April 12, 2023

Why China Could Dominate the Next Big Advance in Batteries

China is far ahead of the rest of the world in the development of batteries that use sodium, which are starting to compete with ubiquitous lithium power cells.

In Changsha, deep in China’s interior, thousands of chemists, engineers and manufacturing workers are shaping the future of batteries.

The city’s Central South University churns out the graduates who are advancing the technology, much as Stanford University molded the careers of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who pioneered microchips. Across the Xiang River, vast factories mix minerals into the highly processed compounds that make rechargeable batteries possible.

These batteries, mostly made of lithium, have powered the rise of cellphones and other consumer electronics. They are transforming the auto industry and could soon start doing the same for solar panels and wind turbines crucial in the fight against climate change. China dominates their chemical refining and production.

Now China is positioning itself to command the next big innovation in rechargeable batteries: replacing lithium with sodium, a far cheaper and more abundant material.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/business/china-sodium-batteries.html

April 12, 2023

Trump Shocks Tucker by Talking Up Friendly Relationship With Gavin Newsom

“I used to get along great with him, you know, when I was president,” Trump said, to the Fox News host’s very visible disbelief.

A day after Tucker Carlson spent his opening monologue criticizing California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Fox News host was surprised to hear that the Democrat used to “get along great” with Donald Trump when he was president and would praise him often—at least, according to Trump.

Newsom, often a villain in the eyes of Fox News opinion hosts, contributors and guests, was mentioned warmly by the former president when responding to Carlson’s question about potential Democratic presidential candidates should Joe Biden not end up running for re-election. (Biden has said that he intends on doing so.)

“You have a very ambitious guy in California, but he’s done a terrible job with the state,” Trump said of the governor, who was elected in 2018, won a recall election in Sept. 2021, and secured a second term last fall.

“I used to get along great with him, you know, when I was president. Got along really good,” Trump said to a wide-eyed Carlson. “He was always very nice to me. Said the greatest things. He would say things like, ‘He’s doing a great job.’”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-shocks-tucker-by-talking-up-friendly-relationship-with-gavin-newsom

April 12, 2023

Reappointed Tennessee Dem Expelled By GOP Calls On State House Speaker To Resign

Tennessee Democratic Rep. Justin Jones called on state House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) to resign hours after the Nashville Metro Council voted to reappoint him to the state House on Monday, with a 36–0 vote.

“Today is an important step forward for democracy, but it’s not the end. They tried to kill democracy last Thursday,” Jones told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Monday night. “We will continue to show up here in the legislature because [Speaker] Cameron Sexton needs to resign.”

Jones’ public reappointment came just days after he and his Democratic colleague, former Rep. Justin Pearson of Memphis — both of whom are young, Black men — were expelled by the Republican-led House for participating in a peaceful gun protest from the floor of the chamber. Rep. Gloria Johnson (D), a white woman, also participated in the protest, but survived the vote to expel last week. The protest came in the wake of the Nashville school shooting that left six people — three children and three school personnel — dead.

In a separate interview Monday night, Jones called Sexton “the greatest enemy to our democracy” and renewed his public call for the state House speaker to resign.

“We don’t need a speaker who shuts off microphones, who cuts off members from speaking, who won’t even let us vote if we go join those protesting,” he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “We have a speaker who represents the opposite of democracy, which is autocracy. And he is not fit to serve in that role.”

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/reappointed-tennessee-dem-expelled-by-gop-calls-on-state-house-speaker-to-resign

Hell Yes!!!!

April 11, 2023

California Economy Is on Edge After Tech Layoffs and Studio Cutbacks

As recession fears persist, the troubles in major industries have hurt tax revenues, turning the state’s $100 billion surplus into a deficit.

California has often been at the country’s economic forefront. Now, as fears of a national recession continue to nag, the state is hoping not to lead the way there.

While the California economy maintains its powerhouse status, outranking even those of most countries, the state’s most-powerful sectors — including tech companies and supply chain logistics — have struggled to keep their footing, pummeled by high interest rates, investor skittishness, labor strife and other turmoil.

