Donald Trump MAGA Republicans have a responsibility to tell Texas flood victims families the truth about global warming worsening the world weather

Texas Floods Were Made Worse by Climate Denialism

Elected officials must be held accountable, now and in the future, for the lives lost in disasters brought on by increasingly extreme weather.

By Michael R. Bloomberg the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The tragic news about the drownings and destruction out of central Texas has been heartbreaking, but it’s also been maddening — because so many lives could have been saved if elected officials had done their jobs. They owe the families who lost loved ones — the death toll from the Fourth of July floods is now at more than 100 — more than thoughts and prayers. They owe them a sincere commitment to righting their deadly wrong, by tackling the problem they’ve turned their backs on for too long: climate change.

The scientific evidence is clear that the more frequent extreme weather we are experiencing is being driven by climate change — and that it’s only going to get worse. As the director of the Texas Center for Extreme Weather at Texas A&M University put it, the storms and flooding in central Texas are “exactly what the future is going to hold.” And yet so many elected officials are pretending otherwise.

The latest episode of horrific flooding isn’t just about a natural disaster in one state. It’s also about a political failure that’s been happening in states across the country, and most of all in Washington. The refusal to recognize that climate change carries a death penalty is sending innocent people, including far too many children, to early graves.

Nearly a year ago, Hurricane Helene caused devastating flooding in western North Carolina that killed more than 100 people. A few months later, wildfires in California killed 30 people and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. This month, the death and destruction of climate change came to Texas. Where will be next? No place is safe.

Not every life can be spared from climate change, unfortunately, but many more could be saved if elected officials stopped pretending that they’re powerless to do anything about it. The fact is: Climate change is a manageable problem with practical solutions. Those solutions will not only save lives, but they will also improve our health, reduce our energy bills and create more jobs. The longer these officials pretend otherwise, the more the public will suffer, and the more people will die. And yet what are those in power in Washington doing? Worse than nothing: They are actively thwarting efforts to address climate change and help communities cope with its harms.

The Trump administration has erased the words “climate change” — and critical climate data and information — from government websites, as if the problem could be wished away. It is attempting to roll back the Environmental Protection Agency’s obligation to fight climate change. And it has put lives at risk by canceling grants to local communities to help them prepare for the effects of climate change — and by cutting essential positions at the National Weather Service that help communities prepare and respond to disasters, leaving the weather service’s offices in the areas around the flooding short-staffed.

Last week, the administration even proposed eliminating a research office that plays a critical role in forecasting extreme weather. 

And that’s not the end of it.

On the same day the Texas floods killed dozens of people, the president signed a budget bill that, in addition to piling on $3 trillion to the national debt, gutted the nation’s efforts to promote renewable energy sources. The new budget repeals tax credits for clean energy production, electric vehicles and clean manufacturing while also eliminating the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which Congress created to help increase private-sector investment in clean energy. As a result, many fewer such projects will be built, killing jobs in communities across the country and driving up energy costs.

All of this will make it harder for the US to drive down the greenhouse-gas emissions that are helping to supercharge deadly storms, while increasing the human toll and financial costs of extreme weather — and making it harder for states and localities to recover from it.

Local and state governments do not have the resources to dig out from disasters on their own, which is why Texas Governor Greg Abbott has requested support and financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Yet the administration has been busy gutting the agency, which has lost some 20% of its full-time staff since the start of the year. Making matters worse, the administration has proposed getting rid of FEMA altogether, which would be a disaster in itself.




In short: The federal government is attempting to get out of the business of helping communities prepare for and respond to climate-fueled weather disasters just as they’re becoming more deadly and destructive. It won’t work. As the flooding in Texas painfully demonstrates, Washington cannot escape its duty to confront climate change. Trying to do so will only lead to higher body counts and heavier financial burdens on communities.

(Maybe Governor Abbott can claim a broken clock ⏰award...❓) To Abbott’s credit, he has stood up for the state’s clean energy industry and helped kill several bills that would have put an anti-free-market cap on clean energy production and subjected wind and solar power projects to additional red tape. We need more of our elected representatives to recognize that climate change should not be a partisan issue — and that it requires urgent cooperation from members of both parties, as well as both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

That’s not only the right thing to do. Increasingly, it will also become the essential thing to do for political self-survival — because as extreme weather events become more and more frequent, voters will increasingly hold elected officials accountable for taking action.

There is much more that our governments can be doing to protect us — and our children and theirs — from the worsening effects of climate change. But for that to happen, all of us need to make our voices heard, and our votes count❗(Maine Writer post script....assuming Americans will be allowed to hold free and fair elections!)

New York City asylum seekers should be given work permits: "It's the American way".

