Today’s comic by Matt Bors is The case against impeachment:
• Democrats hope to extend tax credits that boost solar and wind installations: Under a bipartisan compromise in 2015, the federal production tax credit for wind and investment tax credit for solar were extended for five years and seven years respectively in exchange for ending the nation’s 40-year-old ban on most exports of crude oil. The production tax credit expires next year. The solar tax credit is phasing out, ending for residential projects in 2022. If the credits were extended, BloombergNEF predicted it would generate $73 billion in new investment and deliver a 56% increase in new wind and solar capacity. In the past, many Republicans in the Senate have backed the tax credits, which were designed to help spread the installation of renewables by lowering their costs through economies of scale. That has, in fact, been the effect. But now some Republicans who favored the credits in the past want them to expire. For instance, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, where wind power now generates 37% of the state’s electricity, has said he needs to stick to his vow five years ago to phase out the credit.
• Oh, hell no!
MIDDAY TWEET
• U.S. birth rate tumbles to lowest level in 32 years: In provisional data, the National Center for Health Statistics reported Wednesday that the total fertility rate—births per woman—continues to fall and remains well below the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman. There is a big difference from state to state, as can be seen from national statistics. According to the NCHS, 3,788,235 babies were born in 2018. Based on the Census count of 327,167,434 for the total U.S. population, that puts the birth rate for that year at 11.58 babies per 1,000, a 2% decline from 2017. Vermont’s birth rate is the lowest at 8.7/1,000, while Utah is the highest at 15.77.
• One of Trump’s Nazi-loving pals bemoans a gay wedding on the animated “Arthur” series: The wedding of two male rodents in the show’s 22nd season sent Sebastian Gorka into a rage. The former Breitbart editor and White House aide—known for brandishing the insignia of the pro-Nazi Hungarian group Vitezi Rend and other vile behavior—said: “This is a war for our culture, and that’s why we exist here, on ‘America First,’ on the Salem Radio Network.” No explicit reference was made to the gender of the rodent couple, a move praised by LGBTQ advocacy organizations such as GLAAD.
• At Indian Country Today, Mark Trahant points out a problem with presidential candidates:
...most have little or no footprint when it comes to treaty rights or policy issues that impact Indian Country. Those issues are not found on their campaign computer screens.
Still most voters in Indian Country will sort through the lists hoping to find that one candidate who best understands the history and relationship between America’s Indigenous people and the government that is the United States. Who will work to help Indian Country reach its potential? Who will best honor the treaties? Who will bring more of our voices into the body politic at all levels from Congress to the cabinet?
On
today’s Kagro in the Morning show:
Greg Dworkin & Joan McCarter keep one eye on Trump and Iran, while rounding up polls, still more candidates, still more terrible judges, abortion bans, Brexit, Ukraine, a Kushner immigration faceplant, subpoenas & dog poop. I mean, Marco Rubio.