Even the weather hasn’t cooperated. Severe flooding throughout much of the winter, caused by atmospheric rivers, has left farming communities in the Central Valley devastated, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses.

Thousands of Californians have been laid off in the last few months, the cost of living is increasingly astronomical, and Gov. Gavin Newsom revealed in January that the state faced a $22.5 billion deficit in the 2023-24 fiscal year — a plummet from the $100 billion surplus a year ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/business/economy/california-economy.html

April 11, 2023

White House Proposes Evenly Cutting Water Allotments From Colorado River

Source: New York Times

As the river shrinks, the Biden administration is getting ready to impose, for the first time, reductions in water supplies to states.

After months of fruitless negotiations between the states that depend on the shrinking Colorado River, the Biden administration on Tuesday proposed to put aside legal precedent and save what’s left of the river by evenly cutting water allotments, reducing the water delivered to California, Arizona and Nevada by as much as one-quarter.

The size of those reductions and the prospect of the federal government unilaterally imposing them on states have never occurred in American history.

Overuse and a 23-year-long drought made worse by climate change have threatened to provoke a water and power catastrophe across the West. The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans as well as two states in Mexico, and irrigates 5.5 million agricultural acres. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.

But the river’s flows have recently fallen by one-third compared with historical averages. Levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell are so low that water may soon fail to turn the turbines that generate electricity — and could even fall to the point that water is unable to reach the intake valves that control its flow out of the reservoirs. If that happened, the river would essentially stop moving.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/11/climate/colorado-river-water-cuts-drought.html?unlocked_article_code=v6er0VECZYZv-MB269sXYfHYflDPaouVHYLpaw2qSPYlLpLfrXbddujwQ1g9joF-vvhXdoH04rJyD4RPBpBH12GgIxKoS3a-4jhR1bMjqokcJZ5Q_8VlnI26DKSzlTRoxDZi25bYCpG65b3paFCizbF6RrfFTtwHPKvHaA8iIxXrzL4JdZzD4MRD7vnEUaPU9A2_-vHRGzbKKzkH--SKt4S_UZ5QgutZcXcT9eY7bXwl6s5CYalR7WzjmVKYdWPEVPBMmzsb6bMaV1Cq3VYCvFqeC6DbTePeb_57blr7XliQtcCnI8VpSKBP1MI_-Wsnl9hV5sm3uyKUtm48G7CdgzBo1fD8Hk5EHTx1&smid=url-share

April 11, 2023

Buy an electric vehicle now or wait? Here's how to decide.

The coronavirus pandemic saw a virtually unprecedented spike in the price of vehicles. As chip shortages hobbled the industry, automakers rationed semiconductors, installing them mainly in their most profitable, and most expensive, models. Millions of affordable vehicles, the ones accessible to most new car buyers, never got built.

That drove up the median price of new vehicles in the United States from around $38,000 before the pandemic to a record $49,000 or so this February, according to Cox Automotive.

With electric vehicles, the pain was even more acute — if you could find one.

In February, the average EV price soared to more than $58,000, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly the annual income of the median U.S. worker. Dealers have been able to charge well over the sticker price as buyers have lost the ability to negotiate.

https://wapo.st/3zPonaZ

April 10, 2023

San Diego Roman Catholic Diocese landholdings plummeted in 2019 when new law passed.

An analysis of land records by the Union-Tribune shows the diocese transferred 80 percent of its properties in 2019 — a plan the diocese says has been in the works for years

At the start of 2010, the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego had an impressive land empire across the county, containing some 421 separate properties that county records show it owned or co-owned.

A dozen years later, those holdings have shrunk dramatically to just 56 properties, according to an analysis of county land records by the Union-Tribune.

Now, as the diocese faces hundreds of new lawsuits claiming sex abuse at the hands of clergy members, and openly warns it may declare bankruptcy, those holdings — and how the diocese disposed of them — have come under scrutiny by lawyers for some of those alleged victims.

