U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

No parent should have to worry that they could be subjecting a child to lead poisoning. Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Biden's Lead Pipe & Paint Action Plan, we can spare families like Deana's from this fate and ensure their peace of mind.


Thanks to Biden, there's big progress on lead pipes



President Biden’s infrastructure investments will ensure that kids like my son don’t get lead poisoning

Two days after taking my son Aidan to get a blood test, I got a call from his pediatrician: “Your son needs to go to the hospital right now. We’ve already booked him a room.” The results of the test showed that Aidan, then just 2 years old, had lead poisoning.

I was shocked. Where had my son been exposed to lead? At that point, I knew nothing about lead exposure. I worried that Aidan's doctors were downplaying how dangerous lead poisoning can be, so I started to do more research. I learned that high lead levels are extremely harmful — especially to children. Lead exposure can cause seizures, weight loss, developmental delays, irritability and learning disorders.

When we returned home from the hospital after Aidan received treatment, an inspection revealed that lead paint covered all of the windows in the house we were renting. A contractor came to remove the lead paint and I prayed that would be the end of our troubles.

Yet just after Thanksgiving of 2018, Aidan was hospitalized for lead poisoning again — this time a two-week stay. At that point, Child Protective Services got involved and said, “We can’t discharge your son from the hospital until he has a safe living environment.”

Another inspection revealed that the pipes in our house were made from lead. I felt terrible. I couldn’t let my son be poisoned in our home. I was forced to break my lease so that my children and I could avoid further lead exposure. Soon, we ended up in a shelter for a few months, until my own health took a turn for the worse and we moved back in with family.

As parents, we do everything in our power to keep our children safe and healthy, but there was only so much I could do to protect my children from our country's crumbling infrastructure.

For years, I did not feel comfortable sharing my story with others. I worried that they wouldn’t understand. Eventually, I opened up to my church about what my sons and I had gone through. Other members of the community came forward to let me know that I wasn’t alone, including one mother who told me her kids had also developed lead poisoning. The love and support I received inspired me to become a parent advocate for the Coalition on Lead Emergency (COLE), an organization of Milwaukee residents concerned about the presence of lead in our community.

After years of outreach and education, we are finally seeing progress in our community. Earlier this year, I shared our story with Vice President Kamala Harris when she visited Milwaukee. Harris told me about the investments the Biden-Harris administration is making to strengthen America’s infrastructure, including billions in funding to replace all the lead paint and lead pipes across the country. Leaders have been talking about infrastructure investments for years. It was the Biden administration that finally made it happen.

The Biden administration's Lead Pipe and Paint Action Plan will make our country lead-free and create high-paying jobs that support families across the country. Here in Milwaukee, COLE is doing its part to train workers to be able to safely remove lead laterals from homes. Unfortunately, there are a lot of lead pipes in Milwaukee — nearly 70,000 out of more than 170,000 statewide. This federal funding will massively accelerate our efforts to remove them and protect children like Aidan.

Aidan is almost 9 now and, together, we have put together a book educating children about the dangers of lead. It’s the story of “Super Aidan, The Lead Free Superhero,” who flies across the city of Milwaukee to teach children how to defeat the evil lead monster. We have been working with our public library system and local schools here in Milwaukee to share the story.

Although my sons and I have moved into a safe home, it’s still hard to trust the water flowing from our sink after what we experienced. We now use a lead filter and rely a lot on bottled water. Our family needs time to recover from the trauma we experienced, but thanks to the Biden administration’s investments in lead replacement, we know that soon we will never have to worry about being exposed to that poison again. These investments are already doing so much to ease my mind — and the minds of so many mothers out there.

Deanna Branch lives with her sons Aidan and Jaidyn in Milwaukee, where she is a parent advocate for the Coalition on Lead Emergency.

https://captimes.com/captimes/opinion/guest-columns/opinion-thanks-to-biden-theres-big-progress-on-lead-pipes/article_e846cab0-fe51-5f7c-9bb5-ea68ce4c642f.html

[Rick Plant]

Biden to give prime-time speech about 'soul of the nation' as voters prepare to cast midterm ballots

The president is expected to speak Thursday night outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

President Joe Biden plans to deliver a prime-time speech this week about how America’s “rights and freedoms are still under attack,” returning to the core message of his 2020 campaign as Americans are getting ready to vote in the November midterm elections.

A White House official said Thursday's address at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia would focus on “the continued battle for the soul of the nation” and show how the president sees the central argument of his 2020 candidacy remains as salient as ever with the midterm elections coming into clearer focus.

The president will lay out how America’s standing in the world and its democracy are at stake, the official said. Biden will highlight what he sees as progress over the past two years to protect our democracy, but note that rights and freedoms remain at risk.

“He will make clear who is fighting for those rights, fighting for those freedoms, and fighting for our democracy,” the official said.

Biden will deliver the speech outside Independence Hall, another echo of his 2020 candidacy, which began with a rally in Philadelphia. In that campaign, Biden repeatedly drew upon the message of not just the nation’s Founding Fathers but other great leaders in highlighting how he viewed then-President Donald Trump as someone who would risk changing the character of the nation if given another term in office. He later drew on Abraham Lincoln with a major speech at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and Franklin Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Georgia, in the closing weeks of the 2020 campaign.

