. Hydraulic fracturing--which gets so much heat from environmentalists, for instance--ranks far lower in water supply use. If that isn’t enough, it’s polluting the oceans with microplastics.  So for anyone fashionable who decries the fossil fuels industry pollution, there is some very selective thinking going on here. There is a ton of overlap between the two industries. A whopping two-thirds of our clothing is made from fossil fuel synthetics, and 85% of this material is sent to landfills, unable to decay or decompose.In other words, we’re wearing fossil fuels, and the use of synthetic fibers has doubled since 2000. This year, we’re walking around in 60% synthetic. Polyester, a material composed of greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels and microfibers, costs about $10 per yard once manufacturers turn it into fabric. Also, the chemicals used to process leather, which costs about $15 per yard, send out textile waste into the environment. The fashion industry’s environmental footprint is growing commensurate with digital communications and an insatiable appetite. We want instant gratification, and that includes seasonal fashion. This has given rise to “fast fashion”, which ensures that the latest runway styles go from catwalk to retailer at the speed of light with cheap, mass, rapid production methods. It leads to phenomenally more waste. When it comes to fast fashion, low prices and cheap, synthetic materials, many consumers discard items of clothing after only one use. In other words, fast fashion is becoming disposable fashion. In the UK alone, consumers throw away over 300,000 tons of clothing every year.And part of the problem is over-production of clothing that is never sold.  A power plant in Sweden has partly switched to H&M clothing instead of coal to generate energy. In 2017, the power plant incinerated 15 tons of H&M product, according to Bloomberg.  High-end Burberry, on the other hand, was called out last year for burning some $37 million in clothing just to avoid selling it at a discount. The negative publicity forced them to shift their policy on that.

US greenlights sanctions on mega Russia-EU gas pipeline, but it’s probably too late -The U.S. Senate has approved a defense bill that will see sanctions imposed on companies working on Russia’s massive flagship gas pipeline project to Germany — but the sanctions might not have much effect given that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is almost complete. The Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the multi-billion dollar billion defense policy bill, formally known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), on Tuesday. The NDAA covers a broad range of defense policy and military spending. The annually-set NDAA is also significant for Europe’s energy scene, however, as the 2020 bill also contains provisions to impose sanctions on companies installing deep sea pipelines for Russia’s $10.5 billion Nord Stream 2 (NS2) gas pipeline linking Russia and Germany (via the Baltic Sea). The pipeline is Russia-led, under the aegis of the country’s state-owned energy giant Gazprom, but has been part-financed by several European energy companies, including Shell, OMV and Engie. The TurkStream project which stretches from Russia to Turkey, and estimated to cost around $12 billion, was also mentioned in the defense bill but the pipeline is set to launch early January so sanctions would be ineffectual. Sanctions The defense bill says that no later than 60 days after it’s enacted, a report should be filed to congressional committees identifying vessels that are “engaged in pipe-laying” for Nord Stream 2. Individuals who are identified as being involved in the projects could also have U.S. visas revoked and see transactions related to U.S. property blocked, although the bill allows a 30-day period for individuals to “wind-down” their operations in the project. The NDAA, which also greenlights the creation of a U.S. Space Force and paid parental leave for federal employees, was approved by the House of Representatives last week. It will now be sent to President Donald Trump to be signed into law; he signalled last week he would do so without delay.

U.S. Concedes Defeat on Nord Stream 2 Project, Officials Say - The U.S. has little leverage to prevent the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project between Russia and Germany from being completed, two administration officials said, acknowledging the failure of a years-long effort to head off what officials believe is a threat to European security. The massive $11-billion project is just weeks away from completion and has led President Donald Trump to call Germany “a captive to Russia.” He has criticized the European Union for not doing more to diversify imports away from the nation that supplies more than a third of its gas. Senior U.S. administration officials, who asked not to be identified discussing the administration’s take on the project, said sanctions that passed Congress on Tuesday as part of a defense bill are too late to have any effect. The U.S. instead will try to impose costs on other Russian energy projects, one of the officials added. relates to U.S. Concedes Defeat on Nord Stream 2 Project, Officials Say Nord Stream 2 is being laid on the bottom of the Baltic Sea to feed gas from Russia into Germany.Source: Gazprom The admission is a rare concession on what had been a top foreign-policy priority for the Trump administration and highlights how European allies such as Germany have been impervious to American pressure to abandon the pipeline. It also shows how the U.S. has struggled to deter Russia from flexing its muscles on issues ranging from energy to Ukraine to election interference. “It has been a commercial project, but with a huge geopolitical dimension attached to that,” Peter Beyer, who is German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s trans-Atlantic policy coordinator, told Bloomberg. “I’m expecting that the sanctions, if Donald Trump is going to sign that bill, will not have a big effect on that project.”

Exclusive: Illegally traded chemical halted Russian oil pipeline, tests show - (Reuters) - The substance that brought one of Russia’s longest oil pipelines to a halt in April was carbon tetrachloride, a lethal chemical meant to be tightly controlled by an international agreement, according to the results of three separate, undisclosed tests seen by Reuters. A summary of the results of a test carried out for Russia’s Ministry of Energy and for Transneft, the operator of the pipeline, by a Moscow-based state chemical laboratory seen by Reuters in May, which has not previously been reported, shows that the contaminant was 85 percent carbon tetrachloride. The presence of carbon tetrachloride suggests Russia has not stamped out illegal trade in the chemical, five oil industry sources said. Carbon tetrachloride is supposed to be strictly regulated by Russian law, these sources said. Russia’s energy ministry has blamed the stoppage in the Druzhba pipeline on a legally traded solvent called ethylene dichloride, an organic chloride compound used to clean oil wells, which can corrode equipment if it enters a refinery, according to industry experts. Two separate tests performed by two different companies, a European Union refiner and an international oil trading firm - which both told Reuters they unwittingly bought tainted crude from the pipeline - yielded almost identical results to the tests conducted by the Moscow state laboratory, two sources familiar with the findings told Reuters. Transneft said in June that 200 to 300 tonnes of an unnamed contaminant had entered the pipeline, but has not since made public any further details on the matter. Russia, the world’s second-biggest oil exporter, lost more than $1 billion in revenue due to the more than month-long stoppage of the pipeline, which carries about 1% of the global supply of crude oil from Russia to refineries in eastern and central Europe. The pipeline fully restarted normal operations on July 1.

Fracking leaves heavy footprint in Argentina's Patagonia - Pumpjack oil wells peck like giant birds at the ground, plumes of yellow flames flare from gas pipelines, lakes accumulate contaminated waste—Patagonia and its indigenous people are paying a heavy price for Argentina's economic progress. Vaca Muerta, a huge sweep of western Patagonian wilderness, sits on the world's second largest reserve of shale gas and its fourth largest oil reserves. A push to develop extraction amid Argentina's crippling economic crisis has made the area a magnet for international oil companies. Crucially, Vaca Muerta is also home to indigenous Mapuche communities who say their rights are being denied. "They came in as a state enterprise and just blew up the land. Without measuring the consequences or seeing that there were people living here—a Mapuche community living on the land," says Lorena Bravo, spokeswoman for the Mapuche community in Campo Maripe. "And from then on they denied our existence." The Mapuche claim that the burgeoning oil and shale gas industry, in particular the controversial fracking technique used to extract it, has irreversibly damaged their ancestral homelands, and with it their traditional way of life. "One day all this activity will cease, because the oil is going to run out, the gas is going to run out. We are going to be left only with polluted land," says Bravo.  The Mapuche indigenous communities nearby claim an ancestral right to the land and say they have to daily cope with the pollution caused by fracking. "Fracking is an illegal activity in Mapuche territory. It doesn't comply with our rights to be consulted," said Jorge Nahuel, a leader of Neuquen's Mapuche Confederation.  "Our territories are located over a lake of fuel. The result is pollution and death," said Nahuel, adding that farm animals were being "born with malformations." Other nearby communities like Allen and Fernandez Oro have seen their fruit crops diminish in the face of the oil companies' relentless advance across the land as exploration concessions increase.

Argentina Wants a Fracking Boom. The US Offers a Cautionary Tale -- Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez takes office in the midst of an economic crisis. Like his predecessor, he has made fracking a centerpiece of the country’s economic revival.Argentina has some of the largest natural gas and oil reserves in the world and “possibly the most prospective outside of North America,” according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. If some other country is going to successfully replicate the U.S. shale revolution, most experts put Argentina pretty high on that list. While the U.S.shale industry is showing its age, Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale is in its early stages, with only 4 percent of the acreage developed thus far.The country feels a sense of urgency. Declining conventional production from older oil and gas fields has meant that Argentina has become a net importer of fuels over the past decade. Meanwhile, Argentina’s economy has deteriorated badly due to a toxic cocktail of debt, austerity, inflation, and an unstable currency.For these reasons — a growing energy deficit, a worsening economic situation, and large oil and gas reserves trapped underground — there is enormous political support for kick-starting an American-style fracking boom in Argentina.It has taken on a level of political significance that outstrips its immediate economic potential. In Argentina, Vaca Muerta is treated as the country’s chance at salvation, with fracking seen as doing everything at once — creating jobs, reducing the debt burden, plugging the energy deficit and turning Argentina into a major player on the global oil and gas stage.Astute followers of the American fracking experience will already recognize some similarities. Debt-financed drilling rapidly increased production in the U.S.but also crashed prices. Time and again, the financial losses mounted and companies returned to Wall Street for more capital, peddling stories to investors about how they just needed a little more time to figure things out. But the profits never arrived. Over the past decade, the 40 largest independent oil and gas companies burned through $200 billion more than they earned. Roughly 200 oil and gas companies in North America have declared bankruptcy since 2015. There has even been a rise in “Chapter 22s,” a reference to companies going through Chapter 11 bankruptcy more than once.The worst may yet lie ahead: an estimated $137 billion in debt held by North American oil and gas companies comes due between 2020 and 2022, the result of a wave of financing that was taken out during the 2014-2016 market downturn.“The business case for fracking has not been proven. It produces a lot of natural gas and oil. It doesn’t produce cash,” said Kathy Hipple, a Financial Analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). “What we know is that it sucks in cash and produces a lot of bankruptcies.”More recently, operational problems have become harder to ignore. Companies are running out of the choicest spots to drill. The promise of densely drilling wells together has disappointed. Thousands of wells are not producing as much oil as the industry promised. “I personally think that we are going to discover massive amounts of fraud in the shale industry,” Hipple said. “That there have been probably a lot of overly robust assumptions that everyone has known were overly robust.”

Should The West Be Worried About The Power Of Siberia Pipeline? - A massive work of infrastructure has just been brought online, and its geopolitical implications are explosive.   Last week, the presidents of Russia and China jointly inaugurated one of the biggest pieces of gas infrastructure in the world. The “Power of Siberia” pipeline is sending gas from eastern Siberia over 3,000 kilometers of tundra to northern China; and when it reaches its full capacity of 38 billion cubic meters a year, it will account for about one-sixth of China’s imported gas demand.To some, this is a minor amount and not a reason to worry. Yet a sixth of imports is a pretty solid portion for the world’s largest gas import market. What’s more, there is already talk about Power of Siberia 2, which will bring the Russian share in China’s imported gas market higher, if it comes to be.As is invariably the case with large-scale Russian projects, there are people who want to know: should the West be worried?  To answer this question, we need to first clarify “the West”. In the past, the West was a unified concept including Western Europe and the United States. Now, the former is often at odds with the latter on topics spanning trade balance and free market practices. That’s what globalization has accomplished.  There is no longer a unified West, at least in the area of trade and energy security, a fact made obvious by Germany’s unwavering support for another Russian project, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, in the face of vocal U.S. opposition that at one point escalated to threats of sanctioning all companies involved in the project. So, to rephrase the original question, who should worry about Power of Siberia, and should anyone worry at all? The most immediate, knee-jerk answer would be: all other exporters of gas to China. It’s a no-brainer on the face of it: the Power of Siberia will bring into China 38 billion cubic meters of gas every year, which will unavoidably displace supply from other sources. Yet it pays to look beyond the face of things. In this case, Russian gas will first and foremost displace coal, not gas from other sources. The Power of Siberia will ship gas to northeastern China, which has so far been overwhelmingly dependent on coal for its energy needs, as Reuters’ Clyde Russell noted in a recent column. This part of China does not import LNG, Russell pointed out, so there will be no displacement of LNG imports. For now. A lot of LNG export capacity is being built with the future Chinese market in mind. There seems to be unanimity among energy forecasters that this market will only continue growing in the observable future, even if this growth moderates in pace. So everyone is betting on China specifically—and Asia more broadly. In this context, any other source of supply is a challenge, and if this source is a country on a strategic path of forging closer ties with its neighbor in the southeast, the challenge becomes more serious.

OPEC Deal Isn't Worth the Paper It's Written On – Bloomberg - There was an elephant in the room during the recent OPEC+ meeting: The record-breaking initial public offering of Saudi Arabia’s mammoth oil company Saudi Aramco occurring at exactly the same time. The coincidence meant that the output cuts agreed by OPEC and its allies were designed as much to bolster the share price of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., as they were to balance the oil market going into 2020. This will greatly complicate matters for Saudi Arabia when it finds itself having to impose discipline on fellow producers looking for ways to adhere to their targets without actually cutting production. The deal is much weaker than it looks. The headlines out of Vienna took markets by surprise. The group cut their collective output target by a further 500,000 barrels a day for the first quarter of 2020, taking the reduction from 2018 baselines to 1.7 million barrels a day. Saudi Arabia, the kingmaker in all oil matters, said it would reduce its own target by a further 400,000 barrels a day on top of that — as long as all the other participants adhered to their pledges. That appeared to indicate that OPEC+ output would be slashed by a very substantial 900,000 barrels a day, with 770,000 of them coming from OPEC and the rest from its partners. But in reality, the difference the agreement will make to physical production is really quite small, even if everyone sticks to their new goals. Saudi Arabia’s new voluntary target of 9.744 million barrels a day is just 5,000 barrels a day below what it pumped on average over the past nine months, according to the production numbers it supplies to OPEC. That’s no cut at all. In fact, by tying the 400,000 barrels a day to full compliance by everybody else, its offer was actually a thinly-disguised threat that the kingdom would increase output if any of the other countries fail to meet their commitment. Angola’s production will also go up rather than down in the coming months. The West African country has no new projects to offset steep decline rates at its deep-water fields after the 2014 price crash killed off foreign investment in its oil sector. In November, it pumped about 200,000 barrels a day below its target.  So even if everybody else does what they have promised, the real cut in output from November levels will be closer to 385,000 barrels a day. And even that is optimistic.

 Oil Steady as Trade Optimism Balanced by Caution - Oil was steady near a three-month high as optimism the U.S.-China trade deal will spur demand for crude was tempered by caution due to the agreement’s limited nature and lack of detail. Futures edged lower in New York after closing up 1.5% at the highest since Sept. 16 on Friday. The deal involves China buying more American farm products and making new commitments on intellectual property, while the U.S. will suspend new levies and halve existing tariffs on $120 billion of Chinese imports. It’s expected to be signed and released publicly in early January. While the partial trade deal leaves most of the tariffs built up over the 20-month conflict in place, it’s adding to a more positive outlook for oil prices as it followed deeper-than-expected output cuts by OPEC+ and signs American production growth may be slowing. Hedge funds increased net-bullish wagers on West Texas Intermediate crude by the most in three years in the week through Dec. 10. The lack of details on the trade deal could put oil under pressure this week, said Howie Lee, an economist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. in Singapore. However, the upward trend in prices since early October will likely remain intact given the improved sentiment in the market, he said. WTI for January delivery fell 0.1% to $59.99 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as of 7:32 a.m. in London. It rose 89 cents to $60.07 on Friday, taking its weekly gain to 1.5%. Brent for February settlement declined 0.1% to $65.15 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange after rising 1.6% Friday and 1.3% last week. The global benchmark was at a $5.23 premium to WTI for the same month. President Donald Trump said he expects China’s buying of American agricultural goods to reach $50 billion a year “pretty soon.” While the U.S. halved 15% duties on $120 billion of Chinese imports, it will maintain 25% levies on another $250 billion of goods. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency last week cut its forecast for U.S. oil supply growth to 1.1 million barrels a day for 2020, compared with 1.6 million this year.

Oil tops $60, settles near 3-month high - Oil prices rose slightly Monday on hopes energy demand will benefit from the trade deal between the United States and China announced last week, but prices remained below the previous session’s three-month highs. Brent crude oil futures rose 16 cents to $65.37 a barrel, while West Texas Intermediate crude rose 14 cents to settle near a three-month high of $60.21 a barrel. On Friday, Washington and Beijing announced a “phase one” agreement. U.S. officials said some tariffs would be reduced in exchange for a big jump in Chinese purchases of American farm products and other goods. Progress on trade could boost oil demand, but the market is still weighing the merits of the deal, said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “The market is pausing to digest the U.S.-China trade deal,” Flynn said. “We’re trying to consolidate to see if we can hold above $60 before we get higher.” The agreement averted $160 billion in additional U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods that were to kick in over the weekend. “What the market needs now... is clarity around exactly what the deal entails,” analysts from ING Economics said. “The longer we have to wait for this detail, the more likely market participants will start to question how good a deal it actually is.” On Sunday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the deal would nearly double U.S. exports to China over two years and was “totally done” despite the need for translation and textual revisions. China’s State Council’s customs tariff commission said it had suspended additional tariffs on some U.S. goods.

 Oil prices rise on optimism about economy in 2020 (Reuters) - Crude oil traders have become progressively more bullish about the outlook for prices since the beginning of October as the trade war between the United States and China has eased, lifting concerns about a global recession. Deeper production cuts by Saudi Arabia and its allies in the expanded OPEC+ group of oil exporters, announced at the start of this month, have probably accelerated the bullish shift. But production cuts are a second-order effect. The rise in oil prices has been primarily driven by greater optimism about the outlook for global trade and the economy next year (https://tmsnrt.rs/2PSMGgW).  Manufacturing surveys and data on industrial production in the United States, China, India and Germany have all started to show tentative signs that the recent slowdown in global growth and trade may be bottoming out. In the United States, the Federal Reserve has cut interest rates three times by a total of 75 basis points since the middle of the year in a bid to extend the current expansion. In China and India, governments have announced stimulus packages and encouraged increased bank lending to revive their economies. Even Germany has started to discuss using fiscal policy to stimulate more growth. As it enters a re-election year, the Trump administration’s focus is shifting from trade war to stimulating the economy, accelerating growth and boosting jobs and wages. With so much fiscal and monetary stimulus around the world, and the electoral cycle entering a strongly pro-growth phase, crude traders are betting oil consumption will grow faster next year.

Oil Prices Head Higher Despite OPEC+ Skepticism - Oil has edged up to three-month highs and is holding firm. “The conditions for a rising oil price appear favorable at present,” Commerzbank said in Tuesday. “Economic optimism coupled with a weaker US dollar and growing investor demand have allowed Brent and WTI to climb to over $65 and to over $60 per barrel respectively.” However, the bank noted that the shine on the OPEC+ deal will wear off, which creates downside risk.  Oil prices have hit three-month highs on the back of the OPEC+ cuts and the thaw in the trade war, but the rally has already slowed. Some analysts are skeptical that the lagging members of the OPEC+ cohort, including Iraq and Nigeria, will live up to their commitments. “Why would they change next year just because they made a pledge?” said Giovanni Staunovo, commodities analyst at UBS Global Wealth Management, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Who are some of the best-performers and worst-performers of 2019? The “worst” list is riddled with energy names, while the “best” list contains bad performers from 2018 who managed to stage a rebound.   A study from Carnegie Mellon University found that Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia enjoyed economic benefits from the rise of shale gas, but the region also suffered premature deaths due to pollution. The economic boost between 2004 and 2016 totaled $21 billion, but the costs reached $23 billion.   The EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report forecasts growth of 48,000 bpd in the Permian in January, compared to December. However, output falls by 15,000 bpd in the Anadarko and by 9,000 bpd in the Eagle Ford. On the gas side, output grows in the Permian, but contracts in the Anadarko, Appalachia and Eagle Ford. The contraction in Appalachia is notable since it is the largest source of gas in the country. But the basin has been plagued by poor finances amid low prices.  Goldman Sachs revised its policy to exclude financing for projects based on coal or oil drilling in the Arctic. The Wall Street giant also said that it would mobilize $750 billion in financing for “climate transition and inclusive growth finance” over the next decade. The new policy is “now the strongest among the big six U.S. banks,” according to the Sierra Club and the Rainforest Action Network.  Using satellites, scientists found that a shale gas blowout at an XTO gas well, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil emitted more methane into the atmosphere than some countries do in an entire year.

Oil poised near three-month highs on US-China trade hopes, supply cuts  - Oil prices trickled a fraction lower on Tuesday but remained near a three-month high as investors kept the faith with hopes that a fully fledged U.S.-China trade deal is in the pipeline, set to stoke oil demand in the world’s biggest economies. Brent crude oil futures had slipped by two cents to $65.32 a barrel by 0422 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate crude was down four cents to $60.17 a barrel. Under a partial trade agreement announced last week, Washington will reduce some tariffs on Chinese imports in exchange for Chinese purchases of agricultural, manufactured and energy products increasing by about $200 billion over the next two years. “Oil prices are struggling to extend their gains as investors await further details regarding the U.S.-China ‘Phase One’ trade deal,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA. “Oil should be much higher, but the U.S.-China trade war is far from over.” The so-called ‘Phase One’ trade deal between both countries has been “absolutely completed”, Larry Kudlow, a top White House adviser said on Monday, adding that U.S. exports to China will double under the agreement. The agreement is yet to be signed and several Chinese officials told Reuters the wording of the agreement remained a delicate issue, with care was needed to ensure expressions used in text did not re-escalate tensions and deepen differences. JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have revised their oil price forecasts for the next year upwards, with an OPEC-led agreement to curb output further dovetailing with the improving trade outlook between the U.S. and China. Lower supply next year due to a planned cut by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and associated producers like Russia — a grouping known as ‘OPEC+’ — and stronger economic growth expected because of the improved trade outlook between United States and China will combine to tighten the oil supply-demand balance next year, analysts from JP Morgan said. Oil demand could see further improvements as U.S. President Donald Trump “tries to ... ensure the U.S. growth remains robust before voters turn to the polls in November,”

Crude Slides On Surprise Build As Oil Volatility Plunges To 8-Month Lows -  Oil prices jumped notably intraday (near three-month highs at $61 for WTI) as US manufacturing data printed better than expected, building on post-trade-deal optimism.“The conditions for a rising oil price appear favorable at present,” said Eugen Weinberg, head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt.But that could all change after inventory data.  API:

• Crude +4.7mm (-1.5mm exp)
• Cushing -0.3mm
• Gasoline +5.6mm
• Distillates +3.7mm

Crude inventories rose unexpectedly in the prior week but were expected to draw again this week. However a 4.7mm build was a big surprise relative to the 1.5mm draw expected...  WTI hovered just below $61 ahead of the data, but dropped on the surprise build... And all of this is occurring as Oil 'VIX' drops to its lowest in 8 months...

EIA: US crude inventories down 1.1 million bbl - US crude oil inventories for the week ended Dec. 13, excluding the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, decreased by 1.1 million bbl from the previous week, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration. Separately, the American Petroleum Institute on Dec. 17 reported a build in US crude supplies of 4.7 million bbl for the week. At 446.8 million bbl, US crude oil inventories are 4% above the 5-year average for this time of year, the EIA report indicated. EIA said total motor gasoline inventories increased by 2.5 million bbl and are 5% above the 5-year range for this time of year. Finished gasoline inventories decreased while blending component inventories increased last week. Distillate fuel inventories increased by 1.5 million bbl and are about 7% below the 5-year average for this time of year. Propane-propylene inventories decreased by 2.5 million bbl last week and are about 10% above the 5-year average for this time of year, EIA said. US refinery inputs averaged 16.6 million b/d for the week ended Dec. 13, about 35,000 b/d less than the previous week’s average. Refineries operated at 90.6% of capacity. Gasoline production increased, averaging 9.8 million b/d. Distillate fuel production decreased, averaging 5.1 million b/d. US crude oil imports averaged 6.6 million b/d, down 308,000 b/d from the previous week. Over the last 4 weeks, crude oil imports averaged 6.4 million b/d, 15.1% less than the same period last year. Total motor gasoline imports averaged 519,000 b/d. Distillate fuel imports averaged 178,000 b/d.

WTI Surges Above $61 On Crude Draw, Demand Rebounds From 3-Year Lows - Oil prices remain lower following last night's surprise crude inventory build reported by API but analysts continue to expect a draw in the official data this morning.“As much as the API has taken the wind out of bulls’ sails, the lull in upside is expected to be short-lived,” .“After all, recent positive developments have given oil fundamentals for next year a supportive shot in the arm.”  DOE:

• Crude -1.085mm (-1.75mm exp)
• Cushing -265k
• Gasoline +2.529mm (+2mm exp)
• Distillates +1.509mm

Unlike API's data, DOE reported a crude inventory draw in the last week (though smaller than analysts expected) and gasoline inventories rose for the 6th week in a row... Cushing stocks have fallen for the past six weeks and the market will be looking for signs of improvement in refinery runs, particularly in the Gulf Coast, which have been low compared with previous years, says Bob Yawger, futures director at Mizuho Securities.Additionally, Gasoline stockpiles are the highest they've been this time of year in data going back to 1990.  US oil production held near record highs...

Oil settles slightly lower after smaller-than-expected US inventory decline Oil prices steadied on Wednesday after U.S. government data showed a decline in crude inventories and on expectations for an uptick in demand next year on the back of progress in resolving the U.S.-China trade fight. Brent futures gained 12 cents to trade at $66.22 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate lost 1 cent to settle at $60.93. U.S. crude fell by 1.1 million barrels in the week to Dec. 13 to 446.8 million barrels, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 1.3 million-barrel drop, the Energy Information Administration said. Gasoline and distillate inventories grew last week by 2.5 million barrels to 237.3 million barrels, and 1.5 million barrels to 125.1 million barrels, respectively, EIA said. Oil pared losses after the data, which contradicted Tuesday’s report of a build in U.S. crude stockpiles from industry group American Petroleum Institute (API). API figures released showed U.S. crude inventories swelling by 4.7 million barrels last week to 452 million barrels, sparking a post-settlement sell-off in oil futures. “The market reaction was abruptly stronger due to the fact that we were so far away from industry estimations in the way of a net build,” said Tony Headrick, an energy markets analyst at CHS Hedging. “The upward trend from optimistic demand expectations such as from recent developments like U.S.-China trade deal has the ability to stay in tact after these figures,” Headrick said.

 Oil prices surf US-China trade thaw to three-month highs - Oil prices remained atop three-month peaks on Thursday, extending a robust streak that began a week ago, as thawing trade relations between the United States and China supported global markets. Brent crude futures edged up 8 cents to $66.25 a barrel by 0645 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained 4 cents to $60.97. Trading volume was thin, with not even news of President Donald Trump’s impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives stirring the oil market. “We’re near the top of trading ranges for both Brent and WTI so it’s interesting to see them holding here,” While there is a clear uptrend in place on the daily technical price chart for WTI to potentially move towards $61.50 a barrel, there are also near-term risks — touching that price level may encourage traders to sell, ″(Trading) volumes are terrible. A lot of people have given up for the year with no scheduled events to push oil markets around,” he said. The trend leaves oil prices set to rise for a third consecutive week, surfing momentum from announcements this month about deeper output cuts by major producers as well as the ‘Phase One’ deal between the United States and China to resolve their long-running trade war. The deal between the world’s two largest economies has improved the global economic outlook, lifted the prospect for higher energy demand next year and underpinned oil prices. In a further sign of thawing relations, China’s finance ministry on Thursday published a new list of six U.S. products that will be exempt from tariffs starting Dec. 26.

Oil Prices Hold Steady Near Three-month Highs - Oil prices held steady near three-month highs in thin trade on Thursday ahead of the holiday season. Benchmark Brent crude edged up by 3 cents to $66.20 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures were virtually unchanged at $60.85. A potential thawing in U.S.-China trade relations has improved the global economic outlook, raising the prospect for higher energy demand next year. China has announced a list of United States (US) chemicals that will be exempted from import tariffs starting Dec. 26. This comes under a week after Beijing and Washington agreed a 'phase one' trade deal. Meanwhile, traders seemed to have shrugged off the vote in the U.S. House to impeach President Donald Trump. The United States House of Representatives voted largely along party lines to impeach Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The move to impeach Trump relates to his alleged efforts to coerce Ukraine into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden as well as his alleged attempts to obstruct the Congressional investigation. Republicans currently hold a 53 to 45 majority in the Senate, with two Democratic-leaning independents, and removing Trump from office would require a two-thirds vote in favor. Several Senate Republicans have already indicated they will not vote to remove Trump from office even before the Senate holds its trial on the House charges.

U.S. oil prices settle at a 3-month high; Brent gains a 6th straight session –   Oil futures ended higher Thursday and logged their highest settlement since mid-September, with global benchmark prices stretching their gains to a sixth consecutive session. Oil’s climb came a day after data showed a weekly decline in U.S. crude inventories. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, West Texas Intermediate crude for January delivery rose 29 cents, or 0.5%, to finish at $61.22 a barrel. The contract expired at the end of the session. February WTI crude, the new front-month contract, rose by 33 cents, or 0.5%, to settle at $61.18. February Brent crude added 37 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $66.54 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. That stretched its streak of gains to a sixth consecutive session, the longest winning streak since Jan. 10 when the market rose for 10 straight sessions, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Oil on Wednesday bounced back from early losses after the Energy Information Administration on reported that U.S. crude supplies fell by 1.1 million barrels for the week ended Dec. 13. That was less than the 2.5 million-barrel average decline expected by analysts polled by S&P Global Platts, but came as a relief after the American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday had reported a 4.7 million-barrel climb. The market should see further supply declines “into the end of the year due to year-end tax consequences of destocking,”   Prices for oil may move lower in the first quarter of 2020 “due to slow demand,” Zahir said. “Of course, any problems with the China phase one deal we could see an accelerated move to the downside” as worries about energy demand resurface. On Thursday, however, China revealed a list of import tariff exemptions for six chemical and oil products from the U.S., according to a report from CNBC. Chinese tariff concessions on six U.S. petroleum products are “boosting trade confidence, although the concessions actually announced are insubstantial,”  In other energy trade, January gasoline RBF20, -0.29%  rose 1.4% to $1.7068 a gallon, while January heating oil  rose 0.5% to $2.0295 a gallon. January natural gas declined by 1.3 cents, or 0.6%, to settle at $2.273 per million British thermal units, giving up earlier gains seen in the wake of the latest U.S. supply figures. The EIA on Thursday reported that domestic supplies of natural gas fell by 107 billion cubic feet for the week ended Dec. 13. Analysts expected a fall of 93 billion cubic feet, on average, according to a survey conducted by S&P Global Platts.

Oil posts 5th positive session in 6, fueled by US inventories and trade progress  - Oil prices hovered near the highest in three months in thin pre-Christmas trading on Thursday, buoyed by the previous day’s news that U.S. crude inventories declined and as U.S.-China trade tensions continued to ease. Brent crude gained 37 cents to settle at $66.54 per barrel, for its sixth straight day of gains. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude gained 29 cents, or 0.48%, to settle at $61.22 per barrel. Trading volume was thin, with oil headed for a third consecutive weekly rise. Prices were buoyed by China’s Dec. 13 decision to cancel a plan to impose additional tariffs on U.S. imports on Dec. 15 and the Phase 1 deal between Washington and China, which has eased trade tensions. The deal between the world’s two largest economies has improved the global economic outlook, lifting prospects for higher energy demand next year and underpinning oil prices. “The market’s happy with (Dec. 15) tariffs out of the way and the trade truce, for now,” said Bill Baruch, president at Blue Line Futures in Chicago. In a further sign of thawing relations, China’s finance ministry on Thursday published a new list of six U.S. products that will be exempt from tariffs starting Dec. 26. Oil has also gained momentum from announcements about deeper output cuts by major crude producers. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers such as Russia agreed earlier this month to deepen production cuts by a further 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) from Jan. 1 on top of previous reductions of 1.2 million bpd.

Oil Settles Notably Lower On Jump In Rig Count, Profit Taking - Crude oil prices declined sharply on Friday as data from Baker Hughes showed a sharp increase in rig count in the U.S., and traders looked to trim down positions ahead of upcoming holidays. West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures for February ended down $0.74, or about 1.2%, at $60.44 a barrel. Brent Crude oil futures declined $0.48, or about 0.7%, to 66.06 a barrel. On Thursday, WTI crude oil futures settled at a three-month high. WTI Crude oil futures gained about 0.5% in the week. According to a report released by Baker Hughes, rigs count in the U.S. increased for a second straight week, rising by as much as 18 to 685 this week. The report also said total rigs count have now risen to 813. Despite optimism on the trade front and the ongoing OPEC output cuts, oil prices drifted lower in the session as traders looked keen on taking some profits ahead of the year-end holiday period. After the U.S. and China agreed on a phase one trade deal, China announced a list of United States chemicals that will be exempted from import tariffs. U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday a trade deal with China was finished and is ready for signing after the holidays.

