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POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTING AND EARLY VOTING, WITH GENERAL ELECTION ON NOVEMBER 7^TH; VoteTexas.gov; HarrisVotes.com; Get our analysis and suggestions about the 14 proposed Texas Constitutional amendments and 2 Bond Issues from our October 26^th show which you can access here at ThinkwingRadio.com; Mail-In Ballot Snafus And How To Survive Them; Houston’s 2023 Mayoral Election; Presented by Houston Landing; Everything you need to know before voting for Houston’s new mayor in November election; ‘I’m doing great’ | Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo gives update on mental health; Vouchers could give families money for private school. But do Houston campuses have space?; Facing enrollment declines, Texas Catholic schools are leading supporters of school vouchers; House Republican centrists chickened out and failed America; The Devil’s Bargain Mike Pence Could Not Escape; Everything you wanted to know about Fed day and were afraid to ask; Energy Dept. Pours Billions Into Power Grids but Warns It’s Not Enough; US halts exports of most civilian firearms for 90 days; IAEA officials: Fukushima ongoing discharge of treated radioactive water going well; The place where no humans will tread for 100,000 years; More

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host, assistant producer and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) or Thursdays at 6PM on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

1. VOTING IN THE NOVEMBER 7^TH GENERAL ELECTION:
   3. Early voting is ongoing until Nov. 3. Polling place hours are open Monday thru Saturday, 7am to 7pm, and on Sundays from noon to 7pm
   4. In Harris County, you can get a sample ballot for your specific precinct by going HERE.
   5. Polling places are listed HERE.
   6. For more election information anywhere in Texas, go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
   7. You may be able track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
   8. In HARRIS COUNTY, go to COM. For any place in Texas, you can go to VOTETEXAS.GOV
2. MIKE: You can also get our analysis and suggestions about the various proposed Texas Constitutional amendments and other propositions from our October 26^th show which you can access here at ThinkwingRadio.com.
3. MIKE: I received a mail ballot for every 2023 election until this one. It seems that my application got expunged along with Texas’ mandated elimination of the Harris County election administrator office. This forced me to early vote in person for the first time in years, and I’m sure that is not a unique story. So here’s my story.
   1. I usually get my mail-in ballot before early voting starts. I didn’t. So, I called the Clerk’s office. They had no information for me except that many, many people had been calling with the same complaint.
   2. The HarrisVotes website also had no record of a mail-in ballot for me, but they also didn’t have one for my wife, who did get her ballot.
   3. So to be safe, I decided to early vote.
   4. When I went to early vote, I had all these concerns about, what will happen if I get my mail-in ballot after I vote? Will I have to return it to a polling place to get it “spoiled”?  Will there be some other complication?
   5. I’m sure that is not a unique story.
      
