Today’s comic by Matt Bors is Bernie Sanders exposed!
• California, Washington vie to become the second state to form a state-owned bank: The century-old Bank of North Dakota is the only public bank in the U.S. now, but across the nation there are more than 25 public bank bills in the pipeline. Already in both states, bills have emerged from their first round of committee hearings. In California, then-Assemblyman Ben Hueso filed his first bill to form a feasibility study on a state-owned bank in 2011. The bill passed, but Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the idea. This time around, Hueso, who has moved to the state Senate, introduced SB 528 this year. It doesn’t bother with a feasibility study but goes straight for forming a public bank by converting the existing California Infrastructure and Development Bank into a depository bank by turning the $400 million that bank has for loans into bank capital that would allow it to lend $4 billion. It will take two to three years for such a bank to get a master account from the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, in Washington, Sen. Bob Hasegawa filed his first bill for a state-owned bank almost 10 years ago. The fifth version of the measure is now making headway. It would set up a co-op bank whose capital would include the combined revenues of cities, counties, ports and utility districts, as well as of the state itself.
• Scientists are moving an entire forest to save Mexico’s monarch butterflies:
Tree by tree, Mexican scientists are planting the first stages of a new forest in the mountains of the country’s central Michoacan state. They’re taking saplings from oyamel fir trees further down the mountain and creating a new home for them higher up. Three and a half years ago, the first batch of transplanted trees were each seven inches tall. Now, thousands of saplings have grown, some up to four feet tall.
These trees are home to millions of eastern monarch butterflies who migrate there every winter, and in moving the forest, scientists are hoping they’ll be able to save the species and their habitat.
• 2020 Democrats want to repeal Trump’s tax cuts, and they have lots of ideas on how to spend the revenue.
MIDDAY TWEET
• Scientists revive some brain cells in dead pigs: Sorta. Kinda. “Partly alive,” they say.
• Hiring and retaining credentialed teachers has become ever harder in the USA. That’s according to the second in a series of reports from the Economic Policy Institute:
The teacher shortage in the nation’s K–12 schools is an increasingly recognized but still poorly understood crisis: The shortage is recognized by the media and policymakers, and researchers have estimated the size of the shortage—about 110,000 teachers in the 2017–2018 school year, up from no shortage before 2013 (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, and Carver-Thomas 2016). But the shortage is poorly understood because the reasons for it are complex and interdependent. The shortage occurs because there is an insufficient number of credentialed teachers to fill vacancies at schools. Unfilled vacancies happen for any number of reason, including reduced attractiveness of teaching as a profession, increases in school enrollment, reductions in class sizes, and excessive number of teachers leaving their schools. The teacher shortage constitutes a crisis because of its negative effects on students, teachers, and the education system at large. This crisis calls for urgent, comprehensive, and sustainable policy solutions.
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• Federal judge’s March ruling on California’s high-capacity ammo magazine ban reads like an NRA propaganda brochure: Last month’s decision by U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez barred the state from implementing the voter-initiated Proposition 63, which mandated background checks of ammunition purchases and possession of magazines holding more than 10 rounds. Previously, the state banned sales of such magazines but allowed people to keep the ones they already owned.
• Under Trump regime, approval or rejection of disaster relief has taken twice as long as under Obama, Bush: In an analysis by E&E News, it was found that Trump has taken 26 days on average to act on 155 disaster requests since taking office. In 20 instances, the regime took more than 60 days, according to Federal Emergency Management Agency records. President Obama, on the other hand, took 14 days on average to reach a decision on 565 disaster requests over his two terms. Only once did it take more than 60 days. President George W. Bush took an average of 13 days to decide during his final year and a half in office. One current example: 54 days ago, floods and tornadoes struck Mississippi. Still no federal disaster relief:
The inaction has angered this low-income, largely black city with mounds of debris on roadsides as it waits for federal help to clean up. More than 30 families have left the city, unable to repair their homes or find temporary housing, said Columbus Community Outreach Director Glenda Buckhalter.
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin has Notre Dame news and olds. Yemen resolution vetoed (maybe). Waiting on Barr's book report. Joan McCarter notes Gop rush to "own libs" by catching measles. Barr’s habit of disregarding law & stuff. Fake news: "the wall," Brexit video.