Lawyers claim the decline in the diocese’s land portfolio was a fraudulent transfer of properties, from the diocese to individual parish corporations, that was designed to reduce the amount of money that would be available in any settlement of claims.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/courts/story/2023-04-10/catholic-diocese-san-diego-property-transfers

April 10, 2023

Trump Appeals Decision Forcing Pence to Testify to Jan. 6 Grand Jury

Source: New York Times

The appeal seeks to narrow the scope of testimony that former Vice President Mike Pence can provide the grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to stay in power.

Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump asked a federal appeals court on Monday to narrow the scope of the testimony that former Vice President Mike Pence has to give a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse a lower court’s decision ordering Mr. Pence to testify was the latest attempt by Mr. Trump’s legal team to keep witnesses close to him from divulging information to prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith.

Mr. Pence has always been a potentially important witness in the election inquiry into Mr. Trump because of the conversations he took part in at the White House in the weeks preceding the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that time, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed him to use his ceremonial role overseeing the congressional count of Electoral College votes to block or delay certification of his defeat.

Prosecutors have been trying to get Mr. Pence to talk about Mr. Trump’s demands for months — first in requests by the Justice Department for an interview and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by Mr. Smith, who inherited the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/10/us/politics/trump-appeal-pence-grand-jury.html?unlocked_article_code=ZISkqcViR-UqfZ_Ab6GSGoytMwQo0bnZV9rwMbarW8KuRqXyfIi6hQQAUa4-ClQ1Qpu45gpiY6WSTAQoFEqOs6m0rbm9FVWbxXUyfbysSxOu_JYbqZuF0Z_q3K4Kw8JJkh2Zyp4_2NE7uAoSDlFW4ahf4CBCr6QGlDVdQHSGN0eZJyf_4FAmagan28xxKLt4cwdv2Ib4FbROrRfIqvY1qpDF38tlSUHAdar9rSUEml5rYTnngXeuZBtKmCodHdV4XIFZ5KacXfCGi--aciqBIJa3ehqC70dap8hwq6fx8xBmKFWdG2zt_UtrSQbXYhJC7QDheKhyPl0VOZr4u-CfkAYF4aotNEXYJM5Y&smid=url-share

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Of course he appealed.

April 10, 2023

Trump's 'Hacked' Prayer Call Was Actually Mike Flynn's Fault

Trump claimed an online event last month was hacked by “the radical left.” Turns out the chaos may have been the result of a “dumb” mistake by MAGA ally Michael Flynn.

When a Christian nationalist group’s prayer session starring former President Donald Trump got derailed late last month, the official MAGA line was that leftist “trolls” had “hacked” the system.

But no one in the ex-president’s circle seemed to interrogate whether that was true. As it turns out, the chaos may have come from inside the house.

As The Daily Beast previously reported, the Pastors for Trump National Prayer Call on March 20, starring Trump, Roger Stone, and Michael Flynn, turned into chaos after the twice-impeached ex-president’s line went dead moments after he joined the call.

“I think what happened was that the radical left was working on the phone,” Trump claimed after rejoining the line. “There is no question about it.” Disconnected yet again, a frustrated Trump later reiterated, “I think probably it was the radical left that did something with [the phone lines].”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-hacked-prayer-call-was-actually-mike-flynns-fault

April 10, 2023

A fixed monthly charge is coming to your electric bill. Will it make CA rates more affordable?

The fixed charge will vary according to household income; specifics are still to be worked out.

In an attempt to make rising electricity bills more affordable, California will institute a fixed monthly charge on ratepayers that will vary according to household income in the next couple of years.

The precise dollar amount and other details will be determined by the California Public Utilities Commission, with a final decision approved by mid-2024 and fully implemented in 2025.

The move will affect all ratepayers across the state who receive electricity service from the state’s three big investor-owned utilities — San Diego Gas & Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison.

The new income-based fixed charge will not pertain to the natural gas portion of customer bills — only to electricity — and is mandated by the state as part of a sweeping energy bill the Legislature passed last summer.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2023-04-10/a-fixed-monthly-charge-is-coming-to-your-electric-bill-will-it-make-ca-rates-more-affordable