KAMALA HARRIS Concealed Documents Of Catholic Church Child Abusers

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFbmKAx5Jwo

WILDFIRE, HURRICANES, FLOODS AND DROUGHTS QUADRUPLED IN COST SINCE 1980

https://popularresistance.org/wildfire-hurricanes-floods-and-droughts-quadrupled-in-cost-since-1980/

By Bob Berwyn, Inside Climate News.August 26, 2020
| EDUCATE!


A New Report Looks At The Price Of Climate-Linked Natural Disasters And How Global Warming Is Making Them Worse.

Lisa Paul was still recovering from the wildfire trauma of 2017 when she experienced a renewed wave of sickening dread last week, the skies above her home and vineyard in the mountains east of Sonoma, California, filled with lightning that sparked hundreds of wildfires.

“I had pretty close to a panic attack when the Hennessy Fire, near Lake Berryessa, exploded into almost a mushroom cloud,” she said, adding that she could see the blaze just over the hills, “where the 2017 fires crested.”

The Wine Country fires of two years ago were fanned by a diablo wind that pushed the flames directly toward her property, destroying gardens, orchards and vineyards.

Those fires killed 22 people and damaged or destroyed more than 5,600 structures, burning across about 56 square miles. Property damage totaled $14.5 billion. Firefighting costs were estimated at $1.5 billion.

One year later, the $16.5 billion Camp Fire burned across 240 square miles and incinerated the town of Paradise in Butte County, California, about 180 miles northeast of Sonoma, killing 85 people and destroying or damaging more than 18,000 buildings.

The cost of this year’s fires—the first of which has so far burned their way across more than 1,400 square miles, destroyed hundreds of structures and are still not close to being contained—can’t even be guessed at. Fire season is just beginning. And global warming is going to make it worse, according to a new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters.The report details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980.

“It shows what happens if we don’t do anything about global warming,” said EDF’s Elgie Holstein. “There’s no denying the trends and the fact this all becomes more expensive going forward.”

As if to underscore Holstein’s point, the latest swarm of wildfires to erupt in northern and central California have pushed the state’s wildfire fighting capacity to the edge, with officials warning that they are running out of resources to respond to new blazes, and urgently requesting help from other regions.
Here Are Five Take-Aways From The Report:

1. Climate Disasters are Expensive, and the Damage is Increasing

In the last 40 years, 663 disasters linked to climate change in the United States killed 14,223 people. The total cost: an estimated $1.77 trillion, a bit more than Canada’s Gross National Product in 2018.

Economic losses in Europe resulting from climate-linked extreme weather from 1980 to 2017 were lower, totaling $537 billion. The difference was the cost of tropical storms, which don’t affect Europe but accounted for nearly half of the U.S. total costs.

The report analyzed data going back to 1980 from several sources, including a database of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that catalogs climate disasters with costs of $1 billion or more and is continually updated. Only disasters with costs of that magnitude were included in the analysis.



The $1.77 trillion total cost in the United States included $954.4 billion from 45 tropical storms and hurricanes, by far the most costly extreme weather category. Next came $268.4 billion in costs from 125 hail, wind, ice storms, and blizzards, followed by $252.7 billion from drought, $150.4 billion from flooding, and $85.4 billion from wildfires.

In the 1980s, the annual average cost of climate and extreme weather disasters in the United States was about $18 billion per year. By the 2010s, the total annual cost more than quadrupled, to $80 billion per year.

A key assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change estimated that the economic damage caused by climate change will continue to increase by about 1.2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warming, coming out to $257 billion, just a little more than California’s entire current state budget of $222 billion.

2. Scientific Evidence Shows Strong Links to Climate Change

Tropical storms, hurricanes, droughts and floods account for about three-quarters of the cost of the extreme weather damage categorized in NOAA’s $1 billion disaster database, and there is strong scientific evidence showing that global warming caused by humans is making their impact worse. Based on that research, the EDF report says the current costs are “only a lower bound to what is anticipated” if global temperatures continue to rise.

