Gleaning and Observations
Greening, Putin Version; Class War; Sanctuaries for Immigrants
Vladimir Putin, who is passing on the Glasgow environmental conference because of the outbreak of a new Delta variant in Britain, now concedes that global warming is due to human activity that results in emissions of greenhouse gasses. One step Russia is taking is the construction of a 67-megawatt windfarm on its island of Sakhalin, north of Japan.
The electricity generated will be used to power the open-pit coal mining operation of the island’s East Mining Company. “We don’t want to do anything that would stop the development of your companies,” the island’s governor told a recent conference of oil and gas executives, reports the NYT.
Putin giveth, and Putin taketh away.
The Lone Ranger, the masked (over his upper face only) hero of a radio series in the 1930s, and his trusty Indian side-kick, Tonto, are beset by thousands of hostile Indians. “What are we going to do, old friend?” Tonto replies, “What do you mean ‘we’ white man?”
President Biden, attempting to sell his multi-trillion spending program to a television audience, leans into the camera in the whisper he uses to convey sincerity, and says, “We pay for it all.”
What do you mean by “we”, Mr. President.
Commenting on the possibility of a billionaires’ tax, Darrick Hamilton, an economist at the New School in New York City, tells The Washington Post, “If there’s a sliver of good news, it’s that there may be enough political cohesion to target a class that clearly has a great deal of resources way in excess of what it needs. When you see billionaires being able to go to space and back for hobby and fun – in a society worried about floods on a periodic basis – that’s a problem.”
Any billionaire tax would be paid by ten individuals, including Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, founder of competitor Blue Origin reckons Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley.
According to press reports, both billionaires plan to circle the globe with satellites – 7,000 from SpaceX’s Starling and 3,236 from Amazon’s Project Kuiper -- that will beam broadband internet to give developing countries access to the web. Oh yes, “floods on a periodic basis”: SpaceX has received a $153 million contract to launch geostationary weather satellites to enhance the system for predicting thunderstorms and flash floods.
A caravan of thousands of mostly Central American immigrants is headed for the U.S. border after violently breaking through a line of Mexican police attempting to prevent them from entering Mexico.
Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security expanded the list of “sensitive locations” where immigration officers cannot make arrests. Until now the sensitive locations were limited to schools and churches. The list now includes domestic violence shelters, rallies, demonstrations, parades, food banks, counseling facilities, playgrounds, daycare centers, bus stops and disaster response centers. Arrests are also prohibited at weddings and funerals.
The list of remaining places at which federal agents are free to arrest illegal immigrants has not yet been published.