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Rick Plant:
Thanks Biden!

US. unemployment claims fall to 52-year low after seasonal adjustments

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plummeted last week to the lowest level in more than half a century, another sign that the U.S. job market is rebounding rapidly from last year’s coronavirus recession.

Jobless claims dropped by 71,000 to 199,000, the lowest since mid-November 1969. But seasonal adjustments around the Thanksgiving holiday contributed significantly to the bigger-than-expected drop. Unadjusted, claims actually ticked up by more than 18,000 to nearly 259,000.

The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekly ups and downs, also dropped — by 21,000 to just over 252,000, the lowest since mid-March 2020 when the pandemic slammed the economy.

Since topping 900,000 in early January, the applications have fallen steadily toward and now fallen below their prepandemic level of around 220,000 a week. Claims for jobless aid are a proxy for layoffs.

Overall, 2 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment checks the week that ended Nov. 13, down slightly from the week before.

“Overall, expect continued volatility in the headline figures, but the trend remains very slowly lower,” Contingent Macro Advisors wrote in a research note.

Until Sept. 6, the federal government had supplemented state unemployment insurance programs by paying an extra payment of $300 a week and extending benefits to gig workers and to those who were out of work for six months or more. Including the federal programs, the number of Americans receiving some form of jobless aid peaked at more than 33 million in June 2020.

The job market has staged a remarkable comeback since the spring of 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic forced businesses to close or cut hours and kept many Americans at home as a health precaution. In March and April last year, employers slashed more than 22 million jobs.

But government relief checks, super-low interest rates and the rollout of vaccines combined to give consumers the confidence and financial wherewithal to start spending again. Employers, scrambling to meet an unexpected surge in demand, have made 18 million new hires since April 2020 and are expected to add another 575,000 this month. Still, the United States remains 4 million short of the jobs it had in February 2020.

Companies now complain that they can’t find workers to fill job openings, a near-record 10.4 million in September. Workers, finding themselves with bargaining clout for the first time in decades, are becoming choosier about jobs; a record 4.4 million quit in September, a sign they have confidence in their ability to find something better.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/u-s-unemployment-claims-fall-to-52-year-low-after-seasonal-adjustments

Rick Plant:
This is the GOP of today...vile, racist, and hateful of other religions. They mimic the behavior of Donald Trump because it plays well with his cult.   

'Flat-out wrong' Lauren Boebert doesn't understand the meaning of Christianity: former GOP governor



On CNN Friday, former Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) tore into Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for likening Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to a suicide bomber in a comment to supporters — and suggested that it is an indication her own religious faith is rotten.

"For a woman to make this kind of statement means she's ignoring the fact we're all made in the image of God," said Kasich. "We all deserve respect. We don't deserve attacks. People who laugh at this, they don't understand what faith is all about. We wonder in this country why there's so much fighting, why there's so much name-calling, not just in politics about across the board. It's because people have lost sight of how important religion is, in terms of guiding individual behavior, and it's not about the negatives. It's about the positives."

"The idea that somebody would say something like this means they have really little understanding of what it means to have faith," continued Kasich. "I can't question her or think she's not a faithful person, but it sure gives you a sense that she does not understand that that is completely and totally inappropriate, and, frankly, as a person that is a Christian, it's flat-out wrong and it's very disappointing. These things need to be healed. These things need to be observed if we're going to begin to heal this country."

Watch below:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k4eX9vct7A


'Absolute garbage rhetoric': Mitch McConnell adviser hammers Lauren Boebert on CNN



On CNN Friday, former Mitch McConnell adviser Scott Jennings slammed Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) for her comments joking that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was a suicide bomber.

"Scott, was it just another day at the office and they got these folks in the far right in certain parts of the caucus that they just can't control?" asked anchor Jim Acosta.

"Senator McConnell serves in the Senate," said Jennings. "I guarantee you, I know what he's thinking. It's a garbage comment from a garbage politics. I'm as anti-Squad as the next [Republican], but there's plenty of ways to debate these folks without stooping to this garbage rhetoric. I noted, by the way, that Boebert has been forced to apologize. I assume that didn't happen in a vacuum, but she's of course committed the ultimate sin, which is the people she's being performative for here would say you never should apologize."

