This is an open thread where everyone is welcome, especially night owls and early birds, to share and discuss the happenings of the day. Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments
The American Prospect — A Toxic Explosion in Private Equity Payouts
Private equity barons just pocketed as much as $850 million from the company behind this week’s massive chemical blast in Georgia.
While attention has rightly been paid to the devastation of western North Carolina and other areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a non-natural disaster in the Southeast that appears to be unrelated to the storm transpired simultaneously. Over the weekend, a chemical plant in Conyers, Georgia, exploded in a massive warzone-level blast. Billowing clouds of smoke could be seen from miles away. The nearby stretch of the I-20 highway shut down, 17,000 residents have been evacuated, and another 90,000 have been ordered to shelter in place. That order was reimposed Tuesday morning after briefly lifting, when a weather change blew the toxic clouds back over a populated area.
There are conflicting indications from authorities about safety and air quality. According to local reporting, residents are already exhibiting symptoms such as shortness of breath, lung tightness, coughing, and eye irritation. A law firm is investigating the matter and offering free consultations with affected residents, advising a local news site that victims “may be entitled to compensation.”
But will the company that owns the plant have any cash left over for the victims of its negligence? A cursory look at its capital structure raises doubts.
The explosion came from a facility owned by the swimming pool and spa water treatment manufacturer BioLab, Inc., which itself is owned by the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. The plant has a long recent history of explosions, fires, and workplace safety violations. Four years ago, a similar explosion at another plant in Georgia subsumed the vicinity in a chlorine vapor cloud, just one month after a major fire at a BioLab plant in Louisiana triggered a nationwide shortage of pool products.
Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife
Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.
...A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym. It included ammonia, magnesium and other poisonous nitrates. At the time, fierce fighting was going on in the surrounding area. Ukraine’s armed forces had launched a surprise incursion into Russia and had seized territory in Kursk oblast.
The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs. Kraskov got a call from the authorities warning him a disaster was coming his way. He spotted the first dead fish on 11 September. “There were a few of them in the middle of the river,” he said.
US public sector workers’ retirement savings invested in projects that pump out a billion tonnes of emissions a year
Private equity firms are using US public sector workers’ retirement savings to fund fossil fuel projects pumping more than a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere every year, according to an analysis.
They have ploughed more than $1tn (£750bn) into the energy sector since 2010, often buying into old and new fossil fuel projects and, thanks to exemptions from many financial disclosures, operating them outside the public eye, the researchers say.
In many cases they are mortgaging workers’ futures by taking the money they have put away for old age and investing it in assets that risk serious damage to the climate, the report claims.
“Public sector workers’ money, through national, state, and retirement pensions, provides much of the capital for private equity firms’ energy investments, but there is limited disclosure to the pension fund managers that the deferred earnings of their beneficiaries have potential climate impacts,” it says.
One western North Carolina town reeling from Tropical Storm Helene could impact the massive global semiconductor industry.
Why it matters: Spruce Pine is one of the only places in the world to mine high-purity quartz. The mineral is an essential ingredient of chips in countless products, including medical devices, solar panels, cellphones and the chips powering the latest tech craze: artificial intelligence.
Context: It's difficult to underscore the significance of Spruce Pine — a town of about 2,000 people, known for its charming downtown and blossoming arts scene — to the global economy. Economics editor Ed Conway put it best in his 2023 book "Material World," writing:
"It is rare, unheard of almost, for a single site to control the global supply of a crucial material. Yet if you want to get high-purity quartz — the kind you need to make those crucibles without which you can't make silicon wafers — it has to come from Spruce Pine."
- The Quartz Corp and Sibelco both export high-purity quartz from Spruce Pine. While there are other places to find the material, such as Russia and Brazil, this mountain town has the highest quantity of the highest purity, says Conway.
Funding continues for now as bill likely to be extended but not updated
Since the last farm bill was enacted in 2018, international wars and a pandemic have disrupted supply chains, inflation has skyrocketed and worsening climate change has put a renewed emphasis on conservation practices.
Farmers feel left behind and forgotten.
The comprehensive package of legislation that sets agriculture and food policy is supposed to be updated every five years. But partisan gridlock got in the way last year, forcing Congress simply to extend the 2018 bill another year. That extension expired Monday and, with a presidential election less than two months away, Congress isn't focused on finalizing a new five-year plan -- potentially leading to yet another extension.
Do Arizona Republicans support voter ID? It may depend on who’s disenfranchised.
