September 1, 2023

self-fulfilling FAFO prophecy

September 1, 2023

Families crossing U.S. border illegally reached all-time high in August

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2023/08/31/border-families-record-crossings-biden/

https://archive.ph/VzyZN



Record numbers of migrant families streamed across the U.S.-Mexico border in August, according to preliminary data obtained by The Washington Post, an influx that has upended Biden administration efforts to discourage parents from entering illegally with children and could once again place immigration in the spotlight during a presidential race.

The U.S. Border Patrol arrested at least 91,000 migrants who crossed as part of a family group in August, exceeding the prior one-month record of 84,486 set in May 2019, during the Trump administration. Families were the single largest demographic group crossing the border in August, surpassing single adults for the first time since Biden took office.

Overall, the data show, border apprehensions have risen more than 30 percent for two consecutive months, after falling sharply in May and June as the Biden administration rolled out new restrictions and entry opportunities. The Border Patrol made more than 177,000 arrests along the Mexico border in August, up from 132,652 in July and 99,539 in June.

Erin Heeter, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said the Biden administration is trying to slow illegal entries by expanding lawful options and also stiffening penalties. The government ramped up deportation flights carrying families in August, she said, and since May has repatriated more than 17,000 parents and children who recently crossed the border in a family group.

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September 1, 2023

Meet the Democrat Who Warned Us About Kyrsten Sinema (he is running against Schweikert in AZ-1)

Andrei Cherny, whom Sinema beat more than a decade ago, is running in one of the country’s most competitive House races.

https://newrepublic.com/article/173890/meet-democrat-warned-us-kyrsten-sinema



You can’t say Andrei Cherny didn’t warn us. Back in 2012, when Kyrsten Sinema was a former Arizona state senator and he ex-chairman of the state party, they squared off in a bitter three-way primary in the state’s then-new 9th congressional district. “What we saw then with her is exactly who she has been in Washington, D.C.,” Cherny said recently. “She was someone who was the Republicans’ favorite Democratic legislator. Somebody who was cozy with the Republican lobbyists. Somebody who was funded massively by private equity.”

Fast forward 11 years, and Sinema, who won that 2012 nomination, is a U.S. senator and registered independent, having quit the Democratic Party in December after years of frustrating colleagues and progressives alike by bucking the left on issues ranging from taxes to the filibuster. She’s dangling the prospect of running for reelection as an independent over both political parties’ heads. As for Cherny, he’s still frustrated that he couldn’t nip her career in the bud. “Our campaign’s failing in 2012 is that we weren’t able to convince enough people of who she was, and too many people thought, ‘As long as a Democrat wins, we’re going to be OK,’” he said. “But the truth is [that] there really is a difference. And that’s the lesson that I’m taking into this campaign.”

“This campaign” is for Arizona’s newly redrawn 1st congressional district, where Cherny is one of five candidates running in the Democratic primary. He is coy about dinging his current Democratic primary opponents but has no such reticence against his old foe. He’s eager to slam Sinema, and he framed his candidacy as about both beating incumbent Republican David Schweikert and offering Arizonans an option dissimilar to Sinema’s notorious brand of conservative iconoclastic Democratic politics. “To put it simply, that comes down to no more Schweikert and no more Sinemas,”* Cherny explained to me.

This won’t be Cherny’s first or even second time on a ballot. A Los Angeles native and Harvard graduate with a law degree from Berkeley, his first job out of college landed him in the White House: He wrote a Harvard Crimson column about Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign that caught the Clinton White House staffers’ notice, eventually snagging him a speechwriting gig almost immediately after college. Cherny has made multiple bids for elected office since: In 2002, at 26, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in the California State Assembly. In 2010 he won the Democratic nomination for state treasurer of Arizona, ultimately losing to Republican Doug Ducey, who would later serve two terms as governor.

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September 1, 2023

Big Ag Opens Another Vein of Public Funding

Money from the Climate-Smart Commodities program, designed to reduce agriculture emissions, is going disproportionately to multinationals.

https://prospect.org/environment/2023-09-01-big-ag-opens-another-vein-of-public-funding/



At the COP27 climate summit this past year in Egypt, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack addressed his role in President Biden’s plan to cut U.S. greenhouse emissions in half by 2030. While urging for international cooperation, Vilsack lauded the department’s “unprecedented” green investments to reduce agriculture’s substantial carbon footprint. He singled out a signature new program initiated under his tenure: the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.

