Cop26 - One Word....'Insufficient'

AllTheirSubsidies

'RUsVille

There will still likely be changes, but the 'second draft' of the Cop26 manifesto was released today and some of the changes from the first draft have some folks, especially activists that are pushing for significant global change, upset.

Writing in the Energy Mix, which clearly has an activist bent, Mitchell Beer summarized things thusly:

Fossil fuel subsidies got a new lease on life, vulnerable countries saw only limited progress on climate finance, and the push for faster, deeper carbon cuts was still being slow-walked in the latest draft decision documents published by COP 26 President Alok Sharma at 7:13 AM GMT today....

A little too strident for you?

Well how about we have a look at the following from Alexandra Ellerbuck in the Washington Post:

...The draft keeps in place a call for phasing out coal power and fossil fuel subsidies. It's the first direct reference to the need to phase out fossil fuels in such an agreement in decades, and some environmentalists had worried it might be cut due to lobbying from Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel producers. But the devil is in the details, and critics have noted that a few additional words may weaken the text and provide wiggle room for fossil fuel backers: The draft now says countries should stop burning “unabated” coal and halt “insufficient” fossil fuel subsidies...

Gosh.

Now just who might have pushed for the watering down that led to the insertion of 'insufficient' in front of 'subsidies'?

Well, perhaps it was the largest contingent of 'delegates' who were, most definitely not acolytes of a young Scandinavian woman named Greta.

Matt McGrath had that story for the BBC News earlier in the week:

There are more delegates at COP26 associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country, analysis shared with the BBC shows.

Campaigners led by Global Witness assessed the participant list published by the UN at the start of this meeting.

They found that 503 people with links to fossil fuel interests had been accredited for the climate summit.

These delegates are said to lobby for oil and gas industries, and campaigners say they should be banned...

Imagine that!

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And Then There Were Eight.

WilliamRehnquistWasNo

RaySchalkVille


From Charlie Savage's piece in yesterday's New York Times:

On the surface, a judge’s ruling on Tuesday night that Congress can obtain Trump White House files related to the Jan. 6 riot seemed to echo another high-profile ruling in November 2019. In the earlier matter, a judge said a former White House counsel must testify about then-President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation...

{snip}

...The case, which raises novel issues about the scope of executive privilege when asserted by a former president, is not over: Mr. Trump is asking an appeals court to overturn Judge Chutkan’s ruling and, in the interim, to block the National Archives from giving Congress the first set of files on Friday. The litigation appears destined to reach the Supreme Court, which Mr. Trump reshaped with three appointments...

****

Back in 1974 the Warren Burger-led Supremes voted unanimously, 8-0, that Richard Nixon had to give up the Watergate tapes.

From the Wikiplex:

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that resulted in a unanimous decision against President Richard Nixon, ordering him to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to a federal district court. Issued on July 24, 1974, the decision was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal, when there was an ongoing impeachment process against Richard Nixon. United States v. Nixon is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president to claim executive privilege...

Of course, the current U.S. Supreme court of John Roberts is very different than the one from 47 years ago, what with three of the members having been appointed by Donald Trump.

But here's the thing.

Back in the day Mr. Burger himself, as well as two other members of his court who also voted against Nixon, Harry Blackmum and Lewis Powell, were appointed by...

You got it - Richard Milhous Nixon. 

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And why only eight and not nine in 1974?....Well, the ninth member of the court, William Rehnquist, recused himself because he had served as an Assistant Attorney General under Nixon...

From the doubly historical subheader...Ray Schalk was the Chicago White Sox catcher who was most definitely not part of the 'Eight Men Out' who were a part of the scheme to fix the World Series back in 1919.

Update Thurs pm....As you might have predicted given past performance, Mr. Trump is attempting to play out the clock.

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What I'm Listening To...The Anthropocene Reviewed.

The Anthropocene Reviewed is a WNYC podcast by the now fully grown-up writer, John Green, telling explanatory stories of the human condition to his now pretty much fully grown-up audience.

In the episode embedded below, Green tells the story of how the song 'You'll Never Walk Alone', which was written in the early 1940's by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein for the musical 'Carousel', which itself was an adaptation Frederic Molnar's 1909 play 'Liliom', later became the favourite refrain of Liverpool soccer fans after Gerry and the Pacemakers covered it in 1963.

Green then follows this with the story of Liverpool goalie Jerzy Dudek's amazing redemption song during the 2005 Champions league final.

Even if you have no interest in musicals and/or soccer whatsoever, you will dig this, I promise...

