Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 135

George W. Bush tried steel tariffs. It didn’t work

George W. Bush (Credit: AP/Seth Wenig)

President Donald Trump finally followed through on his almost year-old threat to restrict imports of foreign steel.

On March 8, the president slapped a 25 percent tariff on the metal, while also putting a 10 percent duty on foreign aluminum. After initially suggesting there’d be no exceptions, Trump promised to be “very flexible” and initially exempted Mexico and Canada from the duties, which are set to go into effect in 15 days.

While Trump cited “national security” as the impetus, he’s been vowing since the campaign to use trade policy to restore jobs to the American manufacturing sector, which has suffered in recent decades. The steel sector, for example, supported as many as 650,000 American workers in the 1950s, yet now employs only about 140,000.

My research focuses on the politics of trade and what prompts political leaders to impose restrictions like tariffs. The last time a president slapped tariffs on steel offers an illuminating lesson — and cautionary tale — for Trump’s new policy.

The Bush steel tariffs

In early 2002, then-President George W. Bush imposed steel tariffs of up to 30 percent on imports of steel in an effort to shore up domestic producers against low-cost imports.

These tariffs were controversial both at home and abroad because, even as they helped steelmakers, they squeezed steel users, such as the auto industry.

They were also seen as hypocritical at a time when the Republican administration was trying to encourage other countries to liberalize trade policies — and reduce their tariffs — through the Doha Round of World Trade Organization talks that were happening at the time.

Transfer of wealth

So what happens when a country imposes tariffs?

The general economic view of trade protection says that tariffs transfer money from a good’s consumers to its producers.

Let’s say a country slaps a 20 percent tariff on imports of beef. The country’s beef producers will be much better off because now imported meat is as much as 20 percent more expensive, meaning domestic companies will be able to sell more rib-eyes and raise their prices. That’s bad news for restaurants and fans of steaks and hamburgers, who will pay those higher prices.

This transfer is usually economically inefficient because the benefits that domestic producers receive from a tariff will generally be less than the costs to domestic consumers.

One of the reasons they still happen despite this inefficiency is that consumers are typically a very large and dispersed group. While they collectively may lose a great deal of money in higher costs from a tariff, the cost to any one individual may not be that great. Therefore, consumers are often less motivated in opposing trade protection than a relatively narrower and more unified group of producers who have a lot to gain.

The special case of steel

Steel tariffs, however, don’t follow this pattern.

That’s because far from being broadly dispersed, steel consumers are heavily concentrated in the construction and automotive industries — which have very powerful political lobbies of their own. As a result, steel consumers are more likely to balk at the higher prices that would result from tariffs.

In 2002, it was pushback from these industries that helped persuade the National Association of Manufacturers to come out against the tariffs. Eventually the World Trade Organization ruled the policy illegal because it violated U.S. trade commitments, which led to the threat of a trade war with the European Union.

The Bush administration withdrew the tariffs in December 2003, about 21 months after they were imposed, but not without a cost. The Consuming Industries Trade Action Coalition found that 200,000 workers in U.S. manufacturing lost their jobs as a result of the tariffs. For comparison, the entire U.S. steel industry employed 197,000 at the time.

The politics of trade

So why is Trump doing this?

As my research shows, there are always competing voices lobbying for and against trade protection, and those preferences alone aren’t enough to push a protective measure into law. That depends on how effective an interest group is in winning the support of powerful political patrons.

The steel industry has had several things working in its favor. Trump has said repeatedly that he wants to protect American manufacturing squeezed by foreign competition, and U.S. steel certainly fits that profile. But more importantly, steel production is concentrated in old industrial states in the Midwest, such as Pennsylvania and Ohio. These states have been swing states in recent presidential elections, which gives industries with workers in those regions outsized influence.

The U.S. sugar industry, which is very heavily protected, benefits in a similar way by being heavily concentrated in Florida, a frequent swing state.

Still, despite steel’s political advantages, tariffs are still a large gamble for Trump. While the impact of steel tariffs on other domestic manufacturers such as construction and automotive manufacturing is likely to be bad, the bigger concern is that they set off a trade war.

That would have negative consequences for American consumers and producers alike, as well as for the U.S. economy.

This article incorporates elements of a story published on July 17, 2017.