"Ultimately this is not the future of the party, not the future of the country, not the future of what any of us wants," added Jennings. "These are not the leaders that we need for America or for the Republican Party."

Watch below:

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyentIuJm-o

Rick Plant:
This is a big deal.  Less than 2 years ago, the economy was in freefall, unemployment was rising to Great Depression levels, workforce participation was falling, GDP collapsing and unconstrained disease spread. Electing responsible adults like President Biden matters. https://washingtonpost.com/business/2021/11/24/jobless-claims-pandemic/




This is a historic jobs recovery: 5.6 million jobs have been created since President Biden took office and an unemployment rate of 4.6% two full years earlier than experts predicted was possible.

Rick Plant:
Billions and trillions: Climate efforts set for big boost if Build Back Better bill passes

The Biden administration's $1 trillion infrastructure bill included historic levels of funding for climate projects, but it's the $2 trillion spending bill that has experts feeling optimistic.

For climate experts and policymakers, $1 trillion is just a start.

As the U.S. seeks to prove it’s serious about its international climate commitments, the focus now is on whether the Biden administration can pass its $2 trillion spending bill, which includes $555 billion to fight climate change and could be the new cornerstone of federal climate policy.

The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress this month already commits historic levels of funding for climate projects. But experts say the U.S. won’t reach its climate goals or restore its international credibility unless the administration can pass its Build Back Better bill, which features a variety of other climate initiatives and calls for significant investments in clean energy.

The sizable dollar figures offer a sense of the scale of the challenge the U.S. faces in rolling back its emissions, undoing some environmental damage and preparing for more climate-related natural disasters.

“These are the biggest pieces of climate policy legislation the U.S. has seen in a decade,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher and the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “The faster we can act, the better off we’ll be, because we’re already late to the table. The time for half-measures was 30 years ago.”

The provisions are particularly timely as the U.S. tries to move past President Donald Trump’s efforts to unwind significant climate efforts by pulling the country out of the Paris Agreement and killing a slew of environmental protections.

President Joe Biden’s participation in COP26, the worldwide summit on climate policy held in Scotland this month, marked the U.S.’s return to global climate negotiations after Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement in January.

U.S. officials at the conference faced an uphill fight to restore international trust in the U.S.’s climate commitments.

As part of Biden’s updated COP26 pledge, the U.S. aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. David Waskow, the director of the International Climate Initiative at the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization, said the goal was “quite ambitious,” adding that the U.S.’s return to international diplomacy on climate change was significant in itself.

“It’s critical to remember that if you go back a year, there wouldn’t have been a U.S. administration that was engaging constructively in these talks,” Waskow said.

While Biden went to COP26 projecting a new tone, the country’s ability to deliver on its 2030 targets is likely to hinge on the success of infrastructure projects and the outcome of the Build Back Better Act, which, if it passes, could wind up being significantly scaled back.

Both are needed to meet the country’s emissions goals, experts say.

The infrastructure bill will harden the country’s roadways and ports to better deal with the effects of climate change, but it offers comparatively less to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will intensify climate change.

In Washington state, for example, projects funded by the bill are expected to help re-engineer roads and bridges for a warmer and wetter future, boost transit projects like light rail and improve stream passageways for fish struggling with climate change.

Flooding this month following record rainfall in parts of Western Washington sent landslides onto the state’s most-traveled interstate and poured floodwaters into small towns — a preview of what climate scientists expect more often.

“All of the money to some degree has a bearing on our ability to be more resilient,” said Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat who ran a 2020 presidential campaign centered on climate action. “But it doesn’t get us close to what we need to reduce the rate at which these floods get worse.”

The infrastructure bill will spend about $70 billion to upgrade the country’s electricity grid and $7.5 billion more to build a network of charging stations for electric vehicles, which could hasten the transition away from gas-guzzling cars.

But from Inslee’s perspective, it offers only a “step” toward progress, whereas the Build Back Better bill’s clean energy investments would be “transformative.”

The act calls for spending more than a half-trillion dollars on clean energy investments, incentives and tax credits to shift the economy away from fossil fuels.