Here are the costs of various types of disasters in the United States in the 40 years from 1980 to 2020, and how global warming is making such extreme weather worse.:

Tropical Storms

Most of the damage from tropical storms and hurricanes is caused by flooding, and damage from the storms totaled $954.4 from 1980 to 2020. The warmer the atmosphere gets, the more moisture it can hold, at the rate of 7 percent for every 1.8 degree Fahrenheit warming. So tropical storms also have the potential to produce heavier rains.
One study showed that global warming made Hurricane Harvey three times more likely and 15 percent more intense.
Other research suggests that hurricanes may stall more often over coastal areas to drop devastating rainfall, and there are signs that global warming will cause an increase in the number of the largest and most damaging hurricanes, prompting warnings of “super storms.”
Research also suggests hurricane paths are shifting, potentially threatening new areas that aren’t expecting destructive storms.
Added to that is the steady increase in sea level rise, which is happening faster in tropical and subtropical areas where hurricanes are active. Low-lying coastal areas are increasingly being swamped by sunny flooding because the ocean is creeping up. When a hurricane pushes a storm surge on shore, it magnifies that increase, pushing coastal flooding farther inland.



Droughts

Droughts accounted for 14.1 percent of the total cost of climate-linked disasters in the 40-year period analyzed in the EDF report, totaling $252.7 billion, nearly the size of the annual budget of Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy.
Global warming makes drought worse because a warmer atmosphere sucks moisture out of the ground and from plants, and also shifts rain patterns, as well as the timing and melt of snow.
One indicator of the change is the steep decline of spring season snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere. That trend sets the stage for drying during the hottest summer months.
Global warming is drying up the Colorado River Basin and the larger surrounding Southwest region, with huge implications for the 40 million people who depend on the river for water.
The current climate trajectory is toward a Southwest megadrought that could last for centuries, perhaps punctuated by a few decades of extreme rains.
Consistent with climate evidence from past geologic eras of warming, Earth’s dry subtropical belts, which include most of the world’s desert areas, are expanding poleward, which could be the force that’s driving the intensification of regional droughts.

Floods

Floods were the fourth-costliest type of extreme climate disasters from 1980 to 2020, accounting for $150.4 billion, about 8.4 percent of the total cost.
Climate science shows that global warming is driving up extreme precipitation in some regions, leading to greater chances of flooding.
Global warming is changing snowfall and snowmelt patterns, tripling the risk of particularly destructive rain-on-snow floods, when unseasonable rain suddenly melts the snowpack.
Flooding from sea level rise alone is forcing coastal cities to spend millions to build seawalls and levees and protect water sources.
Globally, the risk of glacier outburst floods is increasing, and a warming climate is changing seasonal flooding patterns, with new risks that some communities may not be expecting.

3. The Poor and People of Color Are Most Vulnerable

With nearly every climate-related disaster, poor people and people of color, and often, indigenous communities, are most vulnerable. They have the fewest resources to adapt, or to get themselves out of harm’s way.
During the current California wildfires, thousands of agricultural workers are harvesting produce in extreme heat and exposed to unhealthy levels of smoke that can cause severe illness. The EDF report noted that about 70 percent of California’s agricultural workers is Latinx. During the 2017 fires, some vineyards had to close because workers left after losing their homes.
A December 2019 study found that during Hurricane Harvey in 2017, “Hispanic, black and other racial/ethnic minority households experienced more extensive flooding than white households,” and lower income households faced more extensive flooding than higher income households.
A 2008 report from a Washington, D.C. think tank said that Hurricane Katrina in 2005 offered a “bitter gift” by refocusing attention on the enduring legacy of racial segregation and poverty in the Gulf South.
Climate experts have found that drought in Central America is part of the reason for a continued stream of migration to the United States, which can multiply the already existing environmental injustice in immigrant and refugee communities.
Globally, drought and water shortages have increased the potential for international conflicts.

4. Nowhere is Safe; Specific Threats Vary by Region

Nowhere is immune to the threat of increasing weather extremes, made more likely by global warming. The National Climate Assessment outlines the regional risks.
Based on the damage trends over the last 40 years, the Gulf Coast and the Southeastern United States are most at-risk for deadly and costly damages from sea level rise flooding, storm surge and the extreme winds of tropical storms and hurricanes.
Extreme rainfall events have increased substantially in the Midwest, leading to more extreme floods that damage homes and fields, and so also threatening food supplies.
The Southwest is threatened by a persistent and intensifying drought that has dried up forests and brushlands and drained rivers and reservoirs.
Wildfires have increased exponentially with warming temperatures, and global warming will increase the risk in most of the West, especially California, recent research concluded.
Parts of the East Coast are sea level rise hotspots, according to a 2017 study.