William Hauk, Associate Professor of Economics, University of South Carolina

Neanderthals knew something about healthcare that America has forgotten

(Credit: AP/Martin Meissner)

Over 40,000 years ago a Neanderthal male — let’s call him Neanderthal Joe — between the ages of 25 and 40 suffered from a myriad of health issues in his last year of life, including a degenerative disease in the spine and shoulders and temporomandibular joint arthritis (TMJ). In prehistoric times, when hunting and foraging were key to survival, this would have put Neanderthal Joe in a vulnerable position, as the degenerative disease likely caused him to weaken in his arms and shoulders.

The common stereotype of Neanderthal would have you believe that this group of hominids were untamed, dumb, and perhaps even violent — an assumption that might lead you to assume that, in the situation above, his tribe might have seen an ailing Neanderthal Joe as a weight on their collective survival. However, articulated remains reveal that Neanderthal Joe was part of his community until his very last breath, according to a University of York study — published in the peer-reviewed journal Taylor & Francis. It appears he even received direct support from his community, such as hygiene maintenance and fever management, for of his many health problems.

In the fascinating study, researchers argue that medical care was an integral part of Neanderthals’ lives, and the motivation to take care of each other was likely driven by compassion and empathy.

“There is no reason to assume the healthcare practices in Neanderthals were driven by the necessity of a life that was unusually harsh rather than being a caring social and cultural response to illness, injury and vulnerability,” researchers say.

The remains of another Neanderthal male, between the age of 40 and 55, reveal that he too was cared for on at least two occasions before his death. The first time was to heal a fracture of the right femur which would have kept him from being mobile, researchers explain. Later on, he was also diagnosed with hypertrophic pulmonary osteoarthropathy, a condition whose symptoms include loss of appetite, fevers, loss of energy, and sleeplessness.

“This same lack of energy, combined with acute and/or chronic pain and likely loss of psychological as well as physical resilience, would render more sedentary tasks increasingly difficult to accomplish,” researchers explain in the study. “Dedicated care, including monitoring, massage, manipulation and repositioning, fever management, and hygiene maintenance, would be required during acute episodes.”

His mortuary treatment after death suggested he was taken care of — not abandoned.

In essence, you can argue that Neanderthals viewed healthcare as an innate part of their culture, or even — daresay — a right. They may not have had the capability of intellectualizing such a thought at the time, but their actions speculated by researchers suggest so.

It is ironic that this research has been published at a political moment in which healthcare, and whether it should be an innate right or a privilege, is being intellectually litigated over by legislators. While Republicans tend to believe it is a privilege and Democrats (with a few exceptions) believe it is best run by private, for-profit actors, both views are at odds with prehistory, and belie hominids’ tribal impulses to care for each other even when the infirm were no longer socially useful to society. Currently, we are amid a continuous debate over whether or not Americans should receive access to free healthcare or not. Medicare For All, a universal healthcare policy initiative that Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., campaigned for during the 2016 election, has morphed into a heated debate that is staking out the soul of the largely resistant Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, on the right, many pundits argue that homo sapiens have no right to healthcare whatsoever. Right-wing magazine The Federalist published an article, “Why Nobody Has A Right To Health Care,” that sounds exactly like what it is; FreedomWorks, the conservative policy organization with ties to the Koch Brothers, has published an op-ed arguing precisely the same. One wonders if these conservatives would feel different if confronted with the prehistorical compassion of our relatives.

Moreover, these findings actually fit well with earlier research regarding (human) compassion. A 2013 academic study suggested that generosity was “more evolutionarily advantageous than selfishness,” as Atlantic columnist Julie Beck wrote at the time. In fact, most anthropological studies on this kind of thing tend to contradict countervailing conservative and free-market wisdom about hominids being inherently self-interested and individualistic — yet the right persists in pushing sophistic ideology to justify the cruelty of oppressive, unregulated free market societies.

In any case, the Neanderthal researchers’ findings are significant inasmuch as they change the narrative that has been told of Neanderthals. As researchers point out, the stereotype of Neanderthals is that they were “different” than modern humans, “even brutish.” As researchers in the study explain, Neanderthals share “a common human emotional and practical response to vulnerability and suffering of those that they were close to, attitudes also reflected in care of children, attitudes to the body at death through mortuary practice.”

The genes within Neanderthal Joe are in many of us, too: early humans and Neanderthals interbred. People of Asian and European ancestry have a genome comprised of about one to three percent Neanderthal DNA.

Researchers suggest that “caring” healthcare isn’t unique to the human species.

“The very similarity of Neanderthal healthcare to that of later periods has important implications however – that organized, knowledgeable and caring healthcare is not unique to our species but rather has a long evolutionary history,” researchers explain.

If compassion was a primitive state of Neanderthals, is that true of humans, too? And if the answer is yes, then is it even more absurd that America is still debating over whether we should be expected to care for the infirm — given that Neanderthals, who were threatened by disease and predators everyday, understood that healthcare was a birthright?

Meet a working class hip hop hero: Bay Area icon Zion I

"The Boombox Collection: Zion I" (Credit: Mohammad Gorjestani)

Meet underground hip hop artist Zumbi, who performs as Zion I. In director Mohammad Gorjestani’s hybrid of a short film and a music video, “Zion I” will introduce you to a man making his way through life.

You can watch the full “Zion I” film on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Here’s how. 

Salon interviewed Gorjestani about the film, which mirrors his early love for hip hop: It “sounds dope and makes you look inward.”

What is the Boombox Collection? How many of these films are you going to make?

The Boombox Collection is a series of films that looks at some of the iconic people in Bay Area hip hop, with a focus on those less known. I kinda’ call it “working class hip hop.” I also focused the films on some of the more established “older” names, because I wanted the films to have a sense of reflection of a personal journey inherent in the films. It just made sense for me, whether faulted or not, to focus on artists who’ve been around for a long time. These are also artists who have influenced me, so I know their work well and really approached it as a fan first.

How did you come upon Zion I?

I grew up listening to Zion I and especially during my adolescence it helped shaped some of my views of the world. I love music that makes you go inward, but when you’re an insecure teenager you also gotta listen to shit that sounds dope. That’s the magic of hip hop to me, it’s layered in that way.

Is his music his primary income or does he do other work?

He’s a working class musician. I know he does some acting too. He’s an artist first and foremost so he expresses that in many ways.

Can you bring us a little behind the scenes shooting Gaines on the pier? How many takes did you do?

It was really an incredible display of camera work from my DP, Mike Gioulakis, and Stew Cantrell, our Steadicam operator. And of course, Zumbi himself. We paced off the song from the end of the pier so we could land the end of the song right where we wanted. We ran the track about 4-5 times and it was amazing to watch Zumbi nail each verse over and over. It was really me and our camera team that wanted extra takes and options. We also shot until it got pitch black so we could have different light options for the edit. I think in total we shot the scene for about one hour straight.

There aren’t many Iranian-Americans making documentaries about hip hop in Oakland. What’s your story?

I’m a Bay Area kid that was born in Tehran, Iran. We left Iran during the brutal Iran-Iraq war right on the tails of the “War of the Cities;” my parents and I with very little money slept in motels and hotels throughout Turkey while my dad worked on getting visas to come to America. We finally landed and spent years on food stamps and lived in subsidized housing in Silicon Valley. My parents still live in the same apartment we moved into in 1988. Growing up an immigrant in the backdrop of Silicon Valley and seeing that whole thing happen (Apple was across the street from my high school); it was a strange experience. Especially since no one in my family worked in tech and we were poor as hell. Naturally when you are poor, I think you look at different ways to find wealth outside of money, and I think for me personally, that is what didn’t appeal about the cash-money [style of] rap music. Don’t get me wrong, I still listened to that stuff, but I found more self worth in music that spoke to the way I was viewing the world. Music by people like Zion I and The Coup.

Have you made any films in Iran? Is that an option?

No I haven’t. And sure that’s an option, just not in the plans right now. Iran makes some of the best films in the world. Ashgar Farhadi has won two Academy Awards in the past few years for best foreign language film; that’s major. The history of Iranian cinema is extraordinary and there’s a ton of incredible talent in addition to the iconic people like Farhadi, Jafari, Panahi . . .  People like Ana Lily Amirpour, Desiree Akhavan, Zal Batmanglij, Saman Kesh, Babak Anvari, Abteen Bagheri, and Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, and so many more.

What are you working on now?

Developing a near future feature film tentatively titled “Refuge” that is based on a short I made a few years ago. It follows a young woman in 2025 who faces deportation in the midst of a cyber war primarily between the U.S. and Iran.  I also just finished a film called “Sister Hearts” that examines incarceration and re-entry from the point of view of women in Louisiana. The project is part of a partnership my studio, Even/Odd, did with Square. We created a series of films called “For Every Dream,” that took a look at America through the lens of small business in unexpected places. We’re premiering “Sister Hearts” at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and then publicly soon after that.

Watch “Zion I” on Salon Premium, our new ad-free, content-rich app. Reading this in the app already? Go back to the main menu and select “SalonTV” to find Salon Films and Salon original shows.

My privilege wakeup call with the author of “So You Want To Talk About Race”

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo (Credit: Courtesy of Author/Seal Press)

For many white liberals, the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the implicit approval of overtly racist, xenophobic policies like the border wall and the Muslim ban was a traumatic but much-needed wake-up call. The curtains on darkened windows were thrown open, revealing just how pervasive racism remains in a country built on stealing land and stealing people.

But even after the curtains are thrown open, some people choose to hide under the blankets and go back to sleep.

“You can’t just go around calling anything racist. Save that word for the big stuff. You know, for Nazis and cross burnings and lynchings. You’re just going to turn people off if you use such inflammatory language.”

That’s what author Ijeoma Oluo’s white friend told her when she dared to complain about a racist exchange online.

“It seemed far more important to him that the white people who were spreading and upholding racism be spared the effects of being called racist, than sparing his black friend the effects of that racism,” Oluo recalls in her new book, “So You Want To Talk About Race.”

Meanwhile, there are a bunch of us white folks who can’t go back to sleep. We want to help. We want to spare our black friends from the effects of racism, but have no idea of how to go about the work of fixing a system that we have benefitted from.

Many of us feel afraid to ask questions, anxious that we’ll offend or inadvertently perpetuate racist attitudes. Many of us aren’t sure who we should even talk with about race, since we don’t want to further burden people of color with coming up with answers while they are in the midst of their own struggles. We don’t want to make our Black friends — if we have Black friends — uncomfortable.

For those of us willing to confront the reality of just how toxic our culture has been for people of color — and what we can do to change it — “So You Want To Talk About Race” is just the book to guide us through the truly uncomfortable period of adjustment between sleeping through white supremacy and being woke.

As someone who grew up Black in white working class Seattle, Ijeoma Oluo demonstrates compassion, understanding and gratitude to her readers while also offering hard truths about race in America.

“These are very scary times for a lot of people who are just now realizing that America is not, and has never been, the melting-pot utopia that their parents and teachers told them it was,” Oluo remarks in her introduction.

The book defies easy classification. On the one hand, it feels like a memoir: Oluo tells us stories of the everyday racism she encountered as a Black girl growing up in white suburbia and the microaggressions she experiences as a Black woman working in corporate America. She gives us first-hand accounts of the terror of being pulled over when driving while Black. She offers us glimpses into her heartbreak when she realizes the chasm of understanding that exists between herself and her white friends.

On the other hand, “So You Want To Talk About Race” reads like a primer on how to navigate difficult but necessary conversations on confronting the most insidious system built into our society: white supremacy. Just the term “white supremacy” can throw up red flags. It brings to mind burning crosses, lynchings and angry young men in polo shirts with tiki torches.

But as Oluo points out, these are symbols that reflect the militant extremes in a culture where the experience of whiteness is assumed to be the default. Angry white men with tiki torches pose much less of an existential threat to people of color than the more subtle and pervasive patterns of racism that end in the school-to-prison pipeline.

The thing about inequality is that the oppressor doesn’t see themselves as an oppressor. They see their behavior as “helping.” An abusive father doesn’t think he’s hurting his child, he thinks he’s disciplining her. An emotionally abusive spouse doesn’t think he’s manipulating his partner, he thinks he’s getting her to listen to him so they’ll get along better. And a police officer doesn’t see himself as brutalizing a black teenager, he sees himself as protecting his neighborhood from a “thug.”

But the uncomfortable truth is, we’re trapped in an abusive relationship in our society. And if you’re white and you aren’t doing anything to stop the abuse, you’re enabling it.

“Often, being a person of color in white-dominated society is like being in an abusive relationship with the world,” Oluo writes. “Every day is a new little hurt, a new little dehumanization. We walk around flinching, still in pain from the last hurt and dreading the next. But when we say ‘this is hurting us,’ a spotlight is shown on the freshest hurt, the bruise just forming: ‘Look at how small it is, and I’m sure there is a good reason for it. Why are you making such a big deal about it? Everyone gets hurt from time to time’—while the world ignores that the rest of our bodies are covered in scars.”

So what does all this have to do with women rising up, the topic I cover on my podcast “Inflection Point?” After all, aren’t all feminists on the same team? Well . . . Oluoo has another hard truth to offer:

“If you call yourself a feminist, it’s important to remember that it’s not an immunization against other bigotries and other biases. You still have to do just as much work there, and that can seem exhausting, but it’s the only way to make sure that your movement doesn’t become an oppressor in its own right. ”

So: let’s do the work together. Listen to my conversation with Oluo on “Inflection Point.” And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions.

Together, we can make this work a little less exhausting — because we all know we can’t go back to sleep.

Hear more stories of how women rise up on “Inflection Point” on Apple Podcasts, RadioPublic, Stitcher and NPROne.

Ryan Zinke: I’m against wind power because I’m pro-bird

Ryan Zinke (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Once again, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has tried to spread anti-renewable energy propaganda by turning the focus on birds, who are, according to Zinke, being killed by wind turbines in droves.

At a Senate energy committee hearing on March 13, according to Huffington Post, he echoed a previous sentiment he touted earlier in the month.

“Every energy source has its consequences,” Zinke said, via Huffington Post. “Wind chops up birds.”

At the CERAWeek energy conference hosted by IHSMarkit in Houston, he said the number of birds killed a year could be as high as 750,000 birds.

“We probably chop up as many as 750,000 birds a year with wind and the carbon footprint on wind is significant,” Zinke said. “I always thought the best place for wind was on the roof of a house.”

As Axios pointed out in a fact-check, Zinke is exaggerating his claim, and more ironically, turbines aren’t as threatening to birds as other human-related causes such as communication towers, cars, glass windows, and power lines — which can cause bird electrocutions.

However, Zinke’s new founded empathy for birds is hypocritical in light of his agency’s history. Indeed, in December 2017 the U.S. Department of the Interior reversed an Obama-era rule that protected accidental bird deaths caused by (yup) wine turbines, oil rigs, and power lines. The reversal, which was part of the The Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 , said those types of bird deaths no longer violate federal law.

Critics have been quick to point out the hypocrisy, including former Interior deputy secretary under President Barack Obama, David Hayes.

In testimony, @SecretaryZinke pooh-poohs #RenewableEnergy on #publiclands. So #oilandgas gets 30+ million acres, but no room for #SolarEnergy? And after @Interior gutted the #MigratoryBirdTreatyAct, birds are suddenly a #windpower concern? So hypocritical. https://t.co/U88hG27xU7

— David J. Hayes (@djhayes01) March 14, 2018

President Donald Trump has also made the same claim before his presidential days. In a 2012 interview Trump told 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain: “[Windmills] kill all the birds. I don’t know if you know that…Thousands of birds are lying on the ground.” He continued: “And the eagle. You know, certain parts of California – they’ve killed so many eagles. You know, they put you in jail if you kill an eagle. And yet these windmills [kill] them by the hundreds.”

According to the American Wind Energy Association the potential U.S. wind energy production by 2020 could provide power for nearly 25 million homes.

Lawmakers act quickly to reform pet air travel rules, remain stagnant on gun violence

(Credit: Getty/Justin Sullivan)

After several recent instances of pets dying on flights, lawmakers have swiftly come up with a proposal that would penalize airlines for putting pets in unsafe travel situations in the future.

The bipartisan legislation has been named the Welfare of Our Furry Friends Act (WOOFF), and was filed and introduced by Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. and John Kennedy, R-La.

The bill will “explicitly prohibit airlines from putting animals in danger by placing them in overhead baggage compartments.”

“This bill directs the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) to create regulations to prohibit the storing of a live animal in any overhead compartment of any flight in air transportation and establish civil fines for violations,” according to Cortez Masto’s statement.

Action came only days after a family’s dog died after they had been instructed by a flight attendant on a United Airlines flight to place the dog in an overhead compartment. But in the midst of a national outcry for gun reform, the bipartisan proposal for pet welfare shows that lawmakers can indeed work together and act quickly to put forth solutions that will prevent needless death. The same simply can’t be said for gun violence.

In the wake of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida on Valentine’s Day just over a month ago, students have led the way and have cried out for national change to little avail. Instead, President Donald Trump has echoed a proposal that would put more guns in schools, through teachers or other faculty.

Of course, the two issues are vastly different, and it’s easier for the lawmakers to come to a consensus that overhead bins are the sole cause of an animal’s death on an airline flight than to tackle an issue such as gun violence, which impacts far more people, though perhaps in more intricate ways.

But lawmakers should be just as quick to act on pet safety as they are on the safety of children, and the tens of thousands of Americans each year who fall victim to gun violence. The debate on ensuring pet safety on airplanes is a simple fix, because the overwhelming consensus is that overhead bins are not safe for pets.

But in the wake of the most recent mass shooting, much of the public reached a consensus that certain guns and ways in which they can be freely purchased with little or no oversight is also not safe.

And speaking of odd priorities: While Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has expressed that not much more can be done about guns in the country, he introduced legislation that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

World Health Organization to review reports of microplastic contamination in bottled water

(Credit: Getty/TeerawatWinyarat)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is set to launch a review of reports that microplastic contaminants were found in popular bottled water brands — including Aquafina, Dasani, and San Pellegrino.

Orb Media, a nonprofit journalism organization, commissioned scientists at the State University of New York to conduct a study into bottled water contaminants using an industry-standard infrared microscope. Out of 259 individual bottles surveyed, 93 percent showed “some sign of microplastic contamination,” with an average of  325 microplastic particles per liter. The particles were identified via a process called Nile Red tagging, which is when red dye is used to fluoresce particles in the water. The study hasn’t yet been peer reviewed.

“Some of the bottles we tested contained so many particles that we asked a former astrophysicist to use his experience counting stars in the heavens to help us tally these fluorescing constellations,” Orb Media explained in their article about the study.

A representative from the WHO told The Guardian that it would “review the very scarce available evidence with the objective of identifying evidence gaps, and establishing a research agenda to inform a more thorough risk assessment.”

The study analyzed bottles from the following popular American, Canadian and European brands: Aquafina, Dasani, Evian, Nestle Pure Life, and San Pellegrino; and other brands popular in different countries, including Aqua (Indonesia), Bisleri (India), Epura (Mexico), Gerolsteiner (Germany), Minalba (Brazil), and Wahaha (China).

As explained in the study, some bottled water is merely “filtered municipal tap water.” Thus, the bottles were purchased from a number of locations to diversify the sources.

The conclusion of this study estimates that a person who drinks a liter of bottled water a day might be consuming tens of thousands of microplastic pieces each year. However, it is unclear what the human health effects of that are. Some components of plastic have been labeled probable carcinogens.

Brands tested have responded to some media requests to comment on the study. Coca Cola told BBC it uses a “multi-step filtration process,” but acknowledged that microplastics “appear to be ubiquitous and therefore may be found at minute levels even in highly treated products.”

PepsiCo told BBC that Aquafina had “rigorous quality control measures sanitary manufacturing practices, filtration and other food safety mechanisms which yield a reliably safe product.”

Gerolsteiner told BBC that it has been testing its bottled water for microplastics, and that since microparticles are “everywhere” the “possibility of them entering the product from ambient air or packaging materials during the bottling process can therefore not be completely ruled out.”

Plastic contamination poses a looming ecological and environmental threat. The Guardian reported in June 2017 that an estimated one million plastic water bottle are sold around the world every minute.

Bottled water is popular for countries that have an “on the go” lifestyle, and can be critical to those who lives in parts of the world where safe and clean water is inaccessible. According to the WHO, 2.1 billion lack access to “readily available water at home”; that means an average of 3 in 10 people worldwide.

Pentagon shells out nearly $140,000 at Trump properties

(Credit: AP/Evan Vucci/Getty/MicroStockHub/Salon)

Department of Defense (DOD) staffers spent more than $138,000 on government-issued Visa cards at Trump-branded properties during the first eight months of Donald Trump’s presidency, according to CNN.

The payments are the latest indication that taxpayer money flows into the president’s company, reigniting concerns of potential conflicts of interests or breached constitutional and ethical protocols. 

CNN revealed that military personnel spent more than one-third of the money — or $58,875.69 on lodging and food at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida — and that the expenses mostly lined up with the 25 days Trump spent at the club between February and April. (Like other modern U.S. presidents, Trump travels with military personnel.)

DOD transactions also surfaced for other Trump-owned properties, including roughly $9,600 at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club around the time of the his trip there in May.

CNN reviewed Defense Department travel records obtained by Property of the People, a nonprofit group that advocates for improved government transparency, who sued the Pentagon for the documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

“With the DOD’s . . . spending at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and Trump’s refusal to divest from his sprawling business empire, once again we find the president’s hand deep in the taxpayer’s pocket,” Ryan Shapiro, co-founder of Property of the People, told CNN.

Not all spending coincided with the president’s travels.

CNN found that 113 transactions were made at the Trump International Las Vegas Hotel, which Trump owns, for a total of $35,652.44. That is in addition to the $17,000 that was charged at a then-Trump branded property in Panama City, Panama. (The owners have since removed the president’s name from the hotel.)

Thomas Crosson, a DOD spokesperson, told CNN that records reviewed by the network represent all of the department’s payments at Trump properties during that time period. He also said that government spending limits at hotels can be waived if personnel need to stay there in order to support the president.

The charges raise questions about whether the Trump business is profiting off of 45’s presidency. Although it is currently being managed by his two eldest sons while he is in office, Trump has maintained ownership of the company that bears his name. But there is little transparency, as the Trump Organization is privately held. And Trump, in a break from tradition from all U.S. presidents since 1968, has continued to refuse to release his tax returns.

 

Mueller subpoenas Trump Organization; Dems say Trump Org worked with sanctioned Russian bank

Robert Mueller; Donald Trump (Credit: Getty/Alex Wong/AP/Evan Vucci/Salon)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation in alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election has drawn closer to President Donald Trump than ever before.

In recent weeks, Mueller subpoenaed the Trump Organization, the president’s sprawling business and real estate empire, and ordered it turn over all documents pertaining to Russia as well as to other matters being investigated, two people briefed on the matter told the New York Times.

The subpoena marks the first time Mueller has inquired directly about the Trump Organization’s role, but the scope of his investigation remains unclear, as do reasons as to why Mueller didn’t just request the documents rather than order them, as the Times noted. It is also another clear indication that Mueller’s ongoing investigation is likely to last many more months, despite assurances from Trump’s lawyers that it would be wrapped up hastily. When elected, Trump turned over daily business operations to his two sons, but he has retained a revocable trust that he can pull money from at any time.

Mueller has expanded the scope of his investigation as of late and has delved into the international financial backing that may have helped Trump’s bid for office during the campaign.

The president signed a “letter of intent” in 2015 for a project to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, the Times noted. The proposal was first sent to the president’s lawyer Michael Cohen, and originated from Felix Sater, a longtime business associate of Trump’s who said that the deal could help Trump’s campaign. Trump discussed the potential construction project with Cohen on three occasions.

The Trump Organization has cooperated with and turned documents over at the request of Congressional investigations, and Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee have said the president’s business empire. was “actively negotiating a business deal in Moscow with a sanctioned Russian bank,” The Guardian reported.

It’s not yet known if House Democrats were referring to the same proposal made by Sater and discussed between Trump and Cohen, or if it is something entirely different. The announcement by Democrats came only days after House Republicans had determined in their own (ideologically compromised) investigation that there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin during the election, a report that has fueled concerns that the investigation has turned increasingly partisan.

Trump, however, has repeatedly and confidently denied any and all wrongdoing. He has previously threatened a “red line” if Mueller began digging into his family’s financial dealings. Trump has not yet issued a tweet on the latest news, but with the White House in a state of chaos amid staff shake-ups, an even bumpier ride might be ahead.

While Mexico plays politics with its water, some cities flood and others go dry

In 2014, Mexican federal police fly over the Balsas River near the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico. (Credit: AP Photo/Eduardo Castillo)

When Cape Town acknowledged in February that it would run out of water within months, South Africa suddenly became the global poster child for bad water management. Newspapers revealed that the federal government had been slow to respond to the city’s three-year drought because the mayor belongs to an opposition party.

Cape Town is not alone. While both rich and poor countries are drying out, the fast-growing cities of the developing world are projected to suffer the most acute shortages in coming years.

Scarcity turns water into a powerful political bargaining chip. From Delhi to Nairobi, its oversight is fraught with inequality, corruption and conflict.