U.S. oil prices end 1.2% lower as rig-count data show weekly increase - Oil futures finished sharply lower Friday, with declines accelerating after a weekly report on drilling rigs showed a big increase. Baker Hughes reported that the number of active U.S. rigs drilling for oil rose by 18 to 685 this week, marking a second straight weekly rise in rigs. The total active U.S. rig count also climbed by 14 to 813, according to Baker Hughes. West Texas Intermediate crude for February delivery, the U.S. benchmark grade, fell 74 cents, or 1.2%, to settle at $60.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Still, the most-active contract gained 0.8% for the week, according to Dow Jones Market Data. February Brent crude BRNG20, -0.06% shed 40 cents, or 0.6%, to end at $66.14 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe, snapping a sixth straight session of gains, its longest win streak since Jan. 10. Still, the international benchmark gained 1.4% for the week and has been up six of the past seven weeks. Both contracts logged a third weekly climb in a row. “I think the overall picture is that we’re down today mainly due to profit taking as traders go into the holiday nervous about remaining [long] oil,” Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group told MarketWatch. “The losses accelerated a bit after the increase in rig counts,” he said. The analyst said crude futures have enjoyed a healthy weekly run-up, with a period of seasonally light volume expected to possibly yield outsize moves in either direction. “It’s Christmas next week,” Flynn said. “A lot of traders aren’t going to be here,” he said. “Along with the growth of stock indices, the growth of oil prices also attracts attention,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, senior market analyst at FxPro. “Avoiding sharp movements, it shows a strengthening for the last seven trading sessions, moving closer towards the heights since July.” Oil prices have been mostly bolstered by more optimistic expectations for the global economy and Sino-American trade developments, as well as the decision earlier this month by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, a group known as OPEC+, to deepen production cuts.

Exclusive: Saudi Arabia, UAE swayed Russia for OPEC+ cuts at Abu Dhabi F1 race - (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia turned to its Gulf ally the United Arab Emirates when it needed help convincing Russia to sign on to deeper oil supply cuts at this month’s OPEC meeting. The UAE’s de-facto ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, hosted crucial talks between Saudi Arabia and Russia in Abu Dhabi, where the three nations ironed out what would become one of the deepest supply cuts in a decade, four sources familiar with the negotiations told Reuters. The UAE’s role in the talks marks a change from years past and highlights Russia’s rising clout in the region. Since Russia started cooperating with OPEC on supply agreements in 2016, Riyadh and Moscow have led oil supply decisions in advance of OPEC meetings without much involvement from other producers. This time, Riyadh wanted Abu Dhabi to help add pressure on Moscow to agree to the cuts, two sources said. Russia saw the agreement as a way to strengthen key relationships in the region. “The message Russia wanted to send is that it is supporting Saudi Arabia at a crucial moment and that the alliance is solid,” one of the sources said. “The UAE’s role shouldn’t come as a surprise. Russia has very strong ties with the UAE.” Russia and Saudi Arabia are the world’s top exporters, together accounting for 20 percent of global production. The involvement of the UAE, which produces 3 percent of global oil supply, came after Moscow signaled opposition to extending new supply cuts in advance of the OPEC meetings in Vienna on Dec. 5 and 6, three of the sources said. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman orchestrated the deeper oil cuts and had been discussing them with Russian officials since October, when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Riyadh, according to three of the sources. Since then, Saudi and Russian officials have shuttled between Riyadh, Moscow and Abu Dhabi to negotiate the oil-supply deal, the sources said.

Exclusive: U.S. probe of Saudi oil attack shows it came from north - report - (Reuters) - The United States said new evidence and analysis of weapons debris recovered from an attack on Saudi oil facilities on Sept. 14 indicates the strike likely came from the north, reinforcing its earlier assessment that Iran was behind the offensive. A comparison of engines (L) involved in the September 14, 2019 attack on an Aramco oil facility in Saudi Arabia and from the Shahed-123, displayed in the Iranian Materiel Display, are shown in this handout image provided by a U.S. government source. U.S. government/Handout via REUTERS In an interim report of its investigation - seen by Reuters ahead of a presentation on Thursday to the United Nations Security Council - Washington assessed that before hitting its targets, one of the drones traversed a location approximately 200 km (124 miles) to the northwest of the attack site. “This, in combination with the assessed 900 kilometer maximum range of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), indicates with high likelihood that the attack originated north of Abqaiq,” the interim report said, referring to the location of one of the Saudi oil facilities that were hit. It added the United States had identified several similarities between the drones used in the raid and an Iranian designed and produced unmanned aircraft known as the IRN-05 UAV. However, the report noted that the analysis of the weapons debris did not definitely reveal the origin of the strike that initially knocked out half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.“At this time, the U.S. Intelligence Community has not identified any information from the recovered weapon systems used in the 14 September attacks on Saudi Arabia that definitively reveals an attack origin,” it said. The new findings include freshly declassified information, a State Department official told Reuters. The United States, European powers and Saudi Arabia blamed the Sept. 14 attack on Iran. Yemen’s Houthi group claimed responsibility for the attacks, and Iran, which supports the Houthis, denied any involvement. Yemen is south of Saudi Arabia.

Officials fear stranded oil tanker off Yemen's coast - Yemen’s officials on Tuesday reiterated their fears that a stranded oil tanker could explode and cause serious pollution off the country’s Red Sea coast. Loaded with nearly 1.1 million barrels of oil, the tanker Safer has been stranded some 7 km off Yemen’s Ras Isa port, north of the city of Hodeidah. In August, the United Nations attempted to assess the Safer. But the Houthis rebels blocked the access to the derelict tanker that was being used as a floating storage for oil transfers. The Houthis placed submitting the revenues from the sale of the oil aboard the tanker to their bank in Sanaa as a precondition to allowing the UN inspection team to reach the Safer. Officials of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, based in the southern port city of Aden, expressed their concern that the Houthis are still refusing to grant the international inspectors access to the decaying oil tanker. They said the tanker is at the risk of exploding as it has remained without maintenance since it fell under the control of the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in 2015. “The tanker is in a pressing need for urgent maintenance,” as four years’ accumulation of flammable gases and the formation of hydrocarbon gases may lead to a blast, an official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. He said, “For several times, the Yemeni government called for international assistance in preventing the potentially serious oil pollution threatening the Red Sea’s ecology but received no active response.” The international community should exert more efforts in pressuring and forcing the Houthi rebels to allow the UN’s technical team to carry out necessary maintenance of the tanker and aborting any environmental disaster, the official said.

New WikiLeaks documents expose phony claims of 2018 Syria chemical weapons attack - Documents published by WikiLeaks on Saturday confirm that there is significant dissent within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the global chemical weapons watchdog, over the doctoring of a public report on the alleged April 7, 2018 chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, which reportedly killed 49 people and wounded as many as 650. The latest round of revelations makes clear that the US-led regime-change operation in Syria which began in 2011 has been based on a pack of lies. And the role of WikiLeaks in exposing these lies demonstrates why the US government has been pursuing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange so ferociously, along with Washington's partners in crime like Britain and Australia. Relying on video which showed alleged victims of the attack in a hospital gasping for air and foaming at the mouth, the Trump administration and its European allies launched missile strikes against Syria just one week later. The US-led attack was an act of war which threatened to spark a wider conflict with Russia and Iran, which both have military forces deployed to the country to back the Assad government in the eight-year regime-change war fueled by the CIA. While the Trump administration made no effort to seek independent confirmation of the allegations against Assad before taking military action, the OPCW report and the organization’s supposedly objective stance were deployed to justify the assault months after the fact.However, a series of internal OPCW files published by WikiLeaks and reporting by columnist Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail show that serious concerns have been raised by members of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission (FFM) to Douma about evidence that was excluded from the final report in order to implicate Assad. Relying on Islamist terrorist groups as “moderate rebel” proxies, including Al Qaeda and its affiliates, the US and its European allies have fueled a war which has resulted in the deaths of 570,000 people and displaced more than 12 million. The years of carnage have been aimed at overthrowing Assad and installing a pliant Western puppet regime in order to neutralize the influence of Iran and Russia in the oil-rich Middle East. Claims of chemical weapons attacks and the use of “barrel bombs” by Syria’s military have been repeatedly deployed throughout the war in an effort to justify Western military action and call for the removal of Assad.

Deluge Of New Leaks Further Shreds The Establishment Syria Narrative - Caitlin Johnstone - WikiLeaks has published multiple documents providing further details on the coverup within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) of its own investigators’ findings which contradicted the official story we were all given about an alleged chlorine gas attack in Douma, Syria last year. The alleged chemical weapons incident was blamed on the Syrian government by the US and its allies, who launched airstrikes against Syria several days later. Subsequent evidence indicating that there was insufficient reason to conclude the chlorine gas attack ever happened was repressed by the OPCW, reportedly at the urging of US government officials. The new publications by WikiLeaks add new detail to this still-unfolding scandal, providing more evidence to further invalidate attempts by establishment Syria narrative managers to spin it all as an empty conspiracy theory. The OPCW has no business hiding any information from the public which casts doubt on the official narrative about an incident which was used to justify an act of war on a sovereign nation. The following are hyperlinks to the individual OPCW documents WikiLeaks published, with some highlights found therein: A first draft of the OPCW’s July 2018 Interim Report on the team’s findings in Douma. Contains crucial information that was not included in either the final draft of the July 2018 Interim Report or the March 2019 Final Report, including:

• 1. The symptoms of the alleged victims of the supposed chemical incident were inconsistent with chlorine gas poisoning.
• 2. OPCW inspectors couldn’t find any explanation for why the gas cylinders supposedly dropped from Syrian aircraft were so undamaged by the fall.
• 3. The team concluded that either the victims were poisoned with some unknown gas which wasn’t chlorine, or there was no chemical weapon at all.

Sabra and Chatila taught me all massacres become ‘alleged massacres’ if we don’t pay attention -  Robert Fisk. -Not that long ago, I spotted a report in an American newspaper which referred to the “alleged Sabra and Chatila massacre”. Up to 1,700 civilians, most of them Palestinians, were slaughtered in the two refugee camps in Beirut in just three days in 1982. They were killed by Israel’s Lebanese Christian Phalangist allies. The Israelis watched – and did nothing. Even Israel’s own commission of enquiry admitted this. With two colleagues, I entered the camps before the murderers had finished committing their war crimes. I hid with an American reporter in the back yard of a hut beside a newly executed young woman. I climbed over heaps of corpses. That evening, I burned my clothes because they smelled of decomposition. Photographs and film of the dead were later broadcast around the world. Yet more than two decades later, this mass killing was merely “alleged”. And when I spoke to a younger colleague scarcely a year ago, he did not know the location of Sabra and Chatila, nor the number killed – almost 400 more than those who were murdered in the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11. But no international or world leaders visit the mass grave at Sabra and Chatila on the anniversary of the massacre of the Palestinians. The greatest enemy of all journalists – and all politicians – is the failure of institutional, historical memory. It’s one thing to claim that a Middle East war is imminent because Iran threatens America or America threatens Iran or because Israel warns that Iran is making nuclear weapons. But if you count up all the previous threats of war between Iran and the US – not to mention Israel’s eight warnings over 15 years, each giving different dates for the ‘doomsday’ of Iran’s nuclear possession — you would do well to downgrade the threat of war. These warnings are issued for us to trumpet like clowns on radio, television, on social media and in newspapers – which we are usually obedient enough to do. They do not represent any kind of reality. They are issued because the supposed warmongers believe – quite rightly – that we either do not remember the identical and equally fraudulent figures they issued years ago. Or because they are convinced (again, I fear, correctly) that we don’t care very much to ‘keep them to the record’. This is one reason why I have spent – cumulatively – years of my time as a Middle East correspondent cataloguing the accounts of survivors of the Armenian genocide of 1917 (all, of course, now dead), the deliberate ethnic cleansing and mass murder of the one and a half million Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Turks. They were shot into mass graves, suffocated in caves in the Syrian desert, the women raped and forced into marriage, the children spitted on bayonets or stakes or hurled into rivers.

Why Syria’s small oil reserves have become the linchpin for political control in the region —Akram Hassan remembers when the modest oil fields in the arid eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor attracted companies from around the world. As an engineer in the industry and Kurd from the northern city of Qamishli, he watched the revenue disappear into the government’s coffers. “Syrian people did not have any benefit from this oil. … All the money the regime kept in their pocket,” said Hassan. Most higher-up workers in fields were from Latakia, the homeland of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s family. “Arab petroleum is for Arabs,” they would tell him. It was a joke, but a revealing one, Hassan said. Times have changed in his country. The oil has attracted another foreign power — the U.S. military — and Kurdish-led forces are the ones controlling the area and collecting revenue. Syria was never a large oil producer compared to its resource-rich neighbors. But somehow the small reserves, barely pumping now after more than eight years of war, have become a linchpin for political control. The Syrian economy has collapsed, and significant outside help is unlikely. The country’s GDP has declined by more than 70% since 2010, according to the CIA’s World Factbook, and the unemployment rate is around 50%. The government’s budget decreased to around $1.162 billion in 2017 compared to $16.4 billion in 2010. The oil could be just enough to prop up the Syrian government — or a competing power. And who controls oil-rich stretches of the Syrian desert could determine who controls large regions of the country. In 2010, before conflict erupted, Syrian wells produced around 385,000 barrels per day, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. That amounted to just 0.5% of global production — around what North Dakota produced that year.

Turkey says S-400 system ‘vital’, will retaliate any US sanctions - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has repeated a retaliation threat against any US sanctions over Ankara's purchase of a Russian missile defence system. Speaking at a conference in Qatar's capital, Doha, Cavusoglu said on Saturday that Turkey would not cancel its deal with Russia over the S-400 missile system "whatever the consequences". "Sanctions and threatening language never work. But if sanctions are placed, Turkey will have to reciprocate," Cavusoglu said at the Doha Forum, a two-day conference billed as a global platform for dialogue. NATO allies Turkey and the United States have been at odds over the purchase of the advanced Russian system, which Washington says is not compatible with NATO defences and poses a threat to its F-35 stealth fighter jets. This week, senators in the US-backed legislation to impose sanctions on Turkey over the S-400 deal earlier this year and its recent military operation in northern Syria. The vote, which was immediately condemned by Turkey, was seen as the latest move to push US President Donald Trump to take a harder line against Ankara. The Trump administration has so far not imposed sanctions despite the president in 2017 signing a sanctions law that mandates financial penalties for countries that do business with Russia's military. Amid already strained bilateral ties, Washington has suspended Ankara from the US F-35 stealth fighter jet programme, in which it was a producer and buyer, to penalise it for buying the Russian system. Cavusoglu said the S-400 purchase - the first such move between a NATO member and Russia - was a necessity. "We are very desperate for an air defence system. We tried to procure it from the US and others, but it didn't work. This is a defence system that is vital for us."

Turkey Gives NATO The Middle Finger, Threatens To Shutter Critical Military Bases Over Sanction Threats -  Although Trump and Erdogan have tried to maintain at least the veneer of a personally amicable relationship, and though Trump has at times defied his own senior NatSec officials to offer a major sop to Erdogan (like when Trump pulled US troops out and stepped aside to allow the Turkish invasion, the the horror of Europe), Erdogan's increasingly tight relationship with Russia - a relationship built on defense and energy ties - is becoming impossible for many western leaders to countenance. Congressional hawks like Lindsey Graham (for the Republicans) and Chris Van Hollen (on the Democratic side) have already successfully pushed Trump to "announce" more sanctions against Turkey via Twitter. And they might be able to finally push him to follow through, too.In response to this and myriad other slights both perceived and real, Erdogan made it clear on Monday that he's had about enough of this harassment from his supposed "allies" in the West. Because when it comes to Trump cards, Erdogan still has one to play.According to Bloomberg, Erdogan warned that he could shutter two of the most important NATO bases in the world if more sanctions are imposed.In the minds of US NatSec officials, Erdogan's threat is an extremely low blow. An early-warning radar at Turkey's Kurecik air base is a critical component of NATO's early-warning defense system against ballistic missile attacks. And the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is critical to tactical air strikes and drone attacks throughout the region. "If it is necessary to shut it down, we would shut down Incirlik," Erdogan told AHaber television on Sunday. "If it is necessary to shut it down, we would shut down Kurecik, too."[...]"If they put measures such as sanctions in force, then we would respond based on reciprocity," Erdogan said. "It is very important for both sides that the U.S. should not take irreparable steps in our relations."