5. The Biggest Future Safeguard: A Zero Emissions Economy

The EDF report recommends that, to protect the most vulnerable communities that are hit by “climate change-fueled extreme weather events first and worst,” federal lawmakers should invest in adaptive strategies in advance of disasters and not just after the fact.
Coastal areas vulnerable to sea level rise and flooding from tropical storms should build up natural ecosystems like dunes and wetlands to buffer storm and sea level rise impacts
Some emergency response funds should be freed up to help with analyzing growing risks from floods and droughts.
Overall, the biggest goal must be to build a zero emissions renewable economy to avoid as much additional global warming as possible
The EDF report focused in part on decarbonizing the transportation sector by switching to electric vehicles. Electrification of school bus fleets and commercial trucks represent low-hanging fruit, the report said.
Modernizing regional electric grids will help integrate and maximize the benefits of the rapidly growing supply of renewable energy, according to the report. Making buildings more energy efficient is another short-term goal with a big payoff.
Finally, investing now in sustainable agriculture will help protect food supplies and farm livelihoods.

None of this is new, said EDF’s Holstein, who was a high-level NOAA official in the early 2000s.

“We already knew ice caps were melting and that glaciers were retreating,” he said. “The changes we’re seeing are best explained by climate change. Nothing has changed, except all the indicators are moving in the direction of bad news. That’s what is in this report. There’s no denying the trends and the fact this becomes more expensive going into the future.”

Joe Kennedy Touted Commission That Proposed Social Security & Medicare Cuts

The Democratic Senate challenger lauded the Simpson-Bowles proposal as “the right blueprint forward.”


Walker Bragman
Aug 26




Editor’s Note: Most days we only do one email per day so that we don’t overwhelm your email box, but today we are doing two. During this stretch run of the election season, we may once in a while do two emails in a day if there is this kind of time-sensitive news. But rest assured that we are mindful of not overloading you with too much information! —Sirota

This report was written by Walker Bragman.



To ward off a push for Social Security cuts in the next Congress, Democrats may need a bloc of Senate votes to prevent another bipartisan commission from trying to slash the program. This coming Tuesday, the issue of austerity is on the ballot in the Massachusetts Senate race as one of the candidates — Rep. Joe Kennedy III — once lauded a framework to cut Social Security and Medicare as “the right blueprint forward.”

In August 2012, just three years after the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression up to that point, Kennedy was a first-time congressional candidate. During a debate hosted by the Martin Institute at Stonehill College, Kennedy told moderators that something had to be done about the debt and deficit and that the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan had gotten it more or less right. That plan — which came out of a White House commission touted by Vice President Joe Biden — proposed cuts to Social Security, along with Medicare and Medicaid.

“We’ve got a jobs crisis and we’ve got a debt problem and the number one issue has to be getting people back to work,” Kennedy told the moderator when asked what he thought about the plan. “Part of that challenge though is the uncertainty that businesses, individuals, corporations are facing with the current tax structure because so many businesses — it’s hard to ask government to say ‘there’s hundreds of billions of dollars on the sideline, let’s get that back into the system,’ when they don’t know what the tax rate is going to be. The uncertainty out there is forcing all that money to be kept on the sideline.”

Kennedy called for a plan that was a “balanced mix of revenue increases and spending cuts.”

“Something along the lines of Simpson-Bowles,” he said. “Something that recognizes that you’re not going to tax your way out of this. We don’t have that much money. You’re not going to cut spending out of this without completely changing what I believe in — gutting [what] the fundamental responsibilities of the government are. You’re going to need a balanced mix of both.”

Kennedy said it was on Congress and the President “to come up with a balanced approach that markets have faith in, that people believe in, that moves our country forward and I think Simpson-Bowles put forth one framework that could provide a blueprint for that.”

Pressed on the matter, Kennedy did clarify that he took issue with the ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases and the Social Security cuts included in the plan, noting that the program “does pay out of its own trust fund.”

“I think the overall framework of Simpson-Bowles probably is the right blueprint forward,” he said. “There are parts of Simpson-Bowles that I certainly did not agree with. Also, I think what’s interesting about Simpson-Bowles though is that nobody agreed with every part of it, right? And when you have a plan that everybody disagrees with it probably means one of two things: One, you got it really wrong, or you got pretty much the right combination because you’re asking everybody to give something that they don’t want. And I believe that in these tough fiscal times, the way that we’re gonna get out of this is by asking everybody to have to contribute forward.”