The false notion of noncitizens voting in large numbers in federal elections has emerged as a faultline in U.S. politics. While an explosion of new legislation and lawsuits across the country seek to combat the purported concern, despite a lack of evidence that it is a meaningful problem in U.S. elections, nowhere has that trend been as complicated – and revealing – as in Arizona.
For the past two years, Arizona’s Republican Party and its legislative leaders have passed and fought to enforce new voter ID laws, requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, and forbidding those who do not provide such proof from engaging in certain methods of voting. Combined, the laws threatened to invalidate more than 40,000 voter registrations in the state.
On Sept. 17, Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, also a Republican, discovered that a glitch in Arizona’s driver’s license database caused nearly 100,000 registered voters not to meet the proof of citizenship requirements under the state’s recently revised election laws. Richer filed an emergency petition to the Arizona Supreme Court seeking to declare them ineligible to vote in state elections. But the next day, Toma and Peterson suddenly opposed the disenfranchisement. That was after it became clear that mostly Republican voters would be affected...
One thing we’ve talked about a lot this year in the Backchannel and the podcast is changes pollsters have made to their methodologies over recent years, in large part because of 2016 and 2020 polling errors tied to Trump. Kyle Kondick, of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, posted two good links on this that I wanted to share with you. The first is this short interview with Professor Charles Franklin of Marquette Law School who runs what is generally considered the signature in-state poll in Wisconsin and one of the most reliable nationwide. (Some of you may remember that Franklin was our polling methodology advisor back in the days of TPMPollTracker.) Then there’s this short article which goes over the changes industry-wide.
Trump-related polling errors aren’t the only driver of this. There’s also a move toward hybrid use of phones and online questionnaires that is driven in part by changes in behavior and changes in technology. But the big thing is weighting samples for demographic features pollsters mostly didn’t use to weight for. The biggest one is education level which, as most of us know, has become a core element of political polarization in the country. But it’s not just that.
The key theory in Trump-driven polling errors isn’t “shy” Trump voters. The thinking is that Trump tends to draw support from people less plugged into politics and more suspicious of major institutions in the dominant culture. So things like the mainstream media and pollsters….
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s recent veto of Senate Bill 674 is a profound missed opportunity. At a time when curbing fossil fuel emissions is more critical than ever, this decision undermines the state’s commitment to protecting its most vulnerable communities from the dangers of industrial pollution.
SB 674, authored by Senator Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), was a crucial piece of legislation designed to provide real-time air monitoring at refineries and other polluting sites. The bill aimed to ensure that residents in fenceline communities — those living closest to these hazardous operations — would be alerted when pollution levels exceeded safe thresholds, enabling them to take necessary precautions to protect their health.
Moreover, SB 674 was designed to empower communities with critical information about the air they breathe. It would have expanded existing monitoring requirements to include nearby facilities supporting refining operations, such as storage tank terminals and sulfur recovery plants that release harmful pollutants. This transparency bill was a clear win for communities of color, who disproportionately bear the brunt of pollution in California. There is no doubt about that.
The sun kicked out a major flare, which means the aurora borealis could shine bright from Oct. 3 to Oct. 5. Here's where and how to catch the spectacle.
The sun is in a time of high activity, and that's great news for fans of the northern lights, a shining show that paints the sky with waving streaks of green, red and purple. The sun just spit out a major flare that could trigger a lovely aurora event that could reach into the northern US.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center issued geomagnetic storm watches for Oct. 3-Oct. 5 after the sun's peppy X7.1 flare on Oct. 1. An X-class flare is the most intense. NASA estimates the strongest known flare was an X45 that occurred in 2003. "Solar flares are powerful bursts of energy," NASA said in a statement. "Flares and solar eruptions can impact radio communications, electric power grids, navigation signals, and pose risks to spacecraft and astronauts." They can also trigger spectacular light shows.
The SWPC offers up aurora forecasts with daily maps of anticipated activity. The map for Oct. 3, for example, shows a strong likelihood of aurora across Alaska and Canada, as represented by red areas. Northern states -- including Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota and upper Michigan -- are in a green area that indicates a lower likelihood of aurora. It's still worth a look if you live in those areas and have clear skies.
Who are YOU racing tonight? Tell us all about it in the comments!
The crew of the Overnight News Digest consists of founder Magnifico, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, jeremybloom, Magnifico, annetteboardman, Rise above the swamp, Besame and jck. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) eeff, Interceptor 7, Man Oh Man, wader, Neon Vincent, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck (RIP), rfall, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw