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Mr. Greene is best known for messing around with his brother Hank online and his YA fiction, some of which has been turned into movies.

For hardcore, old-timey Vancouver Whitecaps fans there is even a bit of Bruce Grobbelaar in Greene's Liveprudlian-centric tale.


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Pine City, Minnesota

NotEverythingBelongs

ToPotterVille

One of the things that most amazed me about living in the United States in the age of Clinton was the 'can do' attitude of just about everyone I ran into, regardless their political stripe.

Thus, I find the current gridlock that prevents meaningful things that people actually want from getting done to be a real problem.

Of course, the true obstructionists here are the Republicans but there is no ignoring the fact that the Democrats currently control all three branches of the Federal Government.

So.

How to get things done?

Well, in the case of free community college tuition for everyone at least, the small town of Pine City Minnesota, located on what remains of Highway 61 North of Minneapolis, has just buckled down and made it happen.

Ryan Faircloth had the story recently in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Here is his lede:

A rural Minnesota college and its community have found a way to send every local high school graduate to college tuition-free, boosting enrollment and creating a model other state higher education institutions could follow.

Pine Technical and Community College in Pine City has seen its enrollment jump 63% since fall 2016, from 1,035 students to 1,682 this fall, thanks in part to a community-driven effort to send local kids to school tuition-free. It started with a scholarship fund launched by a local entrepreneur and expanded this year when Pine County officials invested nearly half a million dollars of federal COVID-19 stimulus funds to increase scholarship opportunities at the college.

As a result, Pine County is now the only county in Minnesota where every high school graduate can attend college free. Pine Technical and Community College's growth comes as other colleges and universities in the Minnesota State system have seen their enrollments decline an average of 15% since 2016.

"These school districts and the businesspeople and the county commissioners, everybody just said we've got to get more people engaged in this economy to be more competitive," said Pine Technical and Community College President Joe Mulford. "We are not a wealthy region. Our region has kind of come together around the purpose of higher ed and the need for it."...

Heckfire.

And here I thought Bedford Falls was in New York.

And, what's more, I had no idea that Sam Wainright has been reincarnated as a fellow named Dennis Frandsen:

...Entrepreneur Dennis Frandsen created the blueprint, establishing a scholarship fund in 2018 that covers two years of tuition at Pine Tech for graduates from five area high schools, three of them in Minnesota (Braham, Pine City and Rush City) and two in Wisconsin (Luck and Frederic)...

Imagine that!

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You can hear the story...Here.

Reader Mike recently pointed out that the Blog Crawl over on the left sidebar has gone a little squiffy lately...It seems to be a bug in the creaky dinosaur that is the old Blogger platform used here...Thus, I'll try to start providing bloggy links of interest directly once in awhile (just like the old days!)...Today's recommendation is a site called 'You Can Know Things' by a young clinician scientist who knows a thing or two about data analysis and visualization. Recently she took on the question: 'Is there really no correlation between vaccination rate and the spread of COVID?'

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What I'm Listening To...Ti Jean And Mr. Allen.

 

These days the slanting pink light that is generated by a blustery blanket of autumnal afternoon clouds directly overhead and a clear sky to the West always reminds me of Jack Kerouac's bit of prose bopsedy that is 'October In The Railroad Earth'. 

And, because we have a new puppy-dog in the house that loves late-in-the-day ball throws at the park, I've seen a lot of those afternoons this fall, just like I did many (many, many) falls ago while running madly up and down the red brick school house walled-in road hockey rinks of my youth.

Kerouac's prose poem about his time as a junior railway brakeman in San Francisco starts like this:

There was a little alley in San Francisco back of the Southern Pacific station at Third and Townsend in redbrick of drowsy lazy afternoons with everybody at work in offices in the air you feel the impending rush of their commuter frenzy as soon they’ll be charging en masse from Market and Sansome buildings on foot and in buses and all well-dressed thru workingman Frisco of walkup truck drivers and even the poor grime-bemarked Third Street of lost bums even Negros so hopeless and long left East and meanings of responsibility and try that now all they do is stand there spitting in the broken glass sometimes fifty in one afternoon against one wall at Third and Howard...

****

When C. and I first moved to the Bay Area thirty years ago the area around Third and Howard was still shrouded in a shadow of the skiddy, operatic row that was Kerouac's South of Market San Franciso during the early '50's.

Now, whenever I return to that intersection it is to attend science geek conferences at the massive Moscone Convention Center right next door.  Of course, these days the skids, at least on the surface, are all gone, chromed over and gleaming, fueled by, presumably, prose-free ones and zeroes.

