Saturday Snippets is a regular weekend Daily Kos feature.
• Coalition of truck makers and others seek to speed up arrival of electric fleet trucks: The 4-month-old National Zero-Emission Truck Coalition has been looking into how federal policy could duplicate for commercial vehicles the support that has helped put nearly 2 million electric passenger cars on the road in the United States. In a letter Wednesday to Democratic and Republican leaders, the coalition boosting the spread of electric trucks would create jobs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "It also plays a key part in improving air quality, which is a big concern in our region," said Michael Backstrom, the managing director of energy and environmental policy at Southern California Edison, one of two California utilities in the group. Participants want the federal government to allocate at least $2 billion over the next five years to subsidize the manufacture of electric fleet trucks with a direct credit or other point-of-sale incentive instead of a tax credit. Any zero emissions vehicle would be eligible for the incentive, whether they run on batteries or hydrogen. Additionally, the group wants a bigger tax credit for alternative fuel infrastructure and $250 million for research and development of zero emissions trucks. Signers include new e-truck companies such as BYD Motors Inc., Arrival Ltd. and Rivian as well as long-time manufacturers like Ford Motor Co., Navistar International Corp., Daimler Trucks North America LLC, and Paccar Inc., and truck component suppliers such as Cummins Inc. and Eaton and Meritor Inc.
• Maine postal workers reassemble high-speed mail-sorting machine: The machine at the Southern Maine Mail Processing Center in Scarborough was among those ordered to be dismantled across the nation by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Republican fundraiser. There were two such machines at the center, but only one could be put back together because the other was scrapped. Such machines can sort more than 20,000 letters an hour.
• ICAP provides information on responding to armed intimidation at the polls: If you’re one of the millions of Americans who will be voting in person—out of choice or because it’s the only available option where you live—the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection has created helpful fact sheets for all 50 states regarding laws restricting private militia groups, and what to do if groups of armed individuals show up at your polling station or voter registration drive. The Michigan entry includes:
Is it legal to act as a private militia in Michigan? No. All 50 states prohibit private, unauthorized militias and military units from engaging in activities reserved for the state militia, including law enforcement activities. Some, including Michigan, also prohibit paramilitary activity during or in furtherance of a civil disorder. [...]
• Researchers capture, tag, and release 3,500-pound great white shark: Scientists from OCEARCH, a non-governmental organization dedicated to tagging and sampling great whites, dolphins, seals, and other sea creatures, found the 17-foot, 2-inch female shark off Nova Scotia. Great white sharks are the world’s largest living predatory fish. The scientists described her as the “Queen of the Ocean” and named her as well. "We named her 'Nukumi', pronounced noo-goo-mee, for the legendary wise old grandmother figure of the Native American Mi'kmaq people," OCEARCH wrote in a Facebook post Saturday. "With the new data we've collected, this matriarch will share her wisdom with us for years to come." She is the largest of the eight great white sharks the crew has tagged in their expedition. A video posted by OCEARCH shows her swimming away after being tagged.
• Newspaper serving Mar-a-Lago endorses Joe Biden: Newspapers’ endorsements of presidential candidates have steadily lost their impact along with their readers over the years. But they can still pack a a punch when they knock a hometown guy and back his out-of-town opponent. Donald Trump isn’t truly local, of course, but he spends a lot of time in the
Palm Beach Post’s backyard. And based on their lengthy Friday editorial endorsing Joe Biden for president, they’re sick of him.
Rarely have so many Americans yearned so strongly to remove a sitting president.
Count The Palm Beach Post Editorial Board among them.
Donald J. Trump’s intentionally divisive presidency is hurtling us toward the most alarming threat to American democracy that any of us has ever seen. For the first time, we have a president who cannot bring himself to commit to the peaceful transition of power. In many other countries, across many centuries, this road often has led to bloodshed, to tyranny. [...]
• Donald Trump made big promises to steel industry in 2016: He promised more jobs for steelworkers, promised to boost demand for steel with extensive infrastructure investment, and promised to ease competition from foreign steel mills by imposing a 25% tariff. That jacked up the price of steel, however, which reduced demand from the auto industry and other steel customers. Consequently, four years on, the Great Lakes Works—which at one time was one of Michigan’s largest steel plants—had to close its doors in June and put 1,250 workers on the street. For the past year, before the pandemic struck, steel operations have been cutting jobs, and there are now 1,900 fewer than when Trump lied his way through the oath of office in January 2017. Across the nation, steel and aluminum tariffs cost 75,000 jobs in metal-using industries by the end of 2019, according to an analysis by Lydia Cox, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Harvard University, and Kadee Russ, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis. They calculate the trade war meant a loss of 175,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs by the middle of last year. In Michigan alone, there are now 55,100 fewer workers in manufacturing than there were when Trump moved into the White House.
• Survey: 60 million Americans think someone in their household will lose income in the next four weeks: Either they will lose a job or take a cut in pay, they say. That scary number is down from the 62.3 million who thought the same in the Census Bureau’s previous Household Pulse Survey a month ago. The latest survey found that more than 27% of Americans aged 25 to 54—which labor experts consider the prime working years—expect either themselves or someone they live with will lose income during October. The pandemic is hitting households of people of color especially hard financially.
• Native activists to launch LANDBACK campaign on Indigenous Peoples’ Day: The American Indian-led NDN Collective will use Monday, Oct. 12 to begin its LANDBACK Campaign, what its organizers call a multi-pronged effort to promote the dismantling of white supremacy and gain justice for indigenous people. “Through the restoration of ecological health to Indigenous lands and the actual recovery of Indigenous land ownership, NDN Collective’s LANDBACK Campaign aims to empower Indigenous people across Turtle Island,” the organization stated in an op-ed at Indianz.com. “We are on the verge of what could be a revolutionary moment,” said Krystal Two Bulls, LANDBACK Campaign Director. “As systems of colonization, oppression and white supremacy start to become dismantled, getting Indigenous lands back into Indigenous hands is necessary. Truth is, that all systems and institutions of oppression that uphold white supremacy were built on top of stolen land by stolen people; so to truly achieve racial justice and move into a revolutionary moment, we have to talk about how racial injustice on this continent began with settler colonialism, the theft of Indigenous lands, and the genocide of Indigenous people.”
• TANF benefits too small to help families: The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities reports that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the cash assistance program for families with the lowest incomes that replaced the old welfare system during the administration of President Bill Clinton, is at its weakest point since it began in 1996. In 33 states, CBPP states, inflation-adjusted benefit levels have fallen 20% since TANF’s enactment. In all 50 states, benefits are at or below 60% of the poverty line. Ali Safawi and Ife Floyd write:
TANF does a poor job of providing assistance to Latino and especially Black children, whose parents and the communities in which they live are more likely to feel the devastating effects of COVID-19 and the resulting economic crisis. Black children are also more likely than white children to live in states where benefits are the lowest, continuing a trend that began under TANF’s predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Many states with high Black populations kept AFDC benefits very low.