Turkish Military Gets Drones WIth Machine Guns - The Turkish military is about to take delivery of a fleet of 55-lb. drones equipped with a machine gun and 200-rounds of ammunition. Made by Ankara-based firm Asisguard, the 'Songar' drone can strike a 6" target at roughly 650 feet and has a range of 6.2 miles, and can operate in groups. A newer version is expected to be able to hit targets from over 1,300 miles away. Accoridng to Ayhan Sungar of Asisguard, a swarm of three Songar drones can be operated from a single remote control - with all three firing simultaneously at a target. Held aloft by eight rotating blades, the drone uses a series of sensors, cameras and lasers to calculate distance, angle and wind speed - along with robotic arms that can help to deliver accurate fire on target with minimal recoil, according to New Scientist. It is hard for a drone to shoot accurately, partly because of the difficulty of judging range and angle, and partly because the recoil from each shot significantly moves the drone, affecting the aim for the next round. Songar has two systems to overcome these challenges. One uses sensors, including cameras and a laser rangefinder, to calculate distance, angle and wind speed, and work out where to aim. The second is a set of robot arms that move the machine gun to compensate for the effects of recoil. -New Scientist While critics such as Robert Bunker of the US Army's Strategic Studies Institute say the drones could end up in the hands of armed insurgents (which they will regardless), Songar says the drones will allow for new tactics, such as laying down suppressive fire while humans or other drones carry out attacks on other targets such as infrastructure or vehicles.

 Turkey To Establish Military Base In Libya As Egypt Threatens Its Own Intervention - Turkey's involvement in the ongoing Libyan war between Benghazi-based General Khalifa Haftar and the UN-recognized Tripoli GNA government is set to grow. Following a recent military agreement between Turkey and Tripoli, and as Haftar's forces threaten attack on any Turkish plane or ship, it's expected the Turkish military will set up a base in the war-torn country. Middle East Monitor reports of the latest developments: Turkey is set to establish a military base in Libya, according to Turkish media reports earlier this week, as President Recep Tayyip weighs up the possibility of intervention in the country’s civil war. Yeni Shafak reported on Monday that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish parliament had approved a recent agreement between Turkey and Libya on military cooperation. It also includes provisions for launching a “quick reaction force” if requested by the Libyan government.The exact location for the proposed base has not been revealed, but it will likely be in the vicinity of Tripoli, given that's where they key front line fighting has been as part of Haftar's LNA forces offensive on the capital. The deal was initially touted by Ankara as primarily for oil and gas exploration off Libya's coast and in the eastern Mediterranean, but was later revealed to include close military cooperation agreements.Addressing the controversial deal in statements made early this week President Erdogan told a pro-government news channel, "We will be defending the rights of Libya and Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean." Already there are unconfirmed reports in Arabic media that Turkish special forces have landed in Tripoli. But crucially, neighboring Egypt, which has long backed east Libyan strongman Haftar, has condemned the Turkey-Tripoli GNA deal as "illegitimate" and has even signaled its own military intervention could come. On Tuesday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi warned in the wake of the Turkey-Libya agreement, "We will not allow anyone to control Libya... it is a matter of Egyptian national security."

 Greece To Help Tripoli 'Block Turkish Ships' As Libyan War Spills Into Mediterranean - The years-long war for post-Gaddafi Libya now threatens to spill over into the Mediterranean as Turkey and Greece line up on either side of the conflict. Each side is now threatening the others' allied ships in southern waters after a controversial maritime deal expanded Turkish claims off Libya's coast.  On Thursday Benghazi-based General Kalifa Haftar declared his Libyan National Army has begun its "final decisive battle" to wrest control of the capital of Tripoli from the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). "Zero hour has come for the broad and total assault expected by every free and honest Libyan," Haftar said in a televised address, reports Al Jazeera. "Today, we announce the decisive battle and the advancement towards the heart of the capital to set it free... advance now our heroes." Beginning eight months ago Haftar launched a siege of Tripoli, which has been stalled in recent months.  Turkey has been the closest military supporter to Tripoli's GNA, even recently signing a controversial maritime agreement, after providing heavy weaponry to repel Haftar's assault. Last summer the LNA even attacked Turkish naval ships, in what's an ongoing declared war with any Turkish vessel or aircraft. This "proxy war" element is now threatening to involve Greece. Days ago Erdogan confirmed his country signed a bilateral memorandum, finalized on Nov. 27, which would allow Turkish forces to enter Libyan territory or waters at the request of the GNA authorities. "With this new agreement between Turkey and Libya, we can hold joint exploration operations in these exclusive economic zones that we determined," Erdogan said. The agreement established a continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) boundary line of 18.6 nautical miles between the two countries.

Turkey Allows Hamas To Plot Attacks From Istanbul- Telegraph - Turkey is allegedly allowing Hamas operatives to plan attacks against Israel from the city of Istanbul, a new report from the Telegraph claimed on Wednesday. Citing transcripts from Israeli police interrogations with suspects, the Telegraph alleged that senior Hamas operatives were using the large city of Istanbul to direct operations in Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. The report said that one such case was the assassination attempt against the mayor of Jerusalem. “Israel has repeatedly told Turkey that Hamas is using its territory to plan attacks, but last weekend Mr Erdogan met Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, and Turkish intelligence agents maintain close contact with the group’s operatives in Istanbul,” the Telegraph report said. Hamas has been hosted in mostly Arab countries since its rise to power in the Gaza Strip. Among these Arab nations that hosted Hamas are Syria and Qatar, the latter being the most recent. Turkey is Qatar’s closest ally in the Middle East and the two countries are often on the same page when it comes to regional politics (e.g. Syrian conflict). The issue has fueled hostility between the two states, even though they maintain diplomatic relations. "Israel is extremely concerned that Turkey is allowing Hamas terrorists to operate from its territory, in planning and engaging in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians," its foreign ministry said. ...Turkey has proved such a welcoming environment for Hamas that the group’s deputy leader, who has a $5 million US government bounty on his head, travels freely to the country without fear of arrest. A dozen Hamas operatives have moved to Istanbul from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in the past year, according to Israeli and Egyptian intelligence records. — The Telegraph Also taking part in this alliance is Iran, who provides training and weapons to both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Lebanon crisis: Dozens hurt as police and protesters clash in Beirut - Clashes between riot police and anti-government protesters in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, have left dozens of people wounded, witnesses say. The violence began as demonstrators, who had been attacked during a sit-in by masked counter-protesters, tried to move into a square near parliament. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets, while protesters threw stones. At least 20 officers were also wounded. Protests over economic mismanagement by the ruling elite began in October. Saturday's events are some of the worst violence since the largely peaceful protests started. They triggered the resignation of the Prime Minister, Saad al-Hariri, but talks to form a new government are deadlocked. "It was a very peaceful protest. Everyone was singing chants that we're one people, that we're all peaceful and then some of the young guys pushed one of the fences that separated us," Mona Fawaz, who was at the protest, told the BBC. "We saw an enormous amount of police come out and really disperse us, push us and then they started [firing] tear gas on us. There was really no reason for all this demonstration of force." Riot police and security forces had been deployed in large numbers in Beirut, chasing demonstrators, beating and detaining some of them, Reuters news agency reports. Some protesters tried to push through steel barriers blocking the way to the parliament and government buildings. Clashes continued late into Saturday night.

Algeria stands at a historic crossroads - Algeria is teetering on the edge of a serious crisis. It is at a crossroads and it is hard to say which way the country will go. On the one hand, disregarding tensions such as the country has not seen since its independence in the early 1960s, the authorities are insisting on ploughing ahead with presidential elections. On the other, huge demonstrations, which for the past ten months have protested against the ruling establishment and the idea of elections under its aegis, are still taking place every week. At the same time, the country is witnessing unprecedented legal trials of the most prominent faces of the ruling regime – including two prime ministers, ministers and business leaders – on serious charges, ranging from corruption and squandering of public funds to the abuse of power. Leading figures who until recently ruled Algeria, including the brother of ousted President Abdelaziz Bouteflika and two senior intelligence and military officers from that time, remain in prison after being convicted on serious charges of violating the authority of the army and conspiring against the government. Against this background, which would have been unimaginable in Algeria only a few months ago, more and more people are taking to the street, rebelling against and suspicious of everything, even of the legal proceedings against these former regime henchmen. After all, the establishment, or what is left of the old regime, is still in place, even if it has offered up its most prominent figures. The political impasse has been going on for weeks. Attempts to calm the public mood by sacrificing some of the Bouteflika faithful has only served to fuel demonstrators' demands that all such remnants of the old guard be rooted out.

Hong Kong ‘Christmas shopping’ protests in several malls across city lead to vandalism of outlets and clashes - Anti-government demonstrators in Hong Kong staged citywide protests in major malls on Sunday, leading to minor clashes with police and members of the public who did not support their cause. A small number of hard-core protesters smashed the glass panels of the atrium in New Town Plaza, Sha Tin – one of the day’s main trouble spots – where they also vandalised restaurants under the Maxim’s chain and spray-painted slogans on the floor. In Mong Kok, late on Sunday night, police fired several rounds of tear gas – the first such incident in two weeks – after a small crowd had gathered on the streets. Earlier in the day, riot police stormed into New Town Plaza mall – and Telford Plaza in Kowloon Bay – to chase after and subdue protesters, triggering clashes between officers and those in black. Families and onlookers were caught up in the maelstrom with one young boy appearing to be hit by pepper spray intended to drive protesters away. A first-aider tended to the child in Kowloon Bay who was heard saying his eye hurt. A woman in Sha Tin who argued with protesters was spray-painted in the face and was helped away by paramedics.While the so-called Christmas shopping protests took place in at least seven malls across the city in the afternoon, elsewhere thousands gathered in Tamar Park in Admiralty to voice support for the city’s beleaguered police force and condemn violence by radical activists. The unprecedented social unrest, triggered by a now-withdrawn extradition bill which then morphed into a wider movement for police accountability and democracy, has been roiling Hong Kong for more than six months.

China EV Sales Plunge In November Amid Turmoil In Global Auto Market -New electric vehicle (EV) sales in China plunged in November for the fifth consecutive month, extending a decline that we've been highlighting for the past 1.5 years. Last month, we noted how China's EV bubble continues to deflate, mostly due to a reduction in government subsidies over the summer.China's EV slump in November was shocking, and sales plunged 43.7% on year to 95,000 units after October recorded one of the fastest declines for the year, reported China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).CAAM said last month that EV sales plunged 45% in October Y/Y. "Because of the insufficient demand of the domestic market, the pressure for automakers to upgrade their technology to the national standard, and the major subsidy cuts for new energy vehicles, the recovery of production and sales is still limited," said Chen Shihua, assistant secretary-general of CAAM.CAAM warned that the EV market would continue to deteriorate through 2020. It won't be until the global economy troughs that the industry could stabilize.  The slowdown also hurt battery manufacturers as the EV slump in China weighs on Lithium prices.

AsiaPac Manufacturing PMIs Slump, But China Retail Sales Surge Amid Inflation Spike - The day started off poorly in AsiaPac with Aussie PMIs notably disappointing (both Services and Manufacturing in contraction).The latest Commonwealth Bank Flash Composite PMI® pointed to a further marginal decrease in business activity across the manufacturing and service sectors in the final month of 2019. Weakness was particularly evident at manufacturers, which saw the sharpest decline in the 44-month survey history.Commenting on the Commonwealth Bank Flash PMI data, CBA Chief Economist, Michael Blythe said:“The PMI readings indicate that the Australian economy ended 2019 on a softish note. The RBA’s “gentle turning point” for the economy remains elusive. And the weakness in private spending evident in the Q3 GDP data looks to have continued in Q4, with a flow on to labour demand as well. There were also some early indications that the disruptions associated with the terrible bushfires around Sydney and elsewhere are having some impact.”This was followed by New Zealand Institute of Economic Research lowering GDP growth expectations to 2.2% (from 2.3% in previous survey published in September), lowering wage inflation expectations as well as employment and raising overall inflation forecasts.Then Japan's PMIs hit with manufacturing contracting further and Services rebounding modestly (as the composite Japan PMI was flat from November (and still in contraction). Commenting on the latest survey results, Joe Hayes, Economist at IHS Markit, said:"Latest survey data showed that the Japanese economy remained stagnant in December, following on from a similar outturn in November. Taking fourth quarter survey data as a whole, the poor performance in October could see Japan's economy dip into contraction."The most disconcerting takeaway from fourth quarter survey data has been the marked loss of momentum in the service sector, which alongside domestic consumption, has been a key driving force of the economy in 2019, negating much of the manufacturing malaise. It is now clear that the service sector is unable to offset the industrial weakness, which does not bode well for growth prospects in 2020.

Elderly In Japan Are Wearing Exoskeletons To Continue Working Into Old Age - While powered exoskeletons may seem like something out of the movies - think Alien, Avatar, Elysium, and how could we forget Iron Man - the concept has increasingly found favor in various applications, ranging from the battlefield to the assembly line and even to restore function to paralyzed people’s body.  But now, elderly citizens in Japan are preparing to potentially step into powered exoskeletons so that they can continue laboring into their old age and stall retirement for as long as possible, New Scientist reports.  Japan has one of the largest populations over the age of 65 out of any country, comprising about 26 percent of the total population, per 2015 census data. Japan has both the world’s highest life expectancy and the lowest birthrate.  And as Japan’s workforce continues to decline, the right-wing government of Shinzo Abe has sought to grapple with labor shortages and increased public spending on the senior citizen population by raising the retirement age from 60 to anywhere between 65 and 71.  But now, Japanese tech companies hope to use these exoskeleton suits to allow them to continue their labor well into their advanced age, with some suits costing only $1,300 and allowing people to lift up to 55 pounds. The suit can be charged through a hand pump that fills the “muscles” with pressurized air.

India’s plunging economy: Why 2010-2020 will be remembered as the lost decade -  When India’s economic history is written at some future date and when a serious examination is undertaken of when exactly India lost its way to its tryst with destiny, the decade of 2010-’20 will be highlighted. The facts speak for themselves. India’s real GDP growth was at its peak in March 2010 when it scaled 13.3%. The nominal GDP at that point was over 16.1%. The nominal GDP in September 2019 was at 6.3%, its lowest in the decade. Since then, the downward trend is evident and we are now scraping the bottom at about a real GDP growth rate of 4.5%, this too with the push of an arguably inflationary methodology. The government’s previous chief economic advisor, Arvind Subramaniam, says that India’s GDP growth is overestimated by at least 2.5%. Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramaniam Swamy is even more pessimistic. He estimates growth to be 1.5%. The decline in the promise is amply evident by the change in the composition of the economy during this decade. In 2010, agriculture contributed 17.5% of GDP, while industry contributed 30.2% and services 45.4%. In 2019, agriculture fell to 15.6%, industry to 26.5% and services to 48.5%. The share of industry has been sliding. This is the typical profile of a post-industrial economy. The irony of India becoming post-industrial without having industrialised must not be missed. The most significant cause for the slowing of growth is the decline in capital investment. It was 39.8% of GDP in 2010 and is now a good 10% lower. Clearly without an increase of capital investment, one cannot hope for more industrialization and hence higher growth. What we have seen in this decade is the huge increase in Services, with now mostly means increase in Public Administration and informal services like pakora sellers. The turn of the century, as China’s GDP began its great leap forward (from about $1.2 trillion in 2010 to $14.2 trillion in 2019), was also a heady moment for India whose GDP of $470 billion began a break from the sub-5% level of most of the 1990s to the rates we became familiar with in the recent past (to hit a peak stride of 10.7% in 2010). At that point, if growth rates kept creeping up, we could have conceivably gone past $30 trillion by 2050. But for that, the growth rate should consistently be above 7%. It seemed so feasible then. In 2010, it seemed we were well on track. But now we are struggling to get past $3 trillion, and the $5 trillion rendezvous that Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised by 2024 will have to wait longer..

Citizenship Act: Violent Protests Rock West Bengal, Mamata Appeals for Calm - Violent agitations continued to rock parts of West Bengal for second consecutive day on Saturday as people protesting against the amended Citizenship Act set several buses on fire and torched portions of a railway station complex, officials said. Incidents of violence were reported from Murshidabad and North 24 Paraganas districts, and rural Howrah, police said. Angry protestors torched around 15 buses, both public and private, and blocked traffic on the arterial Kona Expressway in Howrah that connect both NH6 (Mumbai Road) and NH2 (Delhi Road) to Kolkata, the police said. Traffic movement along the expressway came to a standstill, they said. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday twice appealed to the people to maintain calm and protest “democratically”. She said violence will not be tolerated and stern action will be taken against the miscreants. “Do not take law in your hands. Do not put up road and rail blockades and create trouble for the common people on the roads,” a CMO release quoting Banerjee said. “Do not cause damage to government properties. Strict action will be taken against those who are found guilty of creating disturbances,” the statement said. The National Highway 34, one of the main roads that connect north and south Bengal, was blocked in Murshidabad. Buses were also set on fire there, the police said. Several other roads in the district were also blocked, they said.