Or some such thing.

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If you want to both hear and see Kerouac and Allen doing their thing over a passage from the road book it's...Here.

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What I'm Listening To....'Jazz On The Autobahn'.

ThanksForAll

TheFishVille

It's a new tune from the Felice Brothers' new album.

And it's almost as if young Ian was sitting in the corner taking copious notes while, say, Lou Reed, Mr. Zimmerman and Bukowski huddled at the bar and argued endlessly about the ghosts in Ralf Hutter's many machines.

Or some such thing.

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And, for the record, it was Paul Willcocks, not me, who came up with the idea of finally ditching our day jobs and forming a Felice Brothers tribute (not cover) band....

Subheader?...This.



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Fool We Once...

Pants

AFireVille

From former U.S. Attorney Chuck Rosenberg, writing in Time magazine about Steve Bannon and criminal contempt:

Congress has no authority to prosecute anyone for anything. Prosecution is an executive branch function, and that power is vested in the Justice Department. That is why Congress asked the Justice Department to prosecute Bannon for contempt – a crime punishable by a fine and imprisonment...

{snip}

...Recall, in August 2020, federal prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Bannon and others for “defraud[ing] hundreds of thousands of donors, capitalizing on their interest in funding a border wall to raise millions of dollars, under the false pretense that all of that money would be spent on construction,” according to a Justice Department press release. As a legal matter, that meant that a grand jury found probable cause to believe that several defendants – including Bannon – committed an egregious fraud. Before Bannon could be tried on those felony charges, former President Trump pardoned him.

It makes sense for Justice Department prosecutors to ask whether Bannon – accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors – would tell the truth about the January 6 insurrection. And because Bannon has demonstrated his disdain for the work of the select committee, helped spread election misinformation and fanned the flames ahead of the insurrection, it seems that he might be an unwilling witness and an untruthful witness. In that case, pressuring Bannon to testify seems pointless...

The inimitable Emptywheel, after showing (many) receipts, comes to a different somewhat different conclusion. Specifically, she thinks past performance indicates that the good Mr. Bannon can be leaned on:

...To be clear, the January 6 Select Committee doesn’t have the time to coerce some truths out of Steve Bannon, though it’s possible that DOJ could use any testimony he did offer as Mueller’s team seems to have done during their investigation, as a means to corner him about prior lies.

In any case, though his testimony helped convict Roger Stone (after which Trump pardoned the rat-fucker), whatever truths Bannon told during the Mueller investigation were useless. The truthful bits remained sealed in an unreleased 302 and grand jury testimony, of no use to the public.

Still, the overriding lesson from Bannon’s book of laughter and forgetting is that his past lies and changing loyalties can be exploited, if you have the time to really work on him.

Here's hoping Mr. Biden's version of the U.S. Dept of Justice takes all the time it needs.

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Unrelated but...Apropos of just about everything civic and citizenry....If you, like just about everyone everywhere, have pumpkins on the brain this weekend, go read our friend Danneau's latest post...You won't regret it!

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What I'm Listening To....'A History Of Rock Music In 500 Songs'

AllTheTunes

ThatFitVille


This is a weekly podcast by an English fellow/musical mensch/writer named Andrew Hickey.

It is completely free*, completely DIY, and I'm completely hooked because this guy really, really does the research and makes fantastic connections/has amazing insights.

At the moment Mr. Hickey is up to episode #135 (circa 1965) but every single episode so far is readily available, either at his website or through the usual podcatchers.

At the risk of sowing family discord, here is a fairly recent favourite (#109) about how Peter, Paul and Mary came to be - and before those in the know, and/or the ghost of Dave Van Ronk, start shaking their first at at Albert Grossman, don't forget that most of us probably wouldn't know about Dylan either without big Al)...

Episode 109: “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Peter, Paul, and Mary

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*Unless, of course, you'd like to support his work and receive bonus content via his Patreon.



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What Are The Data For COVID Vaccine Booster Efficacy Across Age Groups?

PublicHealth

MattersVille

The province of British Columbia has announced that it will be rolling out COVID-19 vaccine boosters across age groups after first offering the third shots our most senior and most vulnerable citizens.

The following is from David Carrigg's and Kevin Griffin's story in Wednesday's Vancouver Sun:

B.C. will be the first jurisdiction in North America to offer a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine to the general population.

On Tuesday, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said that as of January a booster dose of either Pfizer or Moderna vaccine would be offered to British Columbians aged 12 and over who have already received their second dose...

{snip}

...Until now, B.C. had followed other Canadian provinces and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control in offering the third dose only to those in long-term care facilities, seniors and those in high-risk settings or who are immune-compromised.

The new B.C. program will deliver millions of booster shots to the population aged 12 and over between January and May...

So.

Are there hard data that an mRNA-based vaccine booster is efficacious?

Well, the best I've seen comes from the Israeli Health Ministry using the Pfizer vaccine.

Here is the kicker from the abstract of their pre-print:

...Across all age groups, rates of confirmed infection and severe illness were substantially lower among those who received a booster dose of the BNT162b2 vaccine...

And here are some of the data from the Israeli study re-formatted and presented to the US FDA recently:

****

Overall, I applaud the province for being proactive and taking this step because the data so far indicate that it's the best way to decrease productive infection by and illness due to SARS-CoV-2  across the province.

However, I must confess that I'm personally somewhat conflicted by our boosters for all ages strategy given how many of the world's citizens have still not received their first vaccine dose. On that front, Stephanie Nolen's NYTimes piece on Merck's decision to make their antiviral treatment widely available cheaply through the Medicines Patent Pool appears to be a real positive.

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We're Number 19!

Meanwhile

IWasStillThinkingVille


Yes, that's right.

According to the fine folks at Newsweek and the Financial Secrecy Institute, Canada is number 19 on the world list of the very 'best' tax havens for those who are looking for such a thing:

Canada has long been considered a tax haven due to its very low executive tax rates for businesses, and has also struggled with being a money-laundering centre, thanks to weakness on beneficial ownership and transparency.

This means that it is easy to operate a shell company out of Canada...

Meanwhile, here in Lotusland we wait for December to arrive...

Three days of closing submissions at the inquiry into money laundering started today (Oct 15th) ahead of a final report and recommendations that are due in December.

The provincial government appointed B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen in 2019 to lead the inquiry after several reports said the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal cash linked to organized crime affected the province's real estate, luxury vehicle and gaming sectors...

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And where does this slot us?....Why right between the exalted company of Malta and Qatar!

Subheader?...This.



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The Will Of The Graph Paper Putin People.

TheTyrannyOfTheRectilinear
SuperMajorityVille

When statisticians/researchers Dmitry Kobak and Sergey Shpilkin aggregated all the Russian voting patterns for the last twenty years and plotted turnout vs. percentage support for Mr. Putin and friends at each polling station, a funny thing happened during the graph making.

Which is that when support for the Putinista's is highest (i.e. top right quadrant of the graph) the cloud disappears and discrete patterns of support emerge that cluster around the zeroes and fives, almost as if arbitrary data entries had occurred over and over and over again.

Imagine that!

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Tip 'O The Toque to the fine folks from FlowingData...

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The (Most) Extreme 'Moderate' (Of Them All).

Quo
StatusVille

Awhile back we wondered if the good Mr. Manchin's posturing on shrinking the size of Joe Biden's infrastructure bill might have had more to do with squeezing climate change initiatives out of the thing than the dollar cost.

Well, well, well, whaddya know...

Link

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Your Morning Audio...Ripple (Grateful Dead Cover)

BeSmarterThanAllThoseOtherKids
FlahertyVille

In the Paul Feig-penned final episode of 'Freaks and Geeks' the most famous Lindsay Weir encounter with the Grateful Dead comes when she lets go to 'Box of Rain' in her bedroom.

But, in my opinion, it's 'Ripple', playing over the closing montage (above), that hits just the right mix of joy and melancholy as freedom and self knowledge collide in a Volkswagen van full of friends heading on down the road.

Or some such thing...

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Weirdly, Feig and producer Judd Apatow knew the show was doomed midway through the first season so they got the last show in the can right then and there so that they could force the network to air it, regardless when the cancellation came. In the end the axe fell after fifteen episodes. Three more surfaced after the fact via cable and streaming deals...Apatow later said that everything he's done since has been an attempt to get revenge on the people that cancelled Freaks and Geeks.

Sub-header is uttered by Count Floyd pretending to be Lindsay's Dad as she boards the bus that is supposed to take her to pre-college nerd camp.

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The Trillionator.

DarkAndDusty

PaintedOnTheSkyVille

In the beginning Joe Biden's stimulatory 'Build Back Better' plan, which included a significant climate action component, was costed at seven trillion dollars.

MSNBC's MacKenzie Sigalos had that story this time last year:

...Striking a stimulus deal is only one part of Biden’s pandemic recovery plan. What he actually wants is something much bigger: for the country to spend over $7 trillion on initiatives such as infrastructure, which includes the creation of 10 million clean-energy jobs, and on housing, education, economic fairness and health care. He’s bundled all his ideas under the slogan Build Back Better...