By Michael R. Bloomberg- Mr. Bloomberg is the founder of Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies, served as mayor of New York from 2002, to 2013, and was a candidate for the 2020, Democratic presidential nomination. Echo opinion published in The New York Times. 

Our long-broken immigration system is now a full-blown crisis with the collapse of the asylum process. The Biden administration has failed to address the steep price many cities are paying for a system they didn’t create and borders the cities don’t control. The White House ought to recognize the political damage the crisis will do to Democrats up and down the ticket in 2024 if it doesn’t take swift and decisive action.

The number of people seeking asylum at the southern border increased under President Donald Trump and has grown further under President Biden. The partial border wall has done nothing to slow the flow. Both parties created the problem, and both parties must work together to fix it.

For starters, current federal law prevents asylum seekers who have already been admitted into the United States from immediately working. The process of receiving a work authorization can take a year or longer. In the meantime, how are asylum seekers expected to pay rent and feed themselves and their families? This amounts to state-enforced poverty and vagrancy — against people who have shown extraordinary fortitude and grit in journeying here, often at great risk, for the opportunity to work and build a better life.

In New York City, denying people the ability to work is especially taxing because of a 1981, legal settlement, in which the city agreed to provide shelter to all homeless residents seeking it. 

Nevertheless, that agreement was never intended to be a blanket guarantee of housing for an unprecedented flow of refugees, but that is what it has become.

New York City has done an admirable job of finding, in short order, shelter for the more than 100,000 asylum seekers who have arrived since last spring. Currently, the city is housing about 60,000 in some 200 sites, which has forced it to take over more than 140 hotels. According to the Mayor’s Office, the cost to taxpayers, at $383 a night, is running into billions of dollars a year. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has been pleading for months, to little avail, for federal support to deal with a flood of asylum seekers.

New York is hardly alone. Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Denver and other cities are also experiencing an influx of asylum seekers who have no housing and no means of legally earning money. Meanwhile, the federal government is failing to provide the resources necessary to hear asylum cases in anything approaching an expeditious fashion. It can take six or seven years for an applicant’s case to be resolved.

Think about it: 

We have a system that essentially allows an unlimited number of people to cross our borders, forbids them from working, offers them free housing, and grants them seven years of residency before ruling on whether they can legally stay. It would be hard to devise a more backward and self-defeating system.

We are a nation of immigrants because we are a land of opportunity. To deny immigrants the opportunity to work — and force them to rely on public handouts — is as anti-American as anything I can think of. It is harmful not only to the refugees, but to our country — especially at a time when so many businesses are facing labor shortages.

Critics who have latched onto Mayor Eric Adams’s recent comments that the crisis will “destroy” the city seem more concerned with his words — spoken in understandable frustration with Washington — than with the problem itself. Solving the crisis will not be easy, especially with a divided Congress. But ignoring it will only make it worse, while also elevating the political fortunes of xenophobes and eroding public support for immigration reform.

It is imperative that Congress and the president work together to secure the resources and adopt the policy changes necessary to fix the asylum process. That means creating a system that is:

Compassionate. America’s refugee laws were designed to help those who were uprooted by World War II and to protect those escaping repressive communist regimes, but the laws are now being used by those fleeing economic hardship and gang violence. Their cases can be heartbreaking, and the United States must do more to help other countries address violence and poverty. But the asylum process should be orderly enough to ensure that we can prioritize taking in — and helping resettle — those fleeing war and state persecution.

Fair. Those who wait their turn for a visa should be respected. The circumvention of standard immigration pathways only reduces incentives to follow the rules.

Just. Justice delayed, as the saying goes, is justice denied. Congress should provide the resources the administration needs to ensure that asylum claims can be resolved in days or weeks, not years.

Practical. If the U.S. government lets you in, it should let you work. It’s the American way, and it’s what generations of immigrants have done. President Biden should use his executive authority to permit many more people to work, and he should work with Congress to ensure that all others can, too.

Rational. Housing costs should not be borne by taxpayers, who cannot possibly be expected to pay to house all the people who arrive every year. Mayor Adams is right in seeking to update the city’s consent decree in order to make this clear, and the Biden administration should reach out to mayors around the country who recognize the power of refugees to help revive and spur local economies.

Humane. When it admits asylum seekers, the federal government should not force local governments to shoulder the burden alone. Cities need federal support to help connect asylum seekers, many of whom arrive with nothing, to employment, housing and services.

Tackling the crisis in ways that stay true to our history and values is the best way to help asylum seekers, support cities and prevent xenophobes from gaining political power.

