Don’t be a Debbie Downer in the comments (no offense intended to anyone named Debbie). Here’s your daily dose of Good News!
Politics
As the article says, “Wait, what?”: (the whole article is worth a close read)
A genuine bombshell dropped yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere. It came in an interview with Simona Mangiante, the wife of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pled guilty last October to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian agents—especially Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor with suspicious Kremlin ties—during the president’s election campaign. As expected, Mangiante explained that her husband, whom she married just three months ago, is innocent of what he admitted he did, and in no way was working for Russian intelligence.
“George had nothing to do with Russia,” she explained, seemingly in an effort to convince the White House that Papadopoulos lacks any dirt on the president’s Kremlin connections that could assist Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Team Trump. However, what Mangiante said next was the real shocker: her husband “pled guilty because [Mueller’s prosecutors] threatened to charge him with being an Israeli agent.”
Oh, this doesn’t look suspicious at all:
The Trump administration asked OPEC to raise oil output by 1 million barrels per day as gasoline prices reached their highest mark in over three years, according to a Bloomberg report.
[...]
Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies only want to raise output by 300,000 barrels per day, but Russia favors raising production by 800,000 bpd, sources told Bloomberg, but Reuters sources said the two sides are looking at raising production by 1 million bpd.
"That confirms the hints by Saudi Arabia and Russia that they were considering raising that amount anyway. What a coincidence!" Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at Price Futures Group, wrote in his daily energy market report.
Farmers growing suspicious of Trump:
The likelihood of a massive exodus of farmers from the Trump coalition is low, said Harwood Schaffer, an agricultural economist and farm-policy expert at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Without a truly dramatic reshaping of the Renewable Fuels Standard, one which would radically lower corn demand and crop prices across the board, farmers are likely to stick with Trump for cultural reasons, he said.
But even weakening support, combined with skepticism from voters who may not be farmers but still care about agricultural issues, may be enough to tilt outcomes in several close races this year, Schaffer said. The farm bloc may be pro-Trump, but also may be less in the president's pocket than was earlier assumed, he said.
"If you see some changes on the margins, you might see some softening along the edges," in terms of support, Schaffer said. "If you see changes that make the price of corn go from $4 to $2 (a bushel), then you'll have a rebellion."
GOP hurts Social Security, Medicare, but some good news, too:
The more glaring oversight in Tuesday’s reporting on both programs is that the trustees made crystal clear that policies of congressional Republicans and the Trump White House have damaged the financial prospects of both programs. There’s a bitter irony in that, since the GOP continually claims that it’s imperative to make both programs healthier to serve the 62 million people dependent on Social Security and 58.4 million covered by Medicare; the truth is that the Republicans are doing their best to cut the legs out from under both.
It’s proper to note, incidentally, that the trustees of both programs are mostly Republican officeholders: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Labor Secretary Alex Acosta. Acting Social Security Commissioner Nancy Berryhill sits on both boards.
For the “Government hands off my Medicare” crowd, the truth may affect their vote.
That didn’t go well:
A federal judge has scheduled a hearing for June 15 on whether to revoke bail for Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, after federal prosecutors alleged that he tried to tamper with potential witnesses while on pretrial release.
Judge Amy Berman is expected to rule at the hearing on whether Manafort will have to go to jail pending his trial in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, or whether the terms of his bail are further restricted.
Federal prosecutors asked Judge Berman to revoke bail in a motion filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Monday night. According to an FBI affidavit included with the motion, Manafort used encrypted messaging applications in February to try to reach two unnamed business partners who could be witnesses to his alleged fraud and money laundering. The judge has ordered the FBI agent who filed the declaration regarding the messaging to be in court and available to testify if necessary.
Chaos in the Cabinet:
President Donald Trump's hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, infuriated North Korea with a strange and threatening comment about denuclearization in May, and now he seems excluded from the countries' talks.
When Trump met with the North Korean official Kim Yong Chol in the White House recently, only Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended. Bolton, who has plenty to say about North Korea, did not.