Mexico, too, has seen its water fall prey to cronyism in too many cities. I interviewed 180 engineers, politicians, business leaders and residents in eight Mexican cities for my book on politics and water. I was startled to discover that Mexican officials frequently treat water distribution and treatment not as public services but as political favors.

When thunderstorms are cause for panic

Nezahualcoyotl is a city in Mexico State near the nation’s sprawling capital. Just after lunch one Friday afternoon in 2008, Pablo, an engineer, was showing me around town when news of an unexpected thunderstorm began lighting up his team’s cell phones and pagers.

The engineers shouted back and forth, looking increasingly frantic. Having just begun my book research, I did not yet understand why an everyday event like a thunderstorm would elicit such panic.

Pablo explained that Nezahualcoyotl’s aged electric grid often failed during big storms and that the city lacked backup generators. If a power outage shut down the local sanitation treatment plant, raw sewage would flood the streets.

These “aguas negras” carry nasty bacteria, viruses and parasitic organisms and can cause cholera, dysentery, hepatitis and severe gastroenteritis. If raw sewage also contains industrial wastewater – which is common in rapidly industrializing countries like Mexico – it may also expose residents to chemicals and heavy metals that can lead to everything from lead poisoning to cancer.

Pablo and his colleagues avoided a flood that day. But I later read news articles confirming how relatively common sewage overflows are there. Nezahualcoyotl residents have been dealing with this multisystem failure for 30 years, complaining of gastrointestinal illness and skin lesions all the while.

So why hasn’t this public health emergency been fixed? The answer is a primer on the tricky politics of urban water delivery in Mexico.

Profit from dysfunction

Public malfeasance in Mexico is widespread. Nearly 90 percent of citizens see the state and federal government as corrupt, according to the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography.

The country’s water situation, too, is pretty dire. The capital, Mexico City, is “parched and sinking,” according to a powerful 2017 New York Times report, and 81 percent of residents say they don’t drink from the tap, either because they lack running water or they don’t trust its quality.

Officially, nearly all Mexicans have access to running water. But in practice, many – particularly poorer people – have intermittent service and very low pressure.

Workers in one city asked me to keep their identity anonymous before explaining why the water infrastructure there was so decrepit. It wasn’t a lack of technology, they said. The mayor’s team actually profits from refusing to upgrade the city’s perpetually defunct hardware. That’s because whenever a generator or valve breaks, they send it to their buddies’ refurbishing shops.

Numerous engineers across Mexico similarly expressed frustration that they were sometimes forbidden from making technical fixes to improve local water service because of a mayor’s “political commitments.”

In Nezahualcoyotl, I met a water director who openly boasted of using public water service for his political and personal gain. In the same breath, he told me that he fought to keep water bills low in this mostly poor city because water was a “human right” but also that he had once turned off supplies to an entire neighborhood for weeks because of a feud with another city employee.

No voter ID, no water

Public officials also use water to influence politics.

My sources also alleged that the powerful Revolutionary Institutional Party, or PRI – which has long run Mexico State, and thus controlled its water supply – has turned off the water in towns whose mayors belonged to opposition parties. These tactics are not reported in the Mexican press, but according to my research the cuts tend to occur just before municipal elections – a bid to make the PRI’s political competition look bad.

Water corruption isn’t limited to Mexico State, or to the center-right PRI party.

The millions of Mexicans who lack reliable access to piped water are served by municipal water trucks, called “pipas,” which drive around filling buildings’ cisterns. This system seems prone to political exploitation.

Interviewees told me that city workers sometimes make people show their voter ID cards, demonstrating their affiliation to the governing party, before receiving their water. Across the country, mayoral candidates chase votes by promising to give residents free or subsidized water service, rather than to charge based on consumption.

The phenomenon of trading water as a political favor is probably more common in lower income communities, which rely almost exclusively on the pipas.

Water is a state secret

In Xalapa, the capital of Veracruz state, I saw how water can hold a different kind of political power.

There, I found, the location of underground pipes and other critical water infrastructure was guarded like a state secret, known by just a handful of public workers. It made them irreplaceable.

So when customers complained that some municipal employees were asking for bribes to provide water, management hesitated to fire them. The workers controlled valuable information about the city’s water system.

Water may be a human right. But when politicians manipulate it for their personal or political benefit, some cities flood while others go dry.

Veronica Herrera, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Connecticut