SPC - Wealth buys attention: An echo opinion about Howard Schultz

An echo editorial by Robert Reich published in The Baltimore Sun

(I learned another acronym! SPC is not just another Starbucks flavor of the day.  Instead, it means "Serious Presidential Candidate")

Howard Schultz has enough money to buy political attention

In the United States, this is the only place in the world where any citizen over the age of 35 can run for president. No experience in government necessary. No support from a political party necessary. You don't even have to have any ideas or policy proposals.

Take Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks whose most notable achievement to date has been the Mocha Frappuccino.

Last week, CNN made Mr. Schultz a Serious Presidential Candidate (SPC) by giving him an hour-long town hall in which he fielded questions from an audience.

Why did CNN do this? Because Mr. Schultz is worth more than $3.6 billion.

In today's America, someone with this much money can buy so much advertising and self-promotion that he automatically becomes an SPC just by virtue of wanting the job and having the capacity to self-finance a campaign.

Ironically, CNN and other major media are giving Mr. Schultz free media now because he can afford an almost infinite amount of paid media later.

Years ago, political parties played the major roles in selecting presidential candidates. Candidates came up through the ranks. They had to convince party leaders across the nation they had what it took to be president. Conventions were the last step in the winnowing process.

Then, over the last several decades, the media took over the job of winnowing the pack. Winners were determined largely by campaign coverage, including presidential primary debates.

Donald Trump became an SPC in 2015, not only because of his billions, but also his notoriety, as the star of a popular reality TV show and, before that, his decades in the tabloids, where he learned the art of getting media attention (even negative reporting).

Now, it seems, all you need to get the media to anoint you is the money to buy an infinite amount of media. Part of the reason is the dramatic escalation in presidential campaign spending.

In the 2000 election, neither George W. Bush nor Al Gore spent more than $200 million, in today's dollars. In 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, the total spent by and for Barack Obama was $730 million. In 2016, total spending by Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton came to around $1.16 billion.

At the same time, there's more money at the top to spend on politics.

Michael Bloomberg, another SPC, with his own media empire, makes Mr. Schultz look like a piker by comparison.

Mr. Bloomberg is worth more than $40 billion, of which he's already pledged at least 1 percent ($400 million) to defeat Trump.

It's not clear if Mr. Bloomberg will run. If he does, he'll run as a Democrat. But Mr. Schultz is planning to run as an independent, so he won't even have to go through the gauntlet of primary battles.

Which means Mr. Schultz could deliver the 2020 election to Mr. Trump, by siphoning off votes from the Democratic candidate.

Schultz can't win, so why is he running? Not because he has any burning issue he wants to raise or any policy he wants to push. 

His interviews to date have been curiously anodyne.

Back in 2014, before anyone thought of Mr. Trump as a plausible candidate, Mr. Schultz berated the incivility he saw in American politics and called for business leaders like himself to "take the lead and do what we can to move the country forward."

Is that it? He wants more civility?

It didn't seem to occur to Mr. Schultz that America's growing incivility might be related to the frustrations of people earning coffee grounds while those at the top run off with the Super Venti Flat White.

In 2014, Starbucks paid its baristas an average of $9 an hour. (It now pays $11, which, adjusted for inflation, isn't much more). Schultz took home $149.8 million.

Under Mr. Schultz, Starbucks touted its so-called "social responsibility," but it was for show.

Take, for example, the bracelets it sold for $5, whose proceeds were donated to banks and loan funds to support investment in poor communities. At the very same time, Starbucks kept some $1.9 billion offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes -- representing hundreds of millions in lost tax revenues that might otherwise have helped poor communities. Social responsibility my macchiato.

Starbucks spends millions each year lobbying the federal government, often seeking spending cuts along with the kind of tax breaks that continue to minimize Starbucks' tax bill.

For Mr. Schultz, like Mr. Trump, it's all about money and media.

Mr. Schultz is running because he thinks it will be a hoot -- the capstone to his coffee career, the apex of his espresso.

But like many other billionaires of America's New Gilded Age, Mr. Schultz doesn't seem to give a damn about what his political escapades do to America.

Robert Reich's latest book is "The Common Good," and his newest documentary is "Saving Capitalism."

Keep the momentum going- Hillary Clinton & Tim Kaine

A preliminary post Democratic Convention poll shows some encouraging election news for the Clinton-Kaine presidential team. Apparently, initial polling shows a post convention spike.

Here are the reasons I believe the Hillary Clinton and Senator Tim Kaine Convention in Philadelphia worked:

I love this Hillary 2016 Philadelphia Convention photograph

1.  Communiations were expertly coordinated. It was a beautiful convention.

2.  Michelle Obama's "First Lady Speech" on Tuesday night set a unifying tone for the convention. I'm not sure if her exquisite speech had a title, or not, but in my mind it was her "Proof of Greatness" speech.

3.  Although not reported so much, those compelling presentations from the public, the messages from individuals who spoke about being immigrants, were exceptional and, in the aggragate, they had a positive impact.

4.  Rather than base the Democratic convention on a  focused "anti_Trump" theme, the messaging demonstrated a bright alternative.

5.  A politically star studded line up of Democrats, Republicans and the Independent Michael Bloomberg drew attention. Regardless of a person's political (or non-political) persuasion, the Philadelphia Convention provided something to hear, for everyone.

6.  Hillary Clinton's family - President Clinton '42 and her daughter Chelsea Clinton, were believable. They are familiar to Americans and they lived up to our expectations about them. Contrast their believability with the glitzy Trump family, the Clinton's have human qualities, flaws and all, rather than "made for TV".

7.  Democrats took political risks.  For example:

• Michelle Obama raised the word "slaves"; 
• Mr. and Mrs. Khizr Kahn proudly represented their Muslim and Islam heritages; 
• Mayor Michael Bloomberg raised the concept of Donald Trump's mental stability, by calling for support of a "sane" presidential candidate
• Democrats reached out with an invitation to Republicans to join in the 2016 support for Hillary Clinton
• Mothers of the Movement took on the National Rifle Association
• Invoking iconic Republicans: President Barack Obama invoked the name of President Ronald Reagan and Admiral Hutson praised Senator John McCain- opening the "big tent" political concept to embrace American Republican icons.

8.  Debbie Wassereman Schultz stepped aside as the DNC chair, to minimize obvious and distracting internal power stuggles.

9.  There were absolutely no controversial negative speeches!

10.  Although the "friendly fire" Democratic protestors were vocal, there were no overt clashes to silence them, thereby eliminating the visuals reminiscent of the 1968 fiasco, still a brutal memory in political history.

Congratulations to everyone who worked very hard to create a magnificent 2016, Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Now, on to  a Hillary/Kaine victory in November!

Thank you Democrats! We're looking for a "huge" victory.

Donald Trump mental health assessment - he needs a medical evaluation

"...marked another bizarre moment..." TheWashington Post

"These signs and symptoms may be observed by others..." 

Donald Trump instablity quotes at this link.

As a registered nurse, I'm qualified to report on paients' symptoms. In my opinion, Donald Trump exhibits many symptoms indicating an unstable personality. As a Registered Nurse, I'm ethically bound to refer Donald Trump to a psychiatrist, a medical professional, to follow through with a mental health competency exam.

Narcissistic personality disorder

It makes no sense for right wing Republicans to vote for a political leader who wears an American flag in his lapel but who calls for our nation's adversary, President Vladimir Putin, to hack a US citizens email.  Donald Trump made this personal request today because, like a child who can't get his own way, decides to embarass his parents in public. This is certainly immature behavior and another symptom of Donald Trump's emotional and behavioral instability.

Donald Trump was unpatrioitic and perhaps seditious when he called upon Russia to hack an American citizen's email!

DORAL, Fla. — Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he hoped Russian intelligence services had successfully hacked Hillary Clinton’s email, and encouraged them to publish whatever they may have stolen, essentially urging a foreign adversary to conduct cyberespionage against a former secretary of state.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

Mr. Trump’s call marked another bizarre moment in the mystery of whether Vladimir V. Putin’s government has been seeking to influence the United States’ presidential race.

Here are a few more symptoms:

1.  Immature behavior - making fun of a jounralist who has a disability.  This is bully behavior used by weak people who use the vulnerabilities of others to build the illusion of having power.

2.  Using multiple personalities- there is an illness now called http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/dissociative-identity-disorder/dissociative-identity-disorder-did-dsm-5-criteria/

Dissociative Identity  Disorder (aka "DID") formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment and self.

According to the DSM-5, personality states may be seen as an "experience of possession." These states "involve(s) marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual." 

3.  Narcissism - Donald Trump refers to himself everytime he speaks. Narcissistic Personality Disorder 

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for admiration and a lack of empathy for others. 

But behind this mask of ultraconfidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

A narcissistic personality disorder causes problems in many areas of life, such as relationships, work, school or financial affairs. You may be generally unhappy and disappointed when you're not given the special favors or admiration you believe you deserve. Others may not enjoy being around you, and you may find your relationships unfulfilling.

Narcissistic personality disorder treatment is centered around talk therapy (psychotherapy).

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has called attention to Donald Trump's mental instability because of his observations made about the erratic behaviors.

Today at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Mayor Michael Bloomberg finally called for somebody to pay attention to Donald Trump's instable mental health.  As a registered nurse, I recommend a mental health evaluation for Donald Trump. Americans deserve to know if you are sane or not.