The reason most likely goes back to Bolton's comment in May that the US was looking at a "Libya model" for denuclearizing North Korea.
One less man to pick up after:
Billionaire David Koch is stepping down from leadership positions in his family’s business and conservative political empire because of deteriorating health, his older brother told company employees in a letter Tuesday.
The world can breathe a little easier:
Ethiopia has announced it will fully accept the terms of a peace agreement with neighboring Eritrea in a major step toward calming deadly tensions with its decades-long rival, as dramatic reforms under a new prime minister continue.
Congress and Zuckerberg, again:
Two months after Mark Zuckerberg sat before Congress and was questioned about Facebook’s protection of user data, the 34-year-old CEO finds himself once again under the spotlight. Two lawmakers, one Republican and one Democrat, asked Zuckerberg in a letter to explain a report from Sunday that Facebook shared large amounts of user data with hardware makers without user consent.
The letter from Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., comes in the aftermath of a New York Times report about Facebook’s relationships with device companies like Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry. Their main concern was whether or not Facebook’s latest scandal violated a 2011 Federal Trade Commission decree that held the site to never changing privacy standards without explicit user consent.
Accountability for political ads:
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday sued Google and Facebook, saying the companies failed to maintain information about political advertising as required by state law.
Washington law requires the companies to maintain information about buyers of political ads, the cost, how they pay for it, and the candidate or ballot measure at issue, according to the lawsuits, filed in King County Superior Court on Monday. The companies also must make that information available to the public upon request.
Ferguson said neither Facebook nor Google did so, even though Washington candidates and political committees have spent nearly $5 million to advertise on those platforms in the past decade.
Economy
More job openings than unemployed workers:
There were a record 6.7 million job openings in April, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. That was an increase from an upwardly revised 6.63 million in March.
The revised data show that job openings outstripped total unemployed workers in March for the first time, and the trend continued in April.
There were 6.59 million unemployed workers in March and even fewer, 6.35 million, in April, according to the Labor Department’s monthly report on job openings and labor turnover, also known as JOLTS.
Social progress
Miss America:
After months of controversy within the Miss America organization, executives announced Tuesday that the nearly century-old pageant will no longer judge contestants on their physical appearance.
Effective this year, the show will scrap the famed swimsuit competition. Instead, the organization said in a news release, “each candidate will participate in a live interactive session with the judges, where she will highlight her achievements and goals in life, and how she will use her talents, passion and ambition to perform the job of Miss America.”
Judge recalled:
California voters on Tuesday backed the recall of the judge who sentenced a former Stanford University swimmer to six months in jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a campus dumpster — a sentence blasted by critics as far too lenient
Class-action suit a go:
A Delaware bankruptcy judge says six women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct can proceed with their class action lawsuit against the television and film company he co-founded.
The judge's ruling Tuesday granted a motion to lift an automatic stay on pending litigation against the Weinstein Co., which was forced into bankruptcy after the sex scandal exploded in October.
Same-sex partners recognized in EU:
All European Union countries must recognize same-sex marriage, at least in relation to immigration cases where one partner is a citizen of the bloc, its highest court ruled on Tuesday.
The verdict was an important victory for L.G.B.T. rights groups, which have long argued that same-sex spouses of European Union citizens should be afforded the same basic right to live and work across the bloc’s 28 countries as heterosexual spouses, regardless of individual countries’ stances on same-sex marriage.
Google is doing something not evil:
The latest opportunity, announced today, is a partnership between Google and online education platform Udacity, providing free online career development courses for job seekers at all career stages. The two companies have worked together in the past and launched a trial course, “Networking for Career Success," in March. Udacity provided scholarships toward the course to members of the Grow With Google program.
Now, the partners are expanding access to the general public, along with 11 additional career courses -- all free to enroll in. These courses will cover resume and cover letter writing, personal branding, tips for GitHub and LinkedIn profile building, as well as interviewing for technical roles involving Python and Swift, front-end development, virtual reality, Android and even iOS.