Anti-Citizenship Act protests: violence hits Delhi, over 50 injured -Violence erupted in the area surrounding Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi on December 15 afternoon as protesters opposing the amendedCitizenship Act clashed with police. Scores were injured as the police resorted to lathi-charge and firing of teargas shells. At least 51 people, who were injured in the police action near Jamia, have been admitted to the nearby Holy Family Hospital. Meanwhile, hundreds of students, teachers and civil society members turned up at the Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO around 10 p.m. in protest against the police brutality towards Jamia students. The protesters demanded immediate withdrawal of the police from the Jamia area and an independent inquiry into the high-handedness of the police during the crackdown. A mob set fire to public buses and damaged parked vehicles. Students, however, dissociated themselves from the violence. Thousands of protesters from the area surrounding the university attempted to march towards Jantar Mantar but were stopped by police barricades put up near The Surya Hotel located about a kilometre from the university’s gates. The protesters took a detour through the parallel Mata Mandir Road but were once again stopped by police. Following an altercation, police lathi charged the gathering crowd and shot multiple rounds of tear gas shells. Running from the police, some protesters threw stones at parked vehicles and public buses on Mata Mandir road. Two buses there were set on fire and two more buses were damaged elsewhere in the area.

Mass protests erupt against Modi-led Indian government’s Hindu supremacist agenda - Mass protests against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s Hindu supremacist “Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019” continued yesterday, spreading to cities across India. Many of the protests were led by university students angered both by the discriminatory Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the police’s violent assault on students at Jamia Millia Islamic University (JMI), who have been in the forefront of anti-CAA protests in India’s capital, Delhi. On Sunday, police illegally invaded the JMI campus, beating students with their lathis (truncheons) and spraying them with tear gas. In one widely shared video, five female students valiantly came to the defense of a male colleague who was being beaten by a half-dozen police, shielding him from lathi-blows with their bodies. The university administration has condemned the “police brutality” and vowed to support the scores of students whom the police detained. The police “fired teargas shells at us, before they resorted to caning us ruthlessly,” 18-year-old JMI student Iman Usmani told the Guardian. “They did not even spare the girls,” added Usmani, one of more than fifty students who required treatment at a nearby hospital. Also on Sunday, police stormed Aligarh Muslim University, 130km (80 miles) southeast of Delhi. Police justified the assault on the grounds that students had been mounting “illegal” anti-CAA protests. But the protests were only illegal because before even a single student had taken to the streets last Friday, local authorities, acting no doubt on the orders of the BJP-led Uttar Pradesh state government, invoked Section 144 of the Criminal Code, making all gatherings in Aligarh of more than four people illegal. Yesterday there were protests at universities across the country from Kerala and Tamil Nadu in the south and Punjab and Delhi in the north, to Maharashtra in the west and West Bengal in the east. Institutions affected included Lucknow’s Nadwa College, Banaras Hindu University, Patna University, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, Jadavpur University in Kolkata, Pondicherry University, Chandigarh University, Chennai’s Loyola College, and Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad Urdu University. Students from Mumbai University and the Tata Institute of Social Science marched in the streets of India’s financial capital chanting “Shame on Delhi Police.” In West Bengal, which is home to more than 25 million Muslims, much of the rail network has been shut down by the mass anti-CAA protests that erupted last weekend. Protesters have staged sit-ins on rail lines and roads. There have also been attacks on train stations and other acts of vandalism. The state government, led by the right-wing Bangla-regionalist Trinamool Congress (TMC), has ordered internet services suspended in four districts, including Howrah, which neighbors Kolkata, and parts of a fifth. Yesterday TMC Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led tens of thousands in a march against the CAA in Kolkata, and vowed to defy the BJP government if it makes good on its vow to order a National Register of Citizens (NRC), under which all of India’s 1.3 billion residents will have to prove to its satisfaction that they are Indian citizens. “For as long as I am alive,” Banerjee declared, “we will never implement the black law and the NRC here.”

 All Hell Breaks Loose In India As Violent Protests Spread After Citizenship LawThe latest unrest is spreading across India like wildfire after the Modi government passed a new law that grants citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from three Muslim-majority countries but doesn't give Muslim migrants from those countries citizenship, reported Al Jazeera. Called the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB), the new measure was passed last week and grants citizenship to non-Muslims from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, who have been persecuted for their faith. Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, and Parsis from the three eligible countries will automatically be given citizenship if they have illegally entered the country. So here's where things get complicated. Rights groups and a Muslim political party have gone bonkers over the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi isn't allowing Muslim migrants from the three country's who have illegally entered India - a path towards citizenship. They say the bill violates India's constitution that prohibits religious discrimination. As a result of the bill, demonstrations have broken out across the country, including in New Delhi and various large cities in several states. RT News is reporting that demonstrations have turned violent with protesters setting busses, trains, and buildings on fire.

Protests rage as US, UK warn on travel to northeast India - Protests against a divisive new citizenship law raged Saturday as Washington and London issued travel warnings for northeast India following days of violent clashes that have killed two people so far. Many in the far-flung, resource-rich northeast fear the new legislation will grant citizenship to large numbers of immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, whom they accuse of stealing jobs and diluting the region's cultural identity. Several thousand protesters rallied in the capital New Delhi late Saturday to urge Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government to revoke the law, some holding signs reading: "Stop Dividing India". "People are not gathered here as Hindus, or Muslims, people are gathered here as citizens of India. We reject this bill that has been brought by the Modi government and we want that equal treatment as is enshrined in our constitution," said protester Amit Baruah, 55, a journalist. Protests turned violent in West Bengal state, a hotbed of political unrest, with at least 20 buses and parts of two railway stations set on fire as demonstrators blocked roads and set fire to tyres. No injuries were reported. Tensions also simmered in Guwahati in Assam state, the epicentre of the unrest, where medical staff said two people were shot dead and 26 hospitalised late Thursday after security forces fired live rounds.Assam police chief Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta told the Press Trust of India late Saturday that 85 people have been arrested in connection with the protests, and that officials are working to identify violent demonstrators caught on video.

A Global Anarchy Revival Could Outdo the 1960s - India has exploded into protests against a citizenship law that explicitly discriminates against its 200 million-strong Muslim population. Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has responded with police firing on demonstrators and assaults on university campuses. The global wildfire of street protests, from Sudan to Chile, Lebanon to Hong Kong, has finally reached the country whose 1.3 billion population is mostly below the age of 25. The social, political, and economic implications couldn’t be more serious. It was only last month that students on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University were throwing petrol bombs at the police, and fielding, in turn, teargas, rubber bullets and water cannons. This violent resistance to an authoritarian state is novel to Hong Kong. The Umbrella Movement that in 2014 first expressed a mass sentiment for greater autonomy from Beijing was strikingly peaceful. The campaigners for democracy in Hong Kong today have also traveled very far away from the Chinese students who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989, and to whom they have been wrongly compared. Those students back in 1989 were deeply respectful of their state: Photographs of student petitioners kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall of the People are no less eloquent than the iconic picture of a protester facing a tank. That acknowledgement of the state’s authority as ultimate arbiter is now rapidly disappearing, in not only Hong Kong, but also India and many other countries. It is being replaced by the conviction that the state has lost its legitimacy through cruel and malign actions. Today’s protesters, who are overwhelmingly young, are usefully compared to the French student demonstrators in Paris in 1968. The latter occupied places of work and study, streets and squares. They also met police crackdowns with makeshift barricades and Molotov cocktails. Like today’s protesters, the French students erupted into violence amid a global escalation of street-fighting; they claimed to reject an older generation’s values and outlook. And they, too, couldn't be simply classified as left-wing, right-wing or centrists. The French communists, in turn, dismissed the protesting students as “anarchist.” This commonplace pejorative confuses anarchism with disorganization. It should be remembered that anarchist politics is one of the modern world’s oldest, if little remembered, political and intellectual traditions. Today, it best describes the radical new turn to protests worldwide.

Pakistan court sentences to death former US-backed military strongman Musharraf - On Tuesday, a Pakistani court sentenced to death former US-backed military dictator Pervez Musharraf on treason charges stemming from the imposition of a state of emergency in 2007. The sentencing deepened the political crisis within the Islamabad ruling elite. Predictably, the military rejected the verdict. Prime Minister Imran Khan has also directed his attorney general to defend Musharraf, who was tried in absentia, taking the side of the military in the unfolding crisis. Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan Wednesday condemned “gaps and weaknesses” in the ruling. After deposing Nawaz Sharif as the elected prime minister in 1999 through a military coup, Musharraf ruled the country until he was forced to step down in 2008. In the face of several court cases, he went into self-exile in March 2016. In a video message from a hospital in Dubai earlier this month, Musharraf claimed the charges are “absolutely baseless.” He’s unlikely to return to Pakistan to face the sentence. Musharraf played a major role in the United States’ “war on terror,” and the Bush administration viewed him as a “key ally.” After breaking with the Taliban regime in Kabul, under pressure from Washington on the eve of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, he transformed Pakistan into the principal US ally in the region in prosecuting this criminal invasion and occupation. Under his rule, Pakistan provided crucial logistical support for NATO forces. Musharraf also launched criminal and repeated expeditions into the semi-autonomous region bordering Afghanistan, formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), in a bid to crush the increasing popular opposition to the Afghan invasion among the predominantly Pashtun-speaking population, whose communities spread across the Durand Line, the international border dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan. These brutal expeditions of the Pakistani military during this period prepared the ground for the rapid rise of the Islamist militant groups that formed the umbrella organization, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also known as the Pakistani Taliban, separate from but affiliated to the Afghan Taliban. TTP increasingly directed terrorist attacks against the Pakistani military and the government, while also being responsible for some of the most brutal sectarian violence.

'Despicable'- Pakistan gov't reacts to Musharraf death sentence - The government of Pakistan will be filing a complaint against a senior judge who, heading the bench that convicted former military ruler Pervez Musharraf for high treason, called for the former president's corpse to be displayed outside Parliament. Judge Waqar Ahmed Seth, in personal observations recorded in a detailed verdict that was released on Thursday, said the former president should be apprehended and hanged by authorities as soon as possible. "And if [Musharraf is] found dead, his corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk [in front of Pakistan's parliament building], Islamabad, Pakistan, and be hanged for three days," read the observation. A special court convicted and sentenced Musharraf to death on Tuesday, an unprecedented verdict in a country that has been ruled by its powerful military for roughly half of its 72-year history. Musharraf has lived in self-imposed exile in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since 2016 and says he will appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court. In a video message released from a hospital bed in Dubai on Thursday, Musharraf said he "respects the judiciary greatly", but repeated his accusations that the court did not give him a fair trial. "This case is only being pursued because some people have a personal vendetta against me, to target an individual," he said. 

Australian Government Created Bizarre Horoscope To Scare Illegal Aliens - The Australian government has created a bizarre horoscope to spook illegal immigrants from Sri Lanka - threatening bad omens if they make an unauthorized trek in to the land down under, according to BuzzFeed News.

• Sagittarius? "If you illegally travel to Australia by boat you will be returned. Everything you risked to get there will be in vain and you will end up owing everyone," reads the horoscope.
• Gemini? "You will lose your wife's jewellery..."
• Taurus? "If you illegally travel to Australia by boat, expect to be returned home where you will face the humiliation of failure in your community."

The horoscope poster was released under a freedom of information application for copies of printed advertising material in English to dissuade people smugglers and asylum seekers trying to reach Australia between 2013 and 2019.The Department of Home Affairs did not respond to questions about when and where the horoscope poster was displayed.However, the poster itself gives a few clues, suggesting it was distributed in Sri Lanka within the last few years."It is almost four years since any Sri Lankan person reached Australia on an illegal boat voyage," the poster says. "During this period, Australian authorities have stopped and returned more than 160 Sri Lankans who tried to go to Australia illegally by boat." As part of the Operation Sovereign Borders policy, Australian immigration officers turn back any boats with asylum seekers on board to its country of origin without hearing their refugee claims. –BuzzFeed

Zambia Says Ambassador Should Leave After Defending Gay Couple --Zambia’s President Edgar Lungu said he wanted the U.S. Ambassador to leave the country after the diplomat criticized the African nation for sentencing a gay couple to 15 years of imprisonment for having a consensual relationship.“We have complained officially to the American government, and we are waiting for their response because we don’t want such people in our midst,” Lungu said Sunday in comments broadcast on state-owned ZNBC TV. “We want him gone.”U.S. Ambassador Daniel Foote said last month that he was “personally horrified” after the high court sentenced the two men and called on the government to reconsider laws that punish minority groups.

By 2100, Five Of The Ten Biggest Countries In The World Will Be In Africa - In the 21st century so far, populous countries and strong population growth were most often associated with Asia – but, as Statista's Katharina Buchholz notes, this view of the world will have to change in the future, data by the United Nations and Pew Research Center shows.While in 2020, five out of the ten most populous countries in the world were located in Asia, the picture will look different in 2100, when five African countries – Nigeria, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo – will be among the world’s ten largest. While some Asian countries will continue to grow, they will do so at a lower rate and will be surpassed in population by African countries exhibiting faster growth. Others, like China and Bangladesh are actually expected to shrink until 2100, mainly a result of higher standard of living and education that has already begun to lower birth rates.In 1950, four European countries were still among the world’s largest. That number will have d ecreased to one in 2020 and none in 2100.The number of children born worldwide is already decreasing, but at currently 2.5 children born per woman, world population is still growing. UN population researchers found that if the global fertility rate kept dropping at the rate it currently is, it would reach 1.9 children per woman in 2100, at which point the world population would actually be decreasing.

Brazil’s evangelical church preaches the Bolsonaro revolution  -Many religions promise believers a glorious life after death, but blessings are bestowed much faster at Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God: results are guaranteed as soon as you leave the Lord’s house. Up to 10,000 worshippers pack the Temple of Solomon, the church’s headquarters in the gritty São Paulo suburb of Brás, for the two-and-a-half-hour Sunday morning service. An outsize reconstruction of the Old Testament landmark in Jerusalem, the Brazilian version comes with creature comforts King Solomon would not have recognised: air conditioning, cinema-style seating in padded chairs, giant screens, a sound system worthy of a rock concert and a giant underground car park. The gospel, preached by self-styled bishop and church founder Edir Macedo, is “prosperity theology”, a Thatcherite message of self-help, hard work and strict discipline. The values promoted by the Universal church and its evangelical siblings are not just reshaping Brazil’s religious beliefs, but also its politics. The first clue comes halfway through the Sunday service, when a reference to the country’s far-right president is dropped in. “I am sure that President [Jair] Bolsonaro will do an excellent job because he is the only president of the republic who is consecrated by God,” bellowed Mr Macedo, to applause. Initially outposts of American Pentecostal missionaries, Brazil’s evangelical churches took off late in the last century after developing homegrown versions. Experts estimate that more than a fifth of Brazilians are now evangelical Protestants, while the once-dominant Catholics are forecast to become a minority of the population by 2022. “The Universal Church invested heavily in the concept of prosperity,” explains Andrey Mendonça, a specialist in religion at the Higher School of Advertising and Marketing in São Paulo. “For Edir Macedo, prosperity is obtained through the fight for faith.” The new religious landscape is reflected in Brasília, where 118 legislators belong to the evangelical caucus, including the president’s son Eduardo. Most of them back Mr Bolsonaro, who was born a Catholic but rebaptised in the Jordan river in Israel by an evangelical pastor in 2016.

Evangelical gangs in Rio de Janeiro wage ‘holy war’ on Afro-Brazilian faiths  ---Charismatic Christianity is on the rise across Brazil. Slightly less than a third of all Brazilians identify as evangelical, up from 5% in the 1960s. The 2020 national census is expected to show significantly more growth. In Rio, where the evangelical population increased 30% in the first decade of this century, even some of the most notorious drug dealers claim to be spreading the gospel. I study violence in Latin America, and I’ve observed a sharp increase in reports of religiously motivated crimes in Rio de Janeiro since 2016, in particular attacks on “terreiros” – the temples of the Candomblé and Umbanda faiths.  According to Brazil’s Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance, over 100 Afro-Brazilian religious facilities nationwide were attacked by drug trafficking groups in 2019, an increase on previous years. A national emergency hotline created to report such attacks finds that 60% of incidents reported between 2011 and 2017 occurred in Rio de Janeiro. Persecution of these Afro-Brazilian religions, whose adherents are largely poor black Brazilians, has been around since at least the 19th century. But the current wave of religious bigotry is more personal, and more violent, than in the past. As the Washington Post recently reported, Afro-Brazilian priests are being harassed and murdered for their faith. Candomblé and Umbanda practitioners fear leaving their homes. Terreiros have closed due to death threats. Rio’s Commission to Combat Religious Intolerance, a group created in 2008 by religious minorities, reported about 200 such incidents in the city between January and September 2019 – up from 92 in all last year. The increase in religious hate crimes coincides with the growing political and cultural clout of evangelicals in Brazil. Evangelical lawmakers currently hold 195 of 513 seats in Brazil’s lower house of Congress, giving them the power to shape the national debate on abortion, religion in schools, gay marriage and other social issues.   Some evangelical leaders who preach the prosperity doctrine also see these Afro-Brazilian religions as dangerously un-Christian, even evil.