Launched in 2022, the program was set up to provide grants and other funding for sustainable farming practices that keep carbon in the soil, prevent deforestation, and other measures. The price tag, just over $3 billion, was unusually high for a “pilot program,” surpassing the annual budgets of other long-standing conservation programs that, at least theoretically, were supposed to support many of the same farming practices. “Our goal is to … make sure that small and underserved producers reap the benefits of these market opportunities,” Vilsack said at COP27.

But nearly a year later, the top grants have instead been awarded to large corporate interests, including Tyson, JBS, Cargill, and other organizations underwritten by Big Ag. The program is under renewed scrutiny from watchdog groups, which claim the department has provided limited public information about the selection process for applications, the contracts being negotiated with grant recipients, and the criteria for what exactly constitutes “climate smart.” “We don’t need USDA facilitating a pay-to-pollute carbon scheme that only goes to benefit big operations,” said Rebecca Wolf, senior policy director at Food & Water Watch.

In the absence of transparency, outside groups have come to view the program as a greenwashing operation to market “climate smart” products without actually cutting emissions. They also allege that the program is a way to use public funds to launch private carbon trading markets, a kind of cap-and-trade system except without the cap or evidence that offsets alone can substantially reduce emissions. It’s an example of how USDA, according to its critics, has lagged behind its fellow agencies in meeting the climate challenge, instead falling back on unambitious policy ideas.

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September 1, 2023

The Internet Is Calling This Chicago Festival 'the Fyre Fest of Pizza'

“I couldn’t deal with the chaos anymore.”

https://www.thrillist.com/eat/chicago/pizza-city-fest-fyre-fest-of-pizza



Chicagoans have long history of getting fired up about pizza, but thanks to a recent pizza festival debacle, they’re getting “Fyred” up over it too. In this case, though, the controversy is less about squabbling over the merits of deep-dish, and more about a pizza festival fiasco—mired in mishaps and chaotic crowds—that led to a flurry of social media rage and biting hashtags like #coalfyrefestival, #garbagefest, and most frequently, #shitshow.

So what exactly happened here that turned The Salt Shed into a veritable Great Exuma over this past weekend? It’s all centered around the innocuous-sounding Pizza City Fest, a concept that—on paper—sounds like a bullseye in a pizza-loving town like Chicago. The problem, though, was that it all was soon mired in what sounds like logistical nightmares, overpriced tickets, and impossibly long lines. It also doesn’t help that Steve Dolinsky, one of the most polarizing figures in the Chicago dining scene, was at its epicenter, pulling a Billy McFarland by seemingly overpromising and under-delivering.

A longtime TV journalist on the local food beat, masquerading as The Hungry Hound and signing framed photos for restaurants whether they wanted it or not, Dolinsky pivoted in more of a pizza-specific direction of late, running pizza tours in Chicago, authoring a pizza book, and hosting a pizza podcast. Naturally, the next extension of his pizza brand was Pizza City Fest, which debuted at Plumbers Union Hall in 2022. Despite some hiccups, it was apparently successful enough to warrant a sophomore effort: a two-day pizza festival in a splashy new location, where attendees could sample different pizza styles from 40 vendors, including lauded restaurants Vito & Nick’s and Bungalow by Middlebrow, coupled with panelists, live music, and all-you-can-drink booze options, all for $95 per ticket. Sounds fun in theory, but if the social media backlash is any indication, that theory didn’t pan out.

The resulting hot takes have been spicier than soppressata. On Instagram, posts from Pizza City Fest have been flooded with angry customers decrying chaotic crowds and bottlenecked lines that made it impossible to wait for more than a few slices. Users claim Pizza City deleted posts, to help mask the mayhem, while others describe the event as a nightmare, with lines that took 30 - 45 minutes to snag a single slice, and a complete lack of organization. One user said “I’d rather stay home and order pizza than attend a pizza city shit show.” Another: “Lol, if you are going to charge bonkers prices you better be able to deliver.” And another: “Left after 3 slices because I couldn’t deal with the chaos anymore.” On Reddit, a Pizza City Fest Chicago thread has not been much kinder, with more echoes of “shit show” and overpriced tickets, and one commenter expressing hope for a future Netflix special.

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