Thursday's speech comes as Biden is ramping up his travel schedule in the closing months of the midterm elections. The event in Philadelphia will be his third in the battleground state in the span of one week. Biden on Tuesday intends to discuss his plan for public safety and will contrast that with what he will say is an “extreme MAGA agenda” from congressional Republicans that “is a threat to the rule of law.”

While it’s not yet clear how much Biden will invoke his predecessor this week, he and his advisers have made clear that they think the former president’s grip on the GOP has boosted Democrats’ chances of protecting congressional majorities this fall.

Last week, in remarks at a Democratic National Committee rally in Maryland, Biden said that “MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security, they’re a threat to our very democracy.”

“They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy,” he said. “This is why, in this moment, those of you who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving America than the MAGA Republicans are to destroying America.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-give-prime-time-speech-soul-nation-voters-prepare-cast-midterm-b-rcna45358

[Rick Plant]

President Biden @POTUS

I’m building the economy we need for working families to succeed and for America to win the future.

And Congressional Republicans are pushing an agenda that serves the wealthiest corporations and themselves.



https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1561826342517309442

[Rick Plant]

Did you know?

It’s states with loose gun laws where violence rates are the highest.

[Rick Plant]

Biden blasts ‘MAGA Republicans,’ ‘sickening’ attacks on FBI



WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday railed against the “MAGA Republicans in Congress” who have refused to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol and now are targeting the FBI as he tried to portray Democrats as the true pro-law enforcement party ahead of the November midterms.

In remarks initially billed as a crime-prevention speech, Biden seized on comments from allies of former President Donald Trump who have called for stripping funding from the FBI since it executed a search warrant at Trump’s Florida residence. Biden’s remarks were the first substantive defense he has made of the FBI since the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago, which triggered not just withering criticism of the agency but threats of violence against its employees.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement and their families, for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said before a crowd of more than 500 at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania. “I’m opposed to defunding the police; I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.”

It was a notably different tack for Biden, who has steered clear of extensively commenting on any element of the Justice Department’s investigation since federal agents conducted the search at Trump’s estate. Biden also appeared to call out — without naming him — recent comments from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who warned of “riots in the streets” should Trump ultimately face prosecution.

“The idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying, ‘If such and such happens there’ll be blood on the street’?” Biden said. “Where the hell are we?”

The speech Tuesday continued Biden’s aggressive rhetoric against the GOP ahead of the midterms, as Democrats enjoy a slightly brighter political environment buoyed by significant legislative accomplishments and a presidential approval rating that has trended slightly upward. During a political rally in the Washington suburbs last week, Biden likened Republican ideology to “semi-fascism.” He is set to deliver a democracy-focused speech on Thursday in Philadelphia that the White House has said “will make clear” who is fighting for democratic values.

As he has done before, Biden on Tuesday criticized GOP officials who have refused to denounce the pro-Trump rioters who breached the U.S. Capitol nearly 20 months ago. Referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, Biden said, “Let me say this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress: Don’t tell me you support the law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th.”

The campaign-style speech near Biden’s birthplace was the first of three visits by the president in less than a week to the state that is home to a competitive governor’s race and a U.S. Senate contest that could help determine whether Democrats will keep their majority in the chamber. Trump is hosting his own rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.

The president also used his remarks Tuesday to promote his administration’s crime-prevention efforts and to continue to pressure Congress to revive a long-expired federal ban on assault-style weapons. Democrats and Republicans worked together in a rare effort to pass gun safety legislation earlier this year after massacres in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. They were the first significant firearm restrictions approved by Congress in nearly three decades, but Biden has repeatedly said more needs to be done.

“We beat the NRA. We took them on and beat the NRA straight up. You have no idea how intimidating they are to elected officials,” an animated Biden said. “We’re not stopping here. I’m determined to ban assault weapons in this country! Determined. I did it once before. And I’ll do it again.”

As a U.S. senator, Biden played a leading role in temporarily banning assault-style weapons, including firearms similar to the AR-15 that have exploded in popularity in recent years, and he wants to put the law back into place. Biden argued that there was no rationale for such weapons “outside of a war zone” and noted that parents of the young victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde had to supply DNA because the weapon used in the massacre rendered the bodies unidentifiable.

“DNA, to say that’s my baby!” Biden said. “What the hell is the matter with us?”


President Joe Biden's speech in Wilkes-Barre

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

The White House @WhiteHouse

Today, two more companies announced big manufacturing investments thanks to @POTUS' legislation:

✅First Solar will build a solar panel factory in the Southeast
✅Corning will build a fiber-optic cable factory in Arizona

Good-paying jobs that don't require college degrees.

Corning says it will build a new manufacturing facility outside Phoenix in response to a spike in demand for fiber-optic cable as the U.S. government ramps up a $42.5 billion internet funding program.
https://www.axios.com/2022/08/30/fiber-optic-cable-corning-factory-broadband-att

https://twitter.com/WhiteHouse/status/1564683976547221506

[Rick Plant]

American manufacturing is roaring back:

-Corning: $42.5 billion on fiber optics
-LG/Honda: $4.4 billion on EV batteries
-Micron: $40 billion on chips
-Qualcomm: $4.2 billion on chips
-Intel: $100 billion on chips

Republicans use jobs as a talking point. Democrats create them.