Chile protests: UN accuses security forces of human rights abuses - The UN has accused the Chilean police and armed forces of committing serious human rights violations in their response to recent mass demonstrations. UN investigators say they have verified four cases of unlawful deaths involving state agents. It notes 345 people have suffered eye trauma from pellets, with torture and sexual violence also highlighted. Some 1,600 people remain in pre-trial detention out of 28,000 detained since mid-October. Protesters are demanding social reforms and changes to a constitution that dates back to the pre-democracy era of the late military leader, Augusto Pinochet. At least 26 people have been killed and hundreds injured in the unrest. The report by the UN human rights office said official Chilean figures of more than 4,900 people injured in the demonstrations were disputed and other sources had far higher estimates. The UN documented 113 specific cases of torture and ill-treatment and 24 cases of sexual violence against women, men and adolescents by members of the police and army. The UN team noted the "unnecessary and disproportionate use of less-lethal weapons" such as anti-riot shotguns and tear gas. "We have found that the overall management of assemblies by police was carried out in a fundamentally repressive manner," Imma Guerras-Delgado, UN mission team leader, told a Geneva news briefing.

Evo Morales granted refugee status in Argentina - Former Bolivian President Evo Morales has arrived in Argentina and been granted refugee status, Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said on Thursday. Morales had previously been in Mexico where he was granted asylum after he resigned November amid pressure after a disputed election. He was again granted asylum to travel to Argentina and had made the request for refugee status to stay, Sola said on news channel TN. "We want a commitment from Evo Morales not to make political statements in Argentina," Sola said, adding that four other people had also requested asylum. The former Bolivian president's arrival comes just two days after new Argentine President Alberto Fernandez was inaugurated. Fernandez had previously said there had been a "coup" against Morales. Bolivia's first Indigenous president, Morales resigned as president on November 10 after his 14-year rule imploded following the release of Organization of American States (OAS) audit that detailed damning irregularities in the October vote. The revelations prompted Morales's governing party allies to quit and the army to urge Morales's departure from the country, which had been rocked by protests, both for and against the president, across the country since the vote. "I had a conversation yesterday with Evo Morales who informed me of his decision to move to Buenos Aires. He thanked the generosity of the people and government of Mexico," Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard tweeted on Thursday. Sola said there was no meeting planned between Morales and Fernandez, but they could talk on the phone..

Watch: Glenn Greenwald’s Exclusive Interview With Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Who Was Deposed in a Coup – Greenwald - ON NOVEMBER 10, Evo Morales, who served as president of Bolivia for 13 years and presided over extraordinary economic growth and a reduction of inequality praised even by his critics, announced that he was resigning the presidency under duress, with implicit threats from the Bolivian military. Morales later made clear that he viewed these events as a classic right-wing military coup of the kind that has plagued the continent for decades, explaining that he was removed from his position by force and then ultimately pressured by a police mutiny and military threats to flee his own country.Morales went to Mexico, where he was granted political asylum, and has lived under heavy security in Mexico City ever since (earlier this week, he was granted refugee status in Argentina). On December 3, I sat with Morales in Mexico City for an hourlong interview that was wide-ranging in scope: not only about the events that led to his removal and exile from Bolivia, but also broader trends in regional and global politics, as well as the role played by the U.S. in Latin America.We discussed who was behind this coup, what its motives are, the role played by both the U.S. and Brazil, the use of violence by the right-wing “interim” government against Indigenous protesters, the criticisms voiced against him for seeking a fourth term despite constitutional term limits, and how his removal by military force in favor of an unelected right-wing coup regime — led by the country’s right, white, Christian minority — reflects broader trends in Latin American politics and global political trends generally. We also discussed the once-notorious but now forgotten extraordinary event in 2013, when Morales’s presidential plane was forced to land in Austria as he was traveling back to Bolivia from a state visit in Russia, on the pretext that the U.S. believed he had Edward Snowden on board and was taking him back to Bolivia for asylum. And Morales was particularly insightful on the role played by Bolivia’s deals with China to sell lithium, and its alliance with Russia, and why those relationships so infuriated the U.S. Morales was incredibly thoughtful, reflective, insightful, and analytical about virtually everything we discussed, not only about Bolivia but also regional and world politics. As someone who presided over a left-wing success story for 13 years in the U.S.’s backyard, he obviously has a unique and sophisticated perspective on a wide range of geopolitical events, and that wisdom shaped the interview. As a result, I regard this as one of the most informative and compelling interviews I’ve done. I hope you’ll watch the full 50-minute video as I believe it’s well worth your time, providing a sophisticated perspective rarely heard in the mainstream press.

Bolivia Issues Arrest Warrant For Exiled President Morales On Sedition & Terrorism - Turmoil intensified inside Bolivia on Wednesday as the country's top prosecutor issued an arrested warrant on "terrorism" charges for former President Evo Morales, also accusing the recently ousted leader of encouraging sedition from abroad. First given political asylum in Mexico, but now in Argentina, Morales has claimed he was target of a military coup with the orchestration of Washington and regional enemies of Bolivia.  Interior Minister Arturo Murillo first brought the charges following fierce clashes in the capital and other cities between police and his supporters. Ratcheting violence in the wake of his ouster early last month has left at least 35 dead, according to prosecutors. They blame the deaths and continuing violence on Morales' continued "seditious" speeches and messages from abroad. This also after interim president Áñez said he must "answer to justice" over alleged election fraud and government corruption, following the mayhem of his last reelection, where an independent body charged him and his administration with being behind mass irregularities.   Morales is being blamed for stoking the mayhem, which allegedly involved him giving orders from exile to blockade cities to force to removal of interim President Jeanine Áñez. Evo supporters say she had illegally seized power in a unilateral power move to control the Senate and secure her leadership over the country.   The former president has since been blocked from running for office again, though Áñez's administration has voiced concern that he plans to use Buenos Aires as a political headquarters to eventually bring himself back into power. 

U.N. Peacekeepers in Haiti Said to Have Fathered Hundreds of Children - NYT - United Nations peacekeepers in Haiti fathered and left behind hundreds of children, researchers found in a newly releasedacademic study, leaving mothers struggling with stigma, poverty and single parenthood after the men departed the country. While the United Nations has acknowledged numerous instances of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers in Haiti and elsewhere, the study on Haitian victims went further in documenting the scope of the problem in that country — the Western Hemisphere’s poorest — than had been previously known.  “Girls as young as 11 were sexually abused and impregnated” by peacekeepers, who were stationed in Haiti from 2004 to 2017, and some of the women were later “left in misery” to raise their children alone, according to the study by two academic researchers. “They put a few coins in your hands to drop a baby in you,” one Haitian was quoted as saying by the researchers, whose work was published on Tuesday by The Conversation, an academic website supported by a consortium of universities. The study, based on interviews with 2,500 Haitians who lived near peacekeeper bases in the summer of 2017, depicts a trail of abuse and exploitation left by some of the soldiers and civilians who served in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as Minustah, an acronym for its name in French.The resulting children are known as “petits minustahs.”Asked for comment, the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations said in a statement that it took the issues raised in the study seriously and that combating sexual exploitation and abuse committed by peacekeepers is a top priority of Secretary General António Guterres.“We have unfortunately seen cases involving Minustah peacekeepers over the past years, although allegations have been generally declining since 2013,” the statement said.The United Nations has previously acknowledged that more than 100 Sri Lankan peacekeepers deployed to Haiti exploited nine children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007, and the men were sent home, but were not punished.

UN Peacekeepers Fathered Hundreds of Babies With Girls in Haiti as Young as 11 - — United Nations (UN) peacekeepers charged with protecting disaster-struck Haiti have fathered hundreds of babies with local women and girls before leaving them behind in poverty, according to a new study. A paper published by the University of Birmingham’s Sabine Lee and Queen’s University’s Susan Bartels describes the experience of those people living under the protection of a UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). The studies were based on conversations with over 2,500 Haitians who shared the experiences of women and girls in the communities that hosted peace operations. Of the 2,500 talked to, about ten percent revealed stories about peacekeeper-fathered children. Girls as young as 11 were allegedly sexually abused and impregnated by peacekeepers and left “in misery” to raise their children alone. The children, dubbed colloquially as “Petit MINUSTAH”, “bébés casques bleus” (blue helmet babies), or “les enfants abandonnés par la MINUSTAH” (the children abandoned by the MINUSTAH) suggests the children will struggle for the unforeseeable future with a label they had no control over.Some girls were traded for “a few coins” in order to get food and had sex with the peacekeepers as a means of survival. Some girls allegedly had sex with the peacekeepers for just one meal.The UN mission in Haiti, one of the UN’s longest peacekeeping deployments, has been riddled with controversy. MINUSTAH was already linked to a sex ring in Haiti in which 134 Sri Lankan peacekeepers exploited nine children in a sex ring from 2004 to 2007. Prior to that, Nepalese soldiers inadvertently introduced a cholera outbreak that reportedly claimed 10,000 lives following the major 2010 earthquake event.In June of this year, Oxfam lost thousands of donors after it allegedly covered up an investigation into staff who had been accused of having paid for sex while working in Haiti in 2010.The MINUSTAH has also been accused of gang rape, the rape of a mentally challenged 14-year-old boy,exploitation and unexplained deaths, torture, and unfortunately more. Historians may also recall that United States Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, with U.S. interference in the country continuing up until the present day. Under the leadership of Bill Clinton, the U.S. led a military operation dubbed “Operation Uphold Democracy” into Haiti to remove the military regime that took over following the 1991 Haitian coup d’etat. It is also worth noting that both Bill and Hillary Clinton have a long and controversial relationship with the Caribbean nation. At the time of writing, the UN has not responded to media requests for comment.

Canada’s infrastructure was once cheap and effective to build. Now, it’s a titanic transfer from taxpayers to the world’s biggest businesses and investors - Trillions of dollars are being plowed into high-tech hospitals, zero-emission public transit and other megaprojects around the globe. Shiny new infrastructure is popping up virtually everywhere, from Australia to Appalachia. Yet leaders aren’t disclosing what taxpayers’ bills will be for this in the coming years. They aren’t even determining the maximum affordable amount for the infrastructure projects, the majority of which are being delivered via public-private partnerships (‘P3s’). Nor are any of the major political parties in Canada or the U.S. calling for objective value-for-money analyses, including studies of what the best greenhouse-gas-reduction bang is for each scarce public buck spent on green projects. In addition, government agencies don’t always take such basic money-saving steps as offsetting the cost of new subway or LRT stations by finding developers that will build and pay for extensive retail, commercial and residential spaces on top of those stations. This is despite already-unprecedented levels of government debt. And there are many other budget pressures: just one example is the impending loss, due to the switch to electric cars and trucks, of the more than $16 billion of gas and diesel tax collected annually by the feds and provinces in Canada. The pressures will increase geometrically with the proliferation of infrastructure projects. But while taxpayers are usually the ultimate payer for these projects, money from non-government sources increasingly is being used to finance construction. This is paid back to the financiers at interest rates that while relatively low at the moment, are higher than the governments themselves could get the money for -- and add up to huge amounts over the long durations of the projects’ contracts. As result, infrastructure and real estate can provide (together with private equity) the most solid and safe rates of return in the world.

The World’s Cash Is Disappearing. Bankers Aren’t Sure Where It Went. Check your pockets. Society is increasingly going cashless, but banknotes are more in demand. Bankers search for clues.  Some Australians are burying it. The Swiss might be hiding it. The Germans are probably hoarding.  Banks are issuing more notes than ever and yet they seem to be disappearing off the face of the earth. Central banks don’t know where they have gone, or why, and are playing detective, trying to crack the same mystery.

Just 26 of the world's richest men have more combined wealth than the poorest 3.8 billion people - The world's richest people are steadily getting richer, but the world's poorest are not, a report by poverty-focused non-profit network Oxfam revealed.  Billionaires added an average of $2.5 billion to their collective fortunes every day in 2018, bringing their share of the world's wealth to $1.4 trillion, according to Oxfam. That is the same amount of wealth controlled by the world's poorest 3.8 billion people. The world's wealth is increasingly concentrating among top billionaires. In 2017, it would have taken 42 of the world's wealthiest people to match the wealth of the world's poorest 4 billion people, Oxfam reported.

 In blow to Macron, France pensions reform tsar resigns (Reuters) - France’s minister for pension reform resigned on Monday over a potential conflict of interest, dealing a blow to President Emmanuel Macron as trade unions staged a 12th day of strikes and prepared for more street protests against the planned changes. Jean-Paul Delevoye, the High Commissioner for Pensions, was one of Macron’s most trusted allies and one of few with cabinet experience. He quit after failing to publicly declare more than a dozen posts he held in addition to his cabinet job. His resignation, first reported by Le Monde newspaper, comes at a crucial moment for Macron whose government is locked in a standoff with unions over the plans to overhaul France’s convoluted pension system to help plug a chronic deficit. The unions have said they will step up their protests unless the government withdraws the reform. Much of the rail network remained gridlocked on Monday as days of traffic chaos continued across France.

French strikers angry about pension reform cut power to homes, companies (Reuters) - France’s trade unions on Wednesday defended their decision to cut power to thousands of homes, companies and even the Bank of France to force the government to drop a wide-ranging pension reform. The power cuts, illegal under French law, deepened a sense of chaos in the second week of nationwide strikes that have crippled transport, shut schools and brought more than half a million people onto the street against President Emmanuel Macron’s reform. Asked on French radio whether the power cuts weren’t a step too far, Philippe Martinez, the head of the hardline CGT union, said the cuts were necessary to force Macron to back down. “I understand these workers’ anger,” the mustachioed union leader said. “These are targeted cuts. You’ll understand that spitting on the public service can make some of us angry.” Following a meeting with government officials, he hinted at further cuts, saying “we may amplify these kinds of methods”. Macron condemned the power outages “in the strongest of terms” during a cabinet meeting, a government spokeswoman said. But his office said the president was open to “improvements” to his reform plans ahead of a new day of talks between his prime minister and union leaders. After the talks, the leader of the more moderate CFDT union said the government had shown more “openness” but that a deal was still “very far” from being agreed. The government is keen to reach a truce before Christmas, when millions of French people travel to spend the holiday with their families. French hotels, cafes and stores are already feeling the pain of the strike. Macron’s transport minister condemned the power cuts, which affected at least 150,000 homes on Tuesday according to the power grid, and said the government would ask the grid company to file complaints.

If France Wants The Middle East, Let Them Have It - Looming over this month’s big NATO confab was not only Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that its signatories contribute more to their own defense, but an ongoing discussion over America’s persistent role in the Middle East. This was telegraphed recently at the Manama Dialogue confab in Bahrain—a get-together involving the Sunni powers in the Gulf region—where French Defense Minister Florence Parly slammed the Trump administration for moving troops out of northern Syria and for pulling out of the Iran deal. She said America wasn’t doing enough to stand up to Iran’s threats to Saudi Arabia, and that Barack Obama should have launched a military strike against the Assad regime after chemical weapons were used in 2013.“We’ve seen deliberate, gradual U.S. disengagement,” said Parly. “The edifice [of American power] has started shaking and opportunists rush in.”The French defense minister went on to decry that Turkish is being spoken in Syria, Russian is being spoken in Libya, and there is a heavy Chinese presence in Djibouti.According to The Jerusalem Post, paraphrasing Parly, “this is important because France is the historical colonial power of Syria; French played a role in the 2011 revolution in Syria; and France has key relations with Djibouti, where it has a naval base.”The subtext is that France is looking to get more involved in the Middle East, starting with a maritime effortgeared towards surveillance.  Yet with all due respect to the French defense minister, her analysis is both backwards and tone-deaf. She rightly mentions France’s (and America’s) role in fueling the Syrian Civil War, but totally ignores the indescribable damage that has ensued. The human cost alone of that conflict has been staggering, yet nothing has been achieved aside from the rise of the Islamic State and other radical Sunni groups. Parly also has the audacity to decry Iranian influence in the Middle East. Yet she glossed over the fact that that influence in Syria and Yemen, over its Shia Muslim friends, was directly proportional to the pressure being placed on those Shia groups by Sunni forces, which were backed by Western military might. In other words, Iran only became heavily involved in Syria after the West decided to foment a civil war and attempt to topple the Assad regime.