Of course 7 trillion dollars is a big number, even if the plan is/was to spend it over ten years.

Except, perhaps, when you compare it the total value of the subsidies that prop up the fossil fuel industry every single year, as the Guardian's Damian Carrington explains:

...The IMF found the production and burning of coal, oil and gas was subsidised by $5.9tn in 2020, with not a single country pricing all its fuels sufficiently to reflect their full supply and environmental costs. Experts said the subsidies were “adding fuel to the fire” of the climate crisis, at a time when rapid reductions in carbon emissions were urgently needed...

****

Of course, Mr. Biden's proposed plan has now been cut in half to $3.5 trillion, still with a significant climate action component, and now he is trying get his own party's senators pass the bill.

Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia has drawn a line in the sand at 1.5 trillion, ostensibly because of  debt reduction:

Joe Manchin proposed a deal to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this summer to limit the total cost of Democrats' sweeping spending bill to $1.5 trillion, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by POLITICO...

{snip}

...In the document, Manchin proposes raising the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, the top tax rate on income to 39.6 percent, raising the capital gains tax rate to 28 percent and says that any revenue from the bill “exceeding” $1.5 trillion will go to deficit reduction...


But.

With crocodile tear-laced apologies to a fine fellow named Grover, is it possible that Mr. Manchin is trying to strangle Mr. Biden's bill in a coal- and oil-filled bathtub for a different reason?

The Irish Times' correspondent in Washington Coral Davenport hinte at that possibility recently:

Senator Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned $500,000 (€430,000) last year from coal production, is preparing to remake US president Joe Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry – despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Manchin has already emerged as the crucial up-or-down vote in a sharply divided Senate when it comes to Biden’s push to pass a $3.5 trillion budget Bill that could reshape the nation’s social welfare network. But Biden also wants the Bill to include an aggressive climate policy that would compel utilities to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to wind, solar or nuclear energy, sources that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet...

With friends like that subsidies....errrr...trillions matter.

OK?


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Update, Friday: And, just in the nick of time...Here comes the (formerly?) green Ms. Sinema with her more direct, upfront rip-off of the Climate Mitigation Slash Machine Blues....

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It's A Long Way From The Blues.

NotAllTillermen

DrinkTeaVille

By the time that big Fleetwood Mac album came out in 1977 I wasn't really paying attention, mostly because my friends and I were already starting to sniff around at that new musical thing coming while we stapled egg cartons to the garage room walls.

You know that then 'new' musical thing that now means that, more than forty years later, all the algorithms in all the gin joints in all the streaming service worlds inevitably lead me back to 'Gates of the West' by the Clash.

Anyway, after Lindsey Buckingham was on Marc Maron's podcast recently, I went back and had another listen to Rumours, etc.

And then I did some digging around in an effort to learn what, exactly, it was that Mick Fleetwood heard while listening to demos at Sound City Studios in 1974 that led him to ask Buckingham to become Fleetwood Mac's new guitar player.

Surprisingly, the algorithms do not take you to that thing that Fleetwood heard on 1973's Buckingham/Nicks album because that album is out of print.

But you can find it - and it's all there - the whole thing, pre-formed.

So much so, that it's pretty darned clear that Fleetwood and John McVie essentially became little more than Buckingham's and Nicks' (and occasionally Christine Perfect's) rhythm section when it came time to make the band's next two albums - you know, the ones that made them all rich and soon drove them white line crazy.

If you don't believe me about that Buckingham/Nicks thing (and/or don't already know), just have a listen...

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Post title is apparently what McVie said to Fleetwood when he was struck dumb by the realization that the two of them were about to make sixteeen tons of money backing that California sound that Buckingham and Nicks had concocted.

Subheader?...You can hear the Cat/Yusaf influence that Buckingham talks about on Maron in that B/N album...Incidentally, it was an album that went nowhere except, weirdly, in Northern Alabama...Go figure. 

Regarding 'Gates of the West'...Back in the day I was very proud of having a cut of Mick Jones's somewhat obscure homage to Mott the Hoople's 'All the way from Memphis' that was the pre-London Calling antithesis of Strummer's earlier 'I'm So Bored With The USA' on a compilation tape that played endlessly in the pirated Kenny van throughout the early '80's.

Update: If you want to go backward in Fleetwood Mac time into the blues, check out this great post by our good friend Danneau.


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