Analysis by the independent Rhodium Group says the budget bill could reduce U.S. carbon emissions by nearly a gigaton, which would be about equivalent to removing the yearly emissions of light-duty vehicles from U.S. roadways. Combining the budget bill with the infrastructure bill and state and local regulations, the U.S. could meet Biden’s 2030 emissions target, with the budget bill representing the “lion’s share” of reductions, the analysis says.

“There’s no question that the Build Back Better Act is crucial. It can drive the U.S. a substantial distance toward achieving the 50 to 52 percent reduction,” Waskow said.

The legislation also prioritizes environmental justice by earmarking 40 percent of the overall benefits of investment for disadvantaged communities.

The infrastructure bill committed $216 million to the Bureau of Indian Affairs specifically for climate resilience projects in Indian County, according to the White House. About $130 million of the money will go toward relocation projects for tribes that need to move away from climate hazards.

Some tribal communities — including many in Alaska — may need to move in the coming decades because of climate hazards like coastal erosion, flooding and thawing permafrost, the Government Accountability Office said in a report last year.

Fawn Sharp, the vice president of the Quinault Indian Nation, whose seaside villages in Washington state face threats from tsunamis, coastal erosion and rising sea levels, estimated that her community needs at least $150 million to complete plans to uproot for higher ground — at least $20 million more than what is committed to all tribes.

“It’s unprecedented and a level of funding we’ve not seen in our lifetime,” Sharp, the president of the National Congress of American Indians, said broadly of the infrastructure bill. “While this is significant, we have a long way to go to restore tribal nations.”

Climate scientist Jonathan Foley sees reasons to feel encouraged even beyond what happens in Congress.

“Sometimes we get obsessed with these large policies, as if they’re going to save the world, but the real work of reducing emissions and addressing climate change is often lots of invisible forces working every single day,” said Foley, the executive director of Project Drawdown, a nonprofit organization that provides resources about climate solutions.

Market forces and technological advances have, for example, helped drive down the cost of solar and wind power, which in turn is contributing to the shift away from fossil fuels. Vocal opposition, led in particular by young activists, is also pressuring government officials to act, Foley said.

“Good policymakers can accelerate change, but activism, technology and markets are already getting things done on their own,” he said. “That has nothing to do with who is in the White House.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/climate-change-efforts-set-big-boost-build-back-better-bill-passes-rcna6471

Rick Plant:
Biden administration approves second major offshore wind project, to provide power to N.Y.
The administration plans to build at least 16 offshore wind energy facilities by 2025

The Biden administration said Wednesday it plans to build a wind farm off Rhode Island to supply power to New York.

The approval from the Interior Department paves the way for the country's second large-scale offshore wind farm after a similar project got underway in Massachusetts. The administration aims to put the U.S. on a path to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, powering about 10 million homes.

“We have no time to waste in cultivating and investing in a clean energy economy that can sustain us for generations,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement Wednesday.

The approximately 130-megawatt project — 19 miles southeast of Block Island, Rhode Island, and 35 miles east of Montauk Point, New York — will eventually power about 70,000 homes on Long Island and create more than 300 jobs, the Biden administration said.

The Interior Department said it adopted “a range of measures” to “avoid, minimize, and mitigate potential impacts that could result from the construction and operation of the proposed project.” It said it consulted with tribes, local governments and industries.

Construction began last week on the first major offshore project — an 800-megawatt wind farm 15 miles off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The project is expected to start sending power to the grid in 2023.

The administration plans to build at least 16 offshore wind energy facilities by 2025.

The U.S. is a latecomer in the global race to build offshore wind farms to lower carbon emissions. Many countries have already expanded their renewable energy capabilities using offshore wind projects.

Worldwide, 6.1 gigawatts were created by new offshore wind projects last year, according to a recent report by the Global Wind Energy Council. China led the pack, adding more than 3 gigawatts, followed by the Netherlands, with 1.5 gigawatts, and Belgium, with 706 megawatts, the report said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/biden-administration-approves-second-major-offshore-wind-project-provide-power-n1284601?icid=recommended

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