Sources:

Corning: https://axios.com/2022/08/30/fiber-optic-cable-corning-factory-broadband-att
LG/Honda: https://cnn.com/2022/08/29/business/honda-lg-electric-vehicles/index.html
Micron: https://cnbc.com/2022/08/09/micron-to-invest-40-billion-in-us-chip-manufacturing.html
Qualcomm: https://reuters.com/technology/qualcomm-globalfoundries-sign-pact-double-chip-manufacturing-2022-08-08/
Intel: https://cnbc.com/2022/01/21/intel-plans-20-billion-chip-manufacturing-site-in-ohio.html


Biden and Democrats deliver.

Reminder: not a single Republican voted for this bill.

“The company pivoted after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law earlier this month…”


First Solar to Invest $1.2 Billion in U.S. Plants, Spurred by Climate Law

The biggest U.S. solar-panel maker said it plans to spend as much as $1.2 billion to boost domestic manufacturing capacity by around 75%.



The biggest U.S. solar-panel maker said it plans to spend as much as $1.2 billion to boost manufacturing capacity at home by around 75%—the latest in a surge of domestic clean-energy investments spurred by the recently passed climate and healthcare legislation.

On Tuesday, Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar Inc. FSLR 0.51%▲ said it would invest up to $1 billion in a new factory in the southeastern U.S. that will eventually be able to make 3.5 gigawatts of panels each year and $185 million in expansions the company now plans at factories in Ohio.

The new investment plans are a reversal for First Solar, the only major American-owned maker of solar panels. First Solar Chief Executive Mark Widmar had said until recently that although the company was eager to boost its manufacturing footprint, high costs and a lack of policy support meant it was considering adding capacity in Europe or India rather than at home.

With the new investments, First Solar now expects to have around 10.6 gigawatts of panel-making capacity in the U.S. by 2025—up from an expected 6 gigawatts next year—enough to power more than 1.8 million homes. It will have around 10 gigawatts of manufacturing capacity outside the U.S. next year, when its new India factory comes online.

The company pivoted after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law earlier this month, Mr. Widmar said. The IRA contains hundreds of billions of dollars in incentives for companies to manufacture clean-energy equipment such as solar panels and electric-vehicle batteries, as well as tax credits for companies that build green-power projects using American-made components.

Depending on how the IRA is interpreted, First Solar could be eligible for tax credits ranging from 4 cents to 18 cents per watt on its modules, according to a recent report by Philip Shen, managing partner at boutique investment bank Roth Capital Partners LLC. Based on the projected capacity of the new plant, that suggests between $140 million and $630 million in tax credits a year.

With the new law, “solar’s going to be investible again” in the U.S., Mr. Widmar said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. The company expects to choose the site for the new U.S. factory in the third quarter of this year.

First Solar’s announcement is part of a surge in expected investment in clean-energy technologies spurred by the law as well as ballooning demand for solar, wind and batteries to meet ambitious U.S. climate goals.

The U.S. government is also concerned about relying too heavily on China, which dominates manufacturing in solar and other clean-energy technologies, with whom relations have been increasingly strained.

Battery and car manufacturers have rushed to unveil multibillion-dollar deals for plants in the U.S. On Monday, Honda Motor Co. and LG Energy Solution Ltd. said they would spend $4.4 billion on a factory to make electric-vehicle batteries in the U.S. Tesla Inc. battery supplier Panasonic Holdings Corp. is considering a $4 billion EV battery factory in Oklahoma, the Journal previously reported, and it announced a similarly sized plant in Kansas in July.

In solar manufacturing, where China controls more than 80% of the global supply chain by some estimates, South Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group member Hanwha Solutions said in March that it plans to pour billions of dollars into building an alternate supply chain in the U.S. As a first step, it is expanding the Georgia panel-making factory of its Qcells clean-energy unit, and it has invested more than $200 million in REC Silicon ASA, a maker of the high-purity silicon used as the fundamental ingredient in most panels. REC is restarting its factory in Moses Lake, Wash., in response.

Not including the latest First Solar announcement, module makers had already announced around 14 gigawatts of U.S. capacity additions around the time of the bill’s passage, said Andy Klump, chief executive of Clean Energy Associates, a consulting firm that helps renewable companies build, manage and track their supply chains. At least three big global manufacturers are now considering plants of five gigawatts or more, according to Mr. Klump.

A big challenge in building out a solar supply chain in the U.S. will be attracting manufacturing that doesn’t currently exist there, such as plants that shape silicon for solar panels into ingots and wafers, industry executives say.

First Solar uses a different panel technology that doesn’t depend on silicon and has a much shorter supply chain. The company has spent years cultivating supply partners and now sources more than 90% of the materials it uses in American factories from the U.S., Mr. Widmar said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-solar-to-invest-1-2-billion-in-u-s-plants-spurred-by-climate-law-11661852700