Sweden Retreats from Negative Interest Rate Experiment - - Yves Smith -- For some time, we’ve maintained that negative interest rates would fail at achieving their intended results, which was to stimulate spending. Honestly, it beggars belief that economists could have convinced themselves of that idea. As we’ll discuss, the Swedish central bank has just thrown in the towel on them.  We’ve heard for years that the Fed had privately come to the conclusion that its experiment with super low interest rates was a bust, even though it still hasn’t figured how to move away from them to a more normal rate posture. In keeping with that line of thinking, the Fed had also concluded that negative interest rates were a bad idea and was unhappy that other central banks hadn’t figured that out. The Fed’s distaste for negative interest rates was finally made official with the release of FOMC minutes saying as much last month. Aside from the effect on savings (that economists expected negative interest rates to induce savers to dip into their capital to preserve their lifestyles and make up for lost interest income), a second reason negative interest rates hurt, or at least don’t help spending is by sending a deflationary signal. If things might be cheaper in a year, why buy now? Some economists had nevertheless believed they could force consumers to spend in a negative rate regime by getting rid of physical cash. If citizens could not hoard cash, their monies would (presumably) be in bank accounts, where bank would charge them to hold funds, providing an incentive to go out and buy things. Note that negative interest rate fan Ken Rogoff has been a noisy advocate of getting rid of currency as important for this very reason. Of course, the wee problem with that is banks don’t like charging consumer negative interest. They’ve kinda-sorta gotten there with fees, but a lot of countries make it hard to have a checking account relationship for less than $25 a month anyhow. It is therefore particularly noteworthy that the Swedish central bank has deemed its negative interest rate experiment to be a flop since Sweden has one of the highest rates of digital currency use. In light of the above, the Financial Times article on the Swedish central bank raising rates to zero despite the economy being crappy is awfully muddled. It is hard to fathom if this results from the central bank sources trying to obfuscate for PR reasons or whether the arguments against a negative interest rate policy went over the reporter’s head and hence weren’t well represented in the story. From the Financial Times: Sweden’s central bank ended its five-year experiment with negative rates amid growing concern about the implications for the economy, businesses and investors from sub-zero monetary policy…. The Riksbank on Thursday repeated its warning from October that if negative rates continued for too long “the behaviour of economic agents may change and negative effects may arise”.

Central Bankers Are Starting to Get a Little Desperate - Sweden’s Riksbank, zigging while the rest of the world zags, just raised interest rates, despite anxiety about the economy and sluggish inflation. It’s a bit of desperation central banking, Mohamed El-Erian explains. Rates around the world are at or below rock bottom, without supercharging growth. Meanwhile savers and banks suffer, which may defeat the purpose of low rates, and wild gambling with cheap money fosters zombie companies and boosts the odds of a blow-up. Ferdinando Giugliano suggests Sweden is panicking about negative rates for nothing. There’s no proof they’re doing real damage yet, he argues. Hiking rates, meanwhile, could definitely hurt the economy, forcing the Riksbank to reverse its decision. Still, central bankers around the world clearly fear their go-to post-crisis tools of QE and negative rates have lost their edge. One big reason for this, as Mohamed notes, is that fiscal policy hasn’t done its share of the work. Central bankers are now openly calling on governments to do more, which is a slippery slope toward uniting the two, writes Alberto Gallo. Central bankers joining forces with politicians may make stimulating economies easier, but at the cost of central-bank independence. And it could make market distortions even weirder and scarier — not in a “Midsommar” way but more like a “Cats” way. The U.K.’s central bank, meanwhile, has its own set of problems. Most importantly, it will soon need a new leader to replace its departing rock-star governor, Mark Carney. The list of candidates that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has floated is … uninspiring, suggests Ferdinando Giugliano. The trouble is that the Bank of England needs an especially skillful leader to deal with Brexit — but thanks to Brexit, the best candidates have run screaming the other way. Meanwhile, the BOE is dealing with an embarrassing scandal: A contractor that records its press conferences sold audio to traders to give them an eight-second edge over the poor saps waiting for the slower video feed. This was a silly oversight on the BOE’s part, writes Marcus Ashworth, although Carney rarely says anything interesting in these gaggles. And if this helped market efficiency, Matt Levine asks, who did it really hurt? If you’re a regular person trading around BOE press conferences, maybe you should reconsider your life choices.

We Could At Most Hope For Stagnation- German Economy To Contract In Q4 - The German Institute for Economic Research, also known as DIW Berlin, warned Friday that Q4 export-oriented manufacturing continued to decelerate, according to Reuters. It's expected that Europe's largest economy will contract by 0.1% in the October-December period."We could at most hope for stagnation," DIW economist Claus Michelsen said.DIW's forecast for Q4 is much different than Ifo institute's forecast that predicts the quarter will expand by 0.2%.Germany's export-dependent industry groups slashed production this year, citing a global synchronized slowdown that stared before the trade war. German manufacturers fell into a recession this year on the heels of economic deceleration in the US and China. German manufacturers also cite the trade war and Brexit uncertainties. Still, one of the reasons why manufacturing has been in a recession is due to the collapse of the global car industry.  DIW said despite the gloom and doom, there's hope that Germany's economy can rebound in the year ahead."German companies are again looking positively into the future, especially when it comes to their international business," said Michelsen. German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Friday that the economy had averted a recession.

Italian Bonds Tumble On Fears Another Government Collapse Is Imminent - For years, reformers have been pushing for changes to the Italian government structure that would, among other changes, reduce the number of seats held by lawmakers. Back in October, Giuseppe Conte's coalition government voted in favor of a plan to reduce the number of lower house members from 630 to 400, and the number of senators from 315 to 200. Throughout modern political history, examples of legislative bodies voluntarily accepting reforms that would knowingly curtail the powers and privileges of its members are few and far between, and Italy is no exception. Not long after the vote, a group of mostly opposition members tried to crash the government and hold a new snap election to save their seats. I mean, what other choice did they have? They're politicians...do you really expect them to go out and get a real job? So the group of lawmakers filed a petition and successfully challenged a reform that would have rendered them redundant, forcing the government to hold a referendum vote if it wants to follow through. The referendum can be held between April 15 and June 15. But by insisting on the vote, Conte is raising the likelihood of a rebellion that could collapse his government, which is what the market's afraid of. And so it is that Italy’s 10-year yield climbed 5bps to 1.39%, its highest level since August, on Thursday, widening the BTP-bund spread 3bps to 162bps. "Although nothing can be given for granted in Italy, we would advise investors to be ready for 2020 snap elections,” analysts at Citi advised the bank's clients in a note published on Wednesday. That shouldn't be a problem. Anybody who has been paying attention to Italian politics over the past year should be ready for the government to collapse at any time.

The Strange Death of Social-Democratic England - The immediate, clear consequence of the UK election of December 12, 2019, is that Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has succeeded where Theresa May’s failed in the last general election, in 2017—by winning an emphatic parliamentary majority that can pass the legislation necessary to facilitate Britain’s departure from the European Union. The faint irony of that two-year hiatus and the handover of party leadership from May to Johnson is that the latter’s deal is rather worse—from the Brexiteers’ point of view—than the one May repeatedly failed to get past Parliament. Nevertheless, the 2019 general election will go down as the moment British voters in effect voted a resounding “yes” in a de facto second referendum on Brexit and gave Boris Johnson a mandate to make his deal law and attempt to meet the latest Brexit deadline (January 31, 2020). Far-reaching though the effects of this punctuation mark in the Brexit story will be, the 2019 general election may change the landscape of British politics and the fabric of its society in even more profound and decisive ways. Brexit’s compromise over the status of Northern Ireland, half-in and half-out of Europe, is an unstable constitutional non-settlement that risks the fragile peace that’s held there since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, while accelerating the hopes of some for a United Ireland. But the future of the Union faces a still more pressing challenge from renewed calls for a referendum on independence for Scotland, where a large majority of voters favor continued membership in Europe. The specter of “the breakup of Britain” that has long haunted the United Kingdom may materialize at last—just at the moment when English nationalists are celebrating their Brexit victory.   So much for the political landscape; what of the social fabric? A fourth successive defeat for the Labour Party, with its most ambitious anti-austerity program yet, and an outright win for a Conservative Party that has purged its moderates have sharpened dividing lines, squeezed the liberal center, and broken consensus into polarity. A minority of Britons—roughly a third, who will now see themselves as effectively disenfranchised—voted for a radical expansion of the public sector, a great leap forward toward a socialist Britain. But the plurality chose a party that, while promising more spending, has actually recomposed itself around a reanimated Thatcherite vision of exclusionary, anti-egalitarian, moralizing social Darwinism. Some part of the Tory electoral coalition might have more welfare-chauvinist reflexes, but the greater part of it distrusts the state, resents the taxation that pays for it, and would like to shrink both.

Welcoming new lawmakers, Johnson vows a speedy Brexit (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will welcome 109 new Conservative lawmakers to parliament on Monday, promising to honour his election-winning pledges to get Brexit done as soon as possible and boost funding for the state health service. After securing a commanding majority in last week’s vote, Johnson will seek to speed up approval by parliament of his withdrawal agreement with the European Union, and start ploughing money into health, education and the police. The prime minister, who won over many traditional supporters of the main opposition Labour Party in northern and central England, has proclaimed he will lead a “people’s government” and “repay the public’s trust by getting Brexit done”. “This election and the new generation of MPs (members of parliament) that have resulted from Labour towns turning blue will help change our politics for the better,” said a source in Johnson’s Downing Street official residence. “The PM has been very clear that we have a responsibility to deliver a better future for our country and that we must repay the public’s trust by getting Brexit done.” The government will bring the Withdrawal Agreement Bill back to parliament on Friday, but it is not yet clear whether there will be a vote because it needs the agreement of the House of Commons’ new speaker. But with such a large majority, he is expected to get the bill through parliament by his deadline. The priority is to leave the EU on Jan. 31 and then secure a trade agreement with the bloc before the end of next year, Johnson’s spokesman said.

Johnson plans big shakeup of government, civil service - newspaper -  (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to run a “revolutionary” government by sacking ministers, merging ministries and replacing civil servants with external experts, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. The newspaper cited sources as saying Johnson, who won a commanding majority in Thursday’s election, could sack up to a third of his top team of ministers to focus work on providing for traditionally Labour-supporting voters in northern and central England who backed his Conservatives. It said the Brexit ministry would be abolished on Jan. 31 when Johnson has promised that Britain will leave the European Union, and that he would set up a department for borders and immigration separate from the Home Office, or interior ministry, and merge the trade ministry with the business department. Johnson is expected to carry out only a modest reshuffle of his cabinet in the coming days to replace ministers who stood down in the election but in February, after Brexit, he will make major changes in the team he hopes will deliver on his election promises for domestic reform, the Sunday Times said. It cited a senior figure as saying: “(The February reshuffle) will be pretty big. It will be finding the people who can do the jobs and not worry about media and short-term things. We’re drawing up a very detailed and very revolutionary plan and then we are going to implement it.” A spokesman for Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Deputy finance minister Rishi Sunak also declined on Sunday to comment on the report, saying only that there would be an effective government.

Brexit Won’t Deliver Sovereignty — And Neither Will Far-Right Movements Anywhere --- Neoliberal globalization has fueled the rise of right-wing nationalist leaders around the world — from Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro in the Western hemisphere, through Viktor Orbán and Boris Johnson in Europe, to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Narendra Modi in Asia. Despite their differences, each has thrived on popular disenchantment with traditional parties of government that have failed to defend the interests and living standards of ordinary people against the social dislocations associated with the transnational mobility of capital. But what the UK election shows most clearly is that despite its nationalist rhetoric, the new right is not in the business of rebalancing the scales between their national polity and the global system. The victorious incumbent Prime Minister Boris Johnson wagered the Conservative Party’s election campaign on the relentless repetition of two slogans: “get Brexit done” and “take back control.” However, scrutiny of Johnson’s program shows that it is not interested in a contest between the rootless forces of globalization and the political and economic shelter offered by democratic decision-making within the nation-state. What is really at stake is the impulse to outmaneuver competitors by finding an advantageous niche within the world market — for Britain to become the “Singapore of Europe.” And paradoxically, it is the language of nationalism that is being deployed to advance this more ruthless and disempowering version of neoliberal globalization. As historian Quinn Slobodian writes, neoliberalism’s global vision has always sought a world “with rules set by supranational bodies operating beyond the reach of any electorate.”This “world of rules” — most clearly embodied in the World Trade Organization (WTO) — removes the operations of the market from the decision-making of any particular population. Corporations and investors shape the lives of ordinary people — directing (or withdrawing) resources and employment, setting wages and conditions, influencing environmental and safety standards, and determining access to health, education, and social services. Yet their decisions are presented as market outcomes and so as lying outside of democratic control or accountability.

 Pound Traders Give Thumbs Down to Johnson’s New Brexit Strategy - The mandate for Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy came from the ballot box. It is not winning a vote of approval in the global currencies market. The pound slumped by the most since January after the prime minister announced plans to set a Brexit deadline of December 2020 with or without a trade deal between the U.K and the European Union. The renewed prospect of a disorderly withdrawal from the bloc erased all of sterling’s gains since an exit poll predicted a clear majority for the Conservatives in last week’s vote. The pressure on sterling deepened as the day wore on, providing a stark illustration of how investors perceive Johnson’s tough stance, compared with earlier hopes for reduced uncertainty over getting a Brexit bill through Parliament. Money markets also reversed course, with the probability of a Bank of England rate cut by next May back at 50%, or the same probability as before the election. “Those who thought that a big majority would free the prime minister to take a patient approach to negotiate the best possible deal have been caught by surprise,” said Kit Juckes, chief foreign-exchange strategist at Societe Generale SA. “And that’s most U.K. economists and strategists.” Pound gives back gains on election result amid renewed Brexit uncertainty For JPMorgan Chase & Co, the risk of a no-deal Brexit remains at an “uncomfortably high” 25% following the election win. One-year implied volatility on the pound-dollar pair was headed for the biggest jump since March. The bank’s economist Allan Monks wrote in a research note dated Dec. 13 that while Johnson’s sturdy majority means “the indecision and domestic delays” of the past two years should be over, it also means the government is likely to take a forceful approach in the upcoming negotiations.

Hot Mic Moment Exposes Insane Sleaziness Of British Political/Media Class - Caitlin Johnstone - There’s a wildly under-appreciated clip of news footage from Thursday’s general election in the UK that, now that everyone’s had some time to emotionally process the emotional fallout from that depressing night, needs more attention. Labour MP and chronic left-puncher Jess Phillips appeared on Channel 4 to talk about how devastated she was about the news of exit polls showing her party’s crushing defeat, except the cameras switched on before she was prepared and caught her in the middle of a joyful chuckle. It took several seconds and the overt reminders from the show’s hosts to put on a “straight face” and act emotional before she could conceal her cheery mood as Corbyn’s Labour leadership was trampled underfoot by odious empire lackey Boris Johnson. “Good evening Jess,” said the program’s host Krishnan Guru-Murthy. “How are you feeling as these results unfold?” Watching the stumbling improvisation that came next feels like walking into a room full of awkward silence when your supposed friends had just been saying mean things about you, or seeing your spouse conspicuously jump away from an attractive coworker when you drop by the office. Phillips, still unaware that the cameras were now rolling, did not interrupt the delighted guffaw she’d been enjoying. “Can you hear me Jess Phillips?” the host asked over nervous tittering from the audience. “It’s Krishnan.” “I can hear you, sorry,” Phillips said after a moment, literally putting her hand over her mouth for a few seconds to hide her giant shit-eating grin. “Straight face,” said Guru-Murthy, who then apparently realized that this was a bizarre thing to say and added “Actually you don’t have to have a straight face, umm, on this show. Umm… what are you thinking?” “Oh are you talking to me now? Sorry that wasn’t clear,” said Phillips after a pause, her face now finally somewhat straightened out. “Sorry, I’m really tired. What I’m thinking is… it’s, it’s just totally devastating isn’t it? It’s totally devastating that all the people that I see every day, they’re gonna have nowhere to turn. I mean, I should probably do that thing where we all pretend that we’re gonna wait and see if the results are better than we thought, but it feels like a kick in the stomach.” Jess Phillips had not been acting like a woman who felt devastated, and she had certainly not been acting like a woman who felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. Jess Phillips had been acting like a woman on her third strawberry daiquiri down at the pub with a couple of hilarious mates.