Simpson-Bowles was the product of negotiations between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans ahead of the 2010 midterms. With the election looming and the GOP pushing doomsday predictions about the deficit, the president sought a middle ground. In February that year, Obama signed an executive order creating the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, which was run by former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., a proponent of cuts to and privatization of Social Security, to co-chair the commission.

In 2013, a majority of congressional Democrats asked Obama to oppose any cuts to Social Security in a letter signed by then-Rep. Ed Markey, but not by Kennedy.

In the years since Kennedy’s first campaign, Democratic politics has changed. Gone are the days when Joe Biden could receive accolades for standing on the floor of the Senate professing his desire to freeze all federal spending including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and veterans’ benefits. Democratic voters today overwhelmingly support major government programs like Medicare-for-all and the Green New Deal -- two policies Kennedy has aligned himself with for his Senate run.

And yet, austerity is alive and well in Washington. One of the first things Nancy Pelosi did after becoming House Speaker again in 2019 was implement a so called PayGo rule, requiring new spending increases be offset by spending cuts. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, has put forward new deficit reduction legislation that critics say would fast-track cuts to Social Security. Marketed as an effort to “strengthen” the program and keep it solvent for the next generation, the proposal has four Democratic co-sponsors and support from Alan Simpson.

Meanwhile, some close to Biden have recently begun suggesting that if elected, the former vice president will hew to a more conservative path if he wins the election.

On Friday, a Politico article quoted former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson who said Biden would “govern like [Bill] Clinton in terms of consensus-building.” That same day, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told CNBC that 2020 would be the “year of the Biden Republican,” and argued that now was the time to permanently realign GOP voters.

The day before, following a TMI report, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives took aim at the longtime Biden ally heading his transition team, Ted Kaufman, after he said that a Biden administration would “be limited” by the deficits Trump has created. "When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare,” he explained. “When you see what Trump's done to the deficit… forget about Covid-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we're going to be limited."

The Biden campaign later tried to walk Kaufman’s comments back, with a spokesperson saying that "there will of course be stimulus spending in the short term to repair the historic damage Donald Trump has done to our economy and to build back better.”

Tracking Major Hurricane Laura: Latest forecast track & updates

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Pk6gyjv3w

OVER 40 PROTESTS ACROSS THE UK ON #STOPARMINGISRAEL DAY OF ACTION

By The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign.

August 26, 2020

https://popularresistance.org/over-40-protests-across-the-uk-on-stoparmingisrael-day-of-action/

Hundreds have taken to the streets in dozens of towns and cities to call for an end to the UK’s complicity in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people, on the 6 year anniversary of the end of Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. The protests come as Israel has conducted a renewed bombardment of Gaza, which remains under a crippling land, air and sea blockade.

The 2014 attack killed over 2,200 Palestinians in 51 days, nearly a quarter of whom were children. The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict found credible allegations that Israel committed war crimes through its indiscriminate attacks on densely populated civilian areas, which left over 100,000 Palestinians homeless.

Protesters called for an end to the two-way arms trade with Israel. Government statistics, collated by Campaign Against Arms Trade show that since 2015, the UK has licensed over £376 million worth of arms to Israel. Licences include: £98 million worth of ML10 licences (Aircraft, helicopters, drones), £16 million worth of ML4 licences (Grenades, bombs, missiles, countermeasures) and £4.6 million worth of ML6 licences (Armoured vehicles, tanks).

This will be an underestimate as there are also 31 Open Licences to Israel. These are mainly for aircraft equipment. Open Licences allow for an unlimited number of exports, so the real figure is likely to be significantly higher.

This trade has occurred despite Israel being widely condemned for its indiscriminate use of force against Palestinian protesters in Gaza, who began weekly demonstrations calling for their fundamental human rights, as part of the Great March of Return, in March 2018. Israel has killed more than 280 Palestinian protesters in its suppression of the protests.

In May, a wide coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations issued a call for states to introduce ‘effective measures’ to stop Israel’s grave violations of international law, including its proposed annexation of large swathes of the illegally occupied West Bank. This includes enacting a ban on arms trade with Israel.

Many of the protests took place outside branches of HSBC. The bank is being targeted for providing investment, loans and financial services worth millions to companies that supply Israel with weapons and technology, such as Raytheon and BAE Systems. In addition, protesters also drew attention to recent research by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has uncovered that both UK universities and local authority pension funds have a raft of investments in companies arming Israel.