Bing disallows some ads:
Bing announced they are not going to be allowing advertisements on the Bing Ads search network for recreational guns or any sort of gun accessory after July 1, 2018.
This excludes items such as bb guns, paintball guns, or air rifles and accessories or devices that can be attached to weapons, used to create ammunition, or aid in the reloading process.
Bing said this does not include items that are "not attachable to a weapon or aid in the reloading process," such as e safety equipment like goggles, earplugs, gun safes, cleaning kits, holsters, and concealed carry clothing, Bing added.
Tesla fails on forced arbitration:
A judge shot down Tesla’s attempt to force into arbitration a class-action lawsuit claiming the company allowed “severe and pervasive” racism against black workers at its Fremont factory.
The lawsuit was filed in November by former employee Marcus Vaughn. It alleged that the Palo Alto electric car maker led by CEO Elon Musk “created an intimidating, hostile, and offensive work environment for African-American employees” where two variations of the n-word were routinely used.
[...]
Now, a state Superior Court judge has ruled that because Vaughn never signed a letter offering him a permanent job and containing an arbitration agreement, he’s not bound by any such agreement.
Environment
I’ve been adding a lot of this because so many of you said you liked it.
Tesla installs a lot of battery storage:
In Australia, the world’s largest lithium-ion battery, installed by Tesla over an area the size of a football field at a wind farm, is saving consumers millions of dollars by making the grid more reliable. On the Pacific island of Ta’u in American Samoa, a solar microgrid using 60 of Tesla’s large Powerpack batteries has fully replaced diesel power. In Hawaii, Tesla batteries store energy generated during the day at a solar farm on Kauai to release it at night. In Southern California, a Powerpack system handles peak energy demand without requiring extra fossil-fuel-powered plants to come online.
In Puerto Rico, after helping to provide emergency power following Hurricane Maria, Tesla is now installing permanent microgrids. More than 1,000 households on the island, like others around the world, now also use Tesla Powerwalls, the company’s product for home electricity storage, which can be connected to home solar panels to help keep lights on after disasters. Powerwalls can also be connected to each other to form “virtual power plants.” In Australia, for example, Tesla is working with the government on a new plan to distribute solar panels and batteries to 50,000 homes, which will work together to supply clean energy to the grid.
Hawai’i goes carbon-neutral:
In a little less than three decades, Hawaii plans to be carbon neutral–the most ambitious climate goal in the United States. Governor David Ige signed a bill today committing to make the state fully carbon neutral by 2045, along with a second bill that will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii. A third bill requires new building projects to consider how high sea levels will rise in their engineering decisions.
[…]
The state is also working to become more self-sufficient. The governor aims to double local food production by 2030; right now, around 90% of what residents and tourists eat in Hawaii–6 million pounds of food a day–comes from somewhere else, on planes or ships.
[… How Hawai’i compares:]
The Maldives is working to become carbon neutral by 2020. Costa Rica will follow in 2021. Norway will be carbon neutral by 2030, Iceland will reach that goal by 2040, and Sweden by 2045. France and New Zealand plan to be carbon neutral by 2050. Some cities are also pursuing the goal. Copenhagen, for example, aims to be carbon neutral by 2025, and Oslo will follow in 2030. Austin, Boston, and several others plan to be carbon neutral by 2050.
New way to measure electricity could change just about everything! And this company has their priorities straight.
Pruitt ordered to put up or shut up:
Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”
The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested “EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change.”
On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
And a tech tip: if you have Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge, you can avoid many ads, popups, popunders, autoplaying videos, etc. by putting read: in front of any URL (don’t leave a space after it). This will take you to the stripped-down “reading view.” It may also help you avoid some paywalls. Or you can click the little book icon at the right of the place where you enter the URL, even after the site refuses you entry without disabling your ad blocker, etc.
Lagniappe: normally I would never link to Fox, but here is info about Netflix’s hidden requests page and hidden codes to unlock more shows. Have fun!
And I’m coming up on publish time, so everyone have a wonderful Wednesday and enjoy the good news!