Getting the UK ready for the next phase of Brexit negotiations - Institute for Government -There has been much talk over the past few years about getting the UK ready for leaving the EU without a deal. However, fundamentally, the government and civil service have a lot of work to do if they are to prepare to leave with a deal – especially given Boris Johnson’s deadline of the end of 2020. As it stands, the UK does not yet appear ‘match-fit’ for the next phase of negotiations. Along with policy and procedural decisions still to be made, the focus of the first two sections of this paper, there are four broad steps which need to take place from now to get a deal brought into force. These relate to the government’s mandate for entering the new negotiations; the way it approaches these; ratification; and implementation. This paper addresses all four of these steps. Contrary to popular belief, negotiations in 2020 can return a clear outcome by the end of the year – subject to a few caveats. Of these, time may prove most pertinent, and may constrain the ambition with which any free-trade agreement (FTA) is produced. Before looking ahead to the second phase, it is important also to learn from the first. Based on the author's experience, there are five key lessons for the prime minister and his team to consider as they begin the process.    Raoul Ruparel was special adviser on Europe to Prime Minister Theresa May between July 2018 and July 2019, having previously held the same role at the Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) between October 2016 and July 2018. This paper sets out his conclusions on the lessons learnt from the first round of Brexit negotiations, and his advice to the prime minister as the UK prepares for the next phase. Download PDF  0.32MB  28 pages

What Corbyn Got Wrong About Brexit Lee Jones Jeremy Corbyn’s article in last Sunday's Observer, in which he gives his interpretation of why Labour lost the 2019 general election, is worth reading carefully, because it symbolises the grave error he and the wider left has made with respect to Brexit.  Corbyn notes that the communities hammered hardest by neoliberalism had “regrettably” voted against Labour, because “politics as a whole wasn’t trusted, but Boris Johnson’s promise to 'get Brexit done' – sold as a blow to the system – was. Sadly that slogan will soon be exposed for the falsehood it is, shattering trust even further. Despite our best efforts, and our attempts to make clear this would be a turning point for the whole direction of our country, the election became mainly about Brexit.” This exposes Corbyn’s principal failure: he could not see that Brexit was not a distraction from a revolt against neoliberalism but the form that this revolt has taken in the British context.  From the beginning, most of the British left have only been able to understand the Leave vote as a reactionary, right-wing phenomenon, and its supporters as either wicked supporters of, or dupes of, the right or even far right. For left liberals to make this error is one thing, but for a lifelong left Eurosceptic to do so is inexcusable.  Brexit was not “sold as a blow to the system”; it was a blow to the system – evidenced by the hysterical response of that system to the vote, its desperate attempts to prevent the enactment of the referendum result ever since, and the challenges to every aspect of Britain’s political and constitutional order. Every political party, barring UKIP and fringe communist groups, campaigned to Remain, as did all the institutions of the business, cultural and educational establishment, backed by the International Monetary Fund and the US president. People rejected the European Union and opted to “take back control” because they could see that the political elite had retreated from them into the state and the interstate networks of the EU. They wanted an end to this post-political era, in which nothing ever changed and political parties had converged on the neoliberal “centre-ground”. They wanted politicians to start representing them again, to listen to and act upon their grievances. They wanted popular sovereignty (see Analysis #6 - Why Did Britain Vote to Leave the EU?).Corbyn’s post-mortem suggests that he was unable to recognise the enormous opportunity that this presented for the left. An anti-establishment revolt of this magnitude – fleetingly led by right-wing hucksters who promptly vanished or stabbed each other in the back after the referendum – exposed the massive political void into which the left could have stepped. This desire for radical, fundamental change in our constitutional order could have been harnessed to a radical programme of political, social and economic reform.

Brexit: Lower British courts to overrule EU law Boris Johnson has split the cabinet with a plan to give British judges new powers to overturn rulings by the European Court of Justice, The Times has learnt. Theresa May’s government agreed to transfer all existing European Union case law into British law after Brexit, a decision opposed by Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. The commitment meant that only the Supreme Court in England and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland would be allowed to “depart” from EU case law. A new clause in Mr Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill will let lower courts overturn ECJ rulings. MPs will vote on the bill on Friday. Mr Johnson has argued that Britain should “take back control of our laws” and the change will be celebrated by his party as restoring the sovereignty of the justice system. It will mean that British courts can rule on existing EU case law dealing with issues such as holiday entitlement, sick leave, maximum working hours, VAT and flight compensation. However, some ministers raised concerns that the plan could bring a rise in legal action and will be strongly opposed by the Lords and the judiciary. It could also harm negotiations for a post-Brexit trade deal with the EU by affecting regulatory alignment. Lord Pannick, QC, the cross-bench peer who acted for Gina Miller in both of her successful Supreme Court cases against the government over Brexit, said: “To allow courts other than the Supreme Court to depart from the decisions of the Court of Justice of the EU in relation to transposed EU law would cause very considerable legal uncertainty.” Geoffrey Cox, the attorney-general, is said to have raised concerns about the consequences if the amendment is not tightly drafted. The plan could have a big impact on workers rights and consumer law, for example by allowing airlines to fight compensation claims from passengers whose flights were delayed by technical faults. Employers could challenge workers’ right to carry over holiday entitlement while on sick leave. Google could also challenge in British law the ECJ’s judgment that people have the “right to be forgotten” online. The amended bill to be tabled on Friday will also have a clause outlawing an extension of the transition period beyond the end of next year. Mr Johnson will drop concessions made to Remainers in areas such as workers’ rights. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has warned that planning to reach a “comprehensive” free-trade deal by December 31 next year is “very unrealistic”.

Michael Gove fails to rule out no-deal Brexit Michael Gove has declined to rule out the possibility of a no-deal Brexit as he was challenged over the government’s decision to make it illegal to request an extension to EU alignment beyond 2020. In its first major announcement since securing a majority in the general election, the government said it would enshrine in law a ban on extending the transition period on a Brexit deal with the EU. This is being seen as an attempt to push the European Union to give Boris Johnson a comprehensive free trade deal in less than 11 months by presenting the bloc with a new cliff-edge. The extension ban will be written into the withdrawal agreement bill, which is due to have its second reading in the Commons on Friday. However, questions have been raised over what happens if an agreement is not struck with the EU by the end of 2020. Gove’s comments came as the prime minister told colleagues at the first cabinet meeting since the Tory landslide election result that they must work “24 hours a day” to create a “people’s government”. Johnson said to ministers gathered around the cabinet table in Downing Street that they must work to repay voters who lent them their support at the ballot box. “The first 100 days were very busy. You may remember it was a very frenetic time. But you ain’t seen nothing yet, folks. We’re going to have to work even harder because people have a very high level of expectation and we must deliver for them.” Appearing on BBC Breakfast, Gove, who has been in charge of no-deal planning, was asked four times if the new arrangement meant there was still a possibility of a no-deal hard Brexit, which MPs tried repeatedly in the Commons to prevent happening through legislation enacted by the Labour MP Hilary Benn. He said: “No, the Brexit we are committed to delivering is the one in our manifesto. We need to make sure we honour that. That is a commitment we have to keep.”

Labour’s Defeat Is Being Overstated The Conservative Party’s election victory is a personal tragedy for Jeremy Corbyn, whose quest to lead a transformative Labour government has ended in failure. It is also a tragedy for Britain, which has lost the opportunity offered by a transformative Corbyn-led Labour government. It may also become a tragedy for the Labour Party, but only if it takes away the wrong lessons from its defeat. The last point needs to be emphasized, all the more so since some of the reporting shows that there is quite clearly an agenda to overstate the extent of Labour’s defeat. Most of the commentary speaks of Labour achieving “its worst result since 1935.” This is a serious misrepresentation of the facts. Labour’s vote share in the election was 32.2 percent. That compares with the 30.4 percent it achieved in the general election of 2015, just before Corbyn became leader, when the Labour Party was led by Ed Miliband. It is also higher than the 29 percent vote share the Labour Party achieved in the general election of 2010, when it was led by the then incumbent Labour prime minister, Gordon Brown. Going back further, Labour’s vote share in earlier general elections was 27.6 percent in 1983; and 30.8 percent in 1987. In terms of absolute numbers of votes, Labour in 2019 gained more votes than it did in the general election of 2005 (10,269,076 versus 9,552,436), which Labour won under the leadership of the then incumbent Labour prime minister, Tony Blair. The claim that Labour achieved “its worst result since 1935” is based solely on the number of members of parliament (MPs) it returned to the House of Commons following the election that stands at 202. This is indeed a historically low figure. However, saying that ignores the fact that Labour had already lost — in the general election of 2015 — 40 of its seats in Scotland, which it could formerly rely upon to reliably return a Labour MP. These 40 seats were lost to the left wing pro-independence Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), not to the Conservatives. The SNP has held on to them ever since.

Jeremy Corbyn will whip Labour MPs to oppose the Government’s Brexit deal on Friday - Jeremy Corbyn will whip his diminished parliamentary party to vote against Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal on Friday, in the outgoing Labour leader’s final strategic call. Mr Corbyn’s move will give the prime minister a renewed opportunity to establish clear dividing lines between the Conservatives and Labour on Brexit. The vote, on Friday, will be the first show of parliamentary strength from the prime minister since his commanding victory in the general election last week gave him a majority in the Commons of 80. Mr Johnson used the parliamentary theatre of Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s re-election as Speaker yesterday to rehearse the contrast between his government and the opposition that he is likely to draw later this week. He boasted that the new parliament was “vastly more democratic” because “it will not waste the nation’s time in deadlock, division and delay”. He said: “On Friday, this parliament will put the withdrawal agreement in the popty ping [microwave], as we say in Wales. Then this new democratic parliament, this people’s parliament, is going to do something . . . What is this parliament going to do? We are going to get Brexit done.” The packed benches of Conservative MPs behind the prime minister chanted “get Brexit done” along with him. Mr Corbyn and his allies believe the Brexit divide was the reason that Labour slumped to its worst defeat in almost 90 years. In a fraught appearance before the parliamentary Labour Party last night Mr Corbyn told them that under his leadership they would continue to oppose Mr Johnson’s deal. “On Friday, we have the debate on the withdrawal agreement bill,” Mr Corbyn said. “We will vote against it because by putting an impossible timetable for a good deal with the EU, Boris Johnson has already shown that his priority is a toxic deal with Donald Trump that will sell out our NHS and risk the safety of our food. And the [withdrawal agreement bill] significantly risks undermining the Good Friday agreement.” Mr Corbyn said that Labour “must now listen to those lifelong Labour voters who we’ve lost”, and that “Brexit was a major, although not the only, reason for their loss of trust in us”. But he said he believed that Mr Johnson’s claim that his deal would get Brexit done would “soon be exposed for the falsehood it is”.

Britain’s Labour Party Faces an Existential Crisis -- Boris Johnson’s decisive victory in last week’s U.K. general election is a watershed moment. It means that for the first time, there is a majority in the House of Commons for a specific course of action on Brexit, which will now happen next month. And that majority –- the Conservative Party’s largest since its glory days in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher -- gives him breathing space if any lawmakers prove rebellious during the next phase of trade negotiations. But electorally, the performance of the opposition Labour Party is even more significant. It is hard to overstate how catastrophic this result is for Labour. Its total of 203 seats is worse even than its 1983 meltdown under Michael Foot -- until now the yardstick of choice for electoral disaster -- and has no parallel in modern times. Despite Labour having been in opposition for virtually the entire decade, during which time growth in real incomes has been almost zero, home ownership rates have fallen, the Conservatives have pursued unpopular fiscal tightening policies and have changed leaders repeatedly, Jeremy Corbyn’s party managed to lose 59 seats to an opponent with middling ratings who many voters find it hard to trust. Labour lost districts where defeat would once have been unthinkable, many of them precisely the areas that were hardest hit by deindustrialization under the Conservatives in the 1980s, and then hit hard again by spending cuts in the 2010s. Many more were held narrowly -- and may be vulnerable in the future if Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party disappears and its vote falls to the Conservatives. The early debate within Labour has seen a division between those blaming Jeremy Corbyn and his allies and those blaming Brexit, with honorable mentions for the party’s radical policy platform. Who’s right? It is true that Corbyn’s ratings are appalling, that Labour’s flip-flopping over Brexit confused voters and pleased neither side, and that its policies, though mostly popular in the abstract, weren’t seen as a credible offering by voters. But all of these failings are in turn symptomatic of something much deeper. Labour has become a party talking mainly to itself, and not one listening to voters. While many individual MPs maintained dialogue with their constituents, much of their feedback from the doorstep has fallen on deaf ears in the party. And the obsession with polls and focus groups of the 1990s has been replaced by an open, sometimes vitriolic hostility to public opinion research.

With a 'radical' agenda, Britain's Johnson sets sights on quick Brexit (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson unveiled what he called a radical government agenda on Thursday, setting his sights on a quick Brexit, future trade deals and on transforming Britain to repay the trust of voters who handed him a landslide election victory. Just a week after he won the largest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher in 1987, the Queen’s Speech offers details of Johnson’s plans for Britain after more than three years of Brexit upheaval. Johnson showed he intended to try to satisfy the demands of voters in northern and central England who broke their tradition of backing the opposition Labour Party to support him. Among pledges to boost funding for the state health service, increase sentences for violent crime and enhance workers’ rights, Johnson made his campaign slogan to “get Brexit done” his number one priority, confirming he would lead Britain out of the European Union on Jan. 31. He said he would not allow any more “dither and delay”, ruling out any extension beyond 2020 to the transition period to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU, and suggesting he would hold trade talks with other countries at the same time. “Our first task is to get Brexit done and we will leave the EU at the end of January,” Johnson said in the foreword to the Queen’s Speech, when Queen Elizabeth sets out her government’s program at the beginning of a new parliament. “We will release the country from the stranglehold of indecision, restoring confidence to people and businesses. We will avoid the trap of further dither and delay - by ruling out any extension to the implementation period beyond 2020.” On Friday, he plans to begin the process of passing legislation needed to ratify Britain’s EU exit on Jan. 31, after which date the government department specially created to oversee Brexit will be closed.

Brexit withdrawal bill: what’s new and what’s different - This is the second version of the withdrawal agreement bill, which was first published in October.It is needed to enshrine the deal Boris Johnson struck with the EU in October in UK law and legitimise the transition period before full departure on 31 December 2020.But, in a reflection of the freedoms delivered by an 80-seat majority, this new version removes previous concessions to opposition parties as well as signalling to Eurosceptics in his own party that Brexit will not just be done, but done the Boris Johnson way. It includes several key changes that reduce parliamentary scrutiny of the Brexit bill and give the government freedom to conduct negotiations without parliamentary approval.Three clauses and one entire schedule have been removed. Five clauses have been added and several clauses modified. What stays the same?

• Powers to make the Brexit deal legal domestically.
• The legislation enabling the transition period allowing the UK to stay in the customs union and single market between 1 February and 21 December 2020.
• Powers to ensure key elements of the European Communities Act of 1972 remain applicable domestically. The UK will remain a rule-taker and not a rule maker.
• Extensive powers to ministers and devolved governments to deal with the separation issues.
• So-called “Henry VIII powers”, under which ministers can repeal or amend an act of parliament without going back to MPs, allowing them to implement the protocol on special arrangements intended to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. These are “a bit of a blank cheque”, says Joe Owen, Brexit director at the Institute for Government. But as nobody knows the detail of how they will operate they reflect the complexity of the consequences of the divorce from the EU.
• Powers and arrangements to ensure EU citizens’ rights laid out in the withdrawal agreement are implemented.

What has been removed? The clauses that give parliamentary say on future Brexit deals, negotiating objectives or the extension period have been removed. Specifically they are:

• The clause giving MPs the right to approve an extension to the transition period.
• The clause 31 requirement for parliamentary approval for negotiations on the future relationship in the October bill has gone. Under the old bill, the House of Commons would have had to approve the negotiating objectives of the government in the next phase of talks. The parliamentary approval process for any future relationship treaty subsequently negotiated with the EU has also gone.
• The removal of clauses pledging alignment with the EU on workers’ rights. The government on Thursday promised in the Queen’s speech that workers’ rights would instead be “protected and enhanced” under an employment bill.
• Legal protections for refugee children reunited with family members in the UK have been watered down. The bill removes, via clause 37, obligations in regard to unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the EU with an obligation to make a statement within two months of passing the act.
• The promise that the government’s position on negotiating the future relationship will be in line with the political declaration that accompanied the withdrawal agreement.

What’s new?

• A clause outlawing an extension to the Brexit transition period beyond 31 December is included.
• A clause locking in Brexit at the stroke of midnight, 31 December. The only way that can change is if the EU changes its summer daylight saving.
• The bill gives the government new powers in several areas, including Northern Ireland, to change Brexit-related laws through secondary legislation rather than primary, which has the potential to reduce parliamentary scrutiny.
• Time limits on any discussion of the divorce bill payments, removing the option of debate up to March 2021. This is in line with the other clauses removing any chance of an extension to the transition period.
• It gives the House of Lords’ EU committee the right to scrutinise developments in EU law of “vital national interest” to the UK during the transition or implementation period. The House of Commons already had these powers under the October bill.