You can still take action! E-mail your MP and demand a two way arms embargo on Israel now!

Message from The Intercept

On June 19, hundreds of thousands of documents hacked from 251 FBI and local police websites were leaked in an unprecedented disclosure known as “BlueLeaks.”

Since the BlueLeaks files were exposed, our reporters have been poring through the documents and uncovering one bombshell after another.

The latest stunning revelations include how police exaggerated the supposed threat of “antifa” to justify escalating violence against protesters. We also uncovered how the FBI chased nonexistent “eco-terrorists” and how police are using debunked junk science on “lie detection” in crime investigations.

These leaks are an unprecedented exposure of the internal operations of federal, state, and local law enforcement, revealing jaw-dropping incompetence, racism, and disregard for civil liberties by the heavily armed government agencies policing our lives.

German authorities, acting on behalf of the U.S. government, seized the server that was being used to distribute the BlueLeaks data, but The Intercept has its own copy, and we believe the public has a right to know the truth about how the police operate behind closed doors.

Our BlueLeaks investigation has uncovered a series of revelations about how police operate behind the scenes. But there’s likely more — much more — in this enormous trove of documents that we haven't found and reported out.

Much of what we’re finding confirms what people have suspected for years — that behind the scenes, when no one can see what’s going on, police all over the country skirt civil liberties and use procedures that are, frankly, idiotic.

But these abuses continue in part because Americans have been fed a diet of pro-police propaganda from the corporate media on TV shows like “Cops” and procedurals in which police are almost invariably presented as “good guys” and the crime is always solved by the end of the show.

To hold law enforcement agencies accountable for the killings of Black people and the routine violations of all our civil liberties, we must break through that wall of propaganda so that the public can understand the truth.

That’s why the BlueLeaks revelations caused such panic among U.S. law enforcement that they got their German counterparts to seize the server and try to shut down BlueLeaks. We won’t let that happen — but to cover this story while continuing all of our other reporting, we need your help.



Will you chip in to support The Intercept’s team scouring through the 269GB BlueLeaks files and support all our groundbreaking journalism?

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As Trump Pushes New Tax Cuts for Wealthy, Analysis Shows US Billionaires $800 Billion Richer Since Pandemic Hit

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/08/26/trump-pushes-new-tax-cuts-wealthy-analysis-shows-us-billionaires-800-billion-richer




As President Donald Trump and top members of his administration continue their push to deliver another round of tax cuts to rich investors, an analysis published Tuesday by the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness showed that U.S. billionaires have seen their collective wealth soar by nearly $800 billion since Covid-19 began spreading rapidly across the country in March.

The new research found that between March 18 and August 20—a five-month period in which the economy tanked and tens of millions of people across the U.S. lost their jobs—the combined wealth of America's more than 600 billionaires jumped by $792 billion, bringing their collective net worth to a staggering $3.7 trillion.


Collins said the fact that just 12 U.S. billionaires now own more than a trillion dollars in combined wealth is "an unprecedented and disturbing indicator of the concentrated wealth during a pandemic." According to IPS, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos—the richest man in the world—has seen his wealth grow by $81.9 billion since mid-March, a bigger jump than any other U.S. billionaire."For billionaires, this is a heads we win, tails you lose economy, boosted by Trump policies to funnel wealth to the top," Chuck Collins, director of the IPS Program on Inequality, said in a statement.

The updated wealth figures came just hours before Larry Kudlow, Trump's top economic adviser, boasted about the president's plan to slash the capital gains tax during a speech on the second night of the Republican National Convention Tuesday. The benefits of any cut to the capital gains tax would disproportionately flow to the wealthiest Americans.




"Looking ahead, more tax cuts and regulatory rollback will be in store," said Kudlow. "Payroll tax cuts for higher wages, income tax cuts for the middle class. Capital gains tax cuts for investment, productivity, and jobs. Much more regulatory relief for small businesses."

Earlier this month, Trump himself vowed to slash the capital gains tax if reelected in November.


Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in a statement that "by demanding even more tax cuts for the rich at this crucial moment, President Trump shows he is as out of touch with our nation's needs as America's billionaires are disconnected from our nation's misery."

"The pandemic profiteering of America's billionaires shows taxes on the wealthy must go up substantially to narrow the wealth gap and raise revenue vital for our big climb back from disaster," Clemente added.