   6. It turns out that I need not have worried. When I showed my ID (which in my case was my Texas Drivers License), they let me vote right away.
   7. Chatting with poll workers later, they told me that if I had a mail-in ballot coming to me, they would have flagged me right away and I would have had to vote with a provisional ballot.
   8. That’s when I understood that the County Clerk’s office had lost my mail application completely.
   9. So the moral of my long story: If you think you’re supposed to get a mail ballot and are still waiting, wait no more. Go to a polling place and vote. You still have a few days to early vote at any polling place in Harris County during regular early voting hours.
   10. REFERENCE: CURBSIDE VOTING — harrisvotes.com/Voter/Voters-with-Disabilities/Curbside-Voting — AND!!! If you have any qualms or physical disability that inhibits you from physically going to a polling place, curbside voting is available under certain circumstances. I’ve provided a reference link on how to curbside vote.
   11. Remember: Elections have consequences. The Republican-dominated Texas legislature has done everything they can to make voting really hard in Harris County. Show them that we can prevail.
4. Houston’s 2023 Mayoral Election; Presented by Houston Landing | VOTE.HOUSTONLANDING.ORG
   1. Get to know your candidates (and more)
   2. ALSO: Everything you need to know before voting for Houston’s new mayor in November election; COM | Tuesday, August 22, 2023/ 1:29PM
   3. MIKE: This is a really comprehensive article about Houston elections: Who’s running for what (including mayor, city controller), and all city council positions.
   4. Harris County residents can download a personalized ballot for t heir precinct by printing a sample ballot tied to your address. The service is available for Harris County residents at HarrisVotes.com and at VoteTexas.gov..
5. ‘I’m doing great’ | Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo gives update on mental health; Hidalgo says she’s enjoying everything about the job more than she did before and seeing things from a different perspective. Author: Marcelino Benito | KHOU | Published: 6:38 PM CDT October 31, 2023 [Updated: 9:28 PM CDT October 31, 2023 ]
   1. Friday will mark one month since Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo returned to work after taking a leave of absence to seek mental health treatment.
   2. Tuesday afternoon, she spoke with reporters about a host of issues, including the status of her health. 
   3. “I’m doing great, I really am,” said Hidalgo. “They told me I was good to go. I was initially supposed to be at the mental health facility for five weeks, then the care team extended it to seven weeks. By the time I got discharged, the sense was ‘I’m good now. I felt a lot better.'”
   4. But Hidalgo admits, returning to work brought with it its own concerns. 
   5. “In the back of my head, I was a little bit worried. You know what if it comes back? How will I know if I’m actually better? Now a month into the job, six weeks after discharge, I really feel great,” she said.
   6. Improving her mental health and focusing on getting better remain Hidalgo’s top priorities as she now sees her job differently. 
   7. “I’m enjoying things more than I did before,” she said. “It’s really seeing things from a different perspective.” …
   8. MIKE: There are also a couple of videos of Hidalgo being interviewed on this subject.
   9. MIKE: Hidalgo’s comment about “seeing things from a different perspective” reminded me of a situation in my life. My parents had been recently divorced, and I had seen the move “Divorce American Style”. Spoiler alert, the couple gets back together at the end.
   10. MIKE: I found this ending made me a little angry because I found it so improbable. Then it was pointed out to me that the couple never really wanted a divorce in the first place, which is a long story in itself. But this change of perspective allowed me to actually enjoy the movie the next time I saw it.
   11. MIKE: Her comment also reminded me of some work I’d read about by William Halse Rivers (W.H.R.) Rivers. He was an English anthropologist, neurologist, and psychiatrist who is today most famous for his work with ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers during World War I.
   12. MIKE: Rivers developed ways to reframe the traumatizing events of soldiers, persuading them to see certain horrific events in ways that eased their minds somewhat.
   13. MIKE: So what I got from Hidalgo’s comment is that whatever was plaguing her mind, getting help to see things from a different perspective is a real thing that can aid a person’s outlook on life. And that makes her personal story potentially important to many people suffering from depression. There can be help.
6. Vouchers could give families money for private school. But do Houston campuses have space?; by Miranda Dunlap / Staff writer | HOUSTONLANDING.ORG | October 31, 2023
   1. As Texas legislators have inched toward enacting an education voucher program this year, officials at The Woodlands Methodist School could sense excitement from families hoping to apply for a coveted spot. 
   2. But the Montgomery County campus faces a challenge shared by private schools across Greater Houston: There’s not enough room to meet the demand. The Woodlands Methodist already has strong enrollment at about 250 students, with several grades completely full and only enough physical space to accommodate roughly 40 more students. …
   3. Amid an ongoing ideological battle over state-funded vouchers that families could use for private school tuition and other education-related expenses, Houston-area campus administrators are warning about the practical realities that could blunt an influx of new students anytime soon. 
   4. Local private school leaders say they’re already near capacity and aren’t planning large expansions in response to voucher legislation. …
7. Along those same lines: Facing enrollment declines, Texas Catholic schools are leading supporters of school vouchers; The Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops has been one of the staunchest voucher supporters, arguing it would increase access to religious education regardless of income level. By Maia Pandey| TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Oct. 27, 2023 — Updated: 11 hours ago
   1. As the Texas Legislature debates school vouchers, one of the staunchest supporters of the initiative has been the Catholic Church.
   2. Texas Catholic leaders have been among the longest-running advocates for Gov. Greg Abbott’s top current legislative priority, which would allow parents to use taxpayer money for private education expenses. That’s true even as some other religious leaders have firmly opposed the legislation.
   3. Why are they divided? Catholic leaders say other religious leaders don’t fully appreciate the voucher program’s benefits, particularly its potential to expand access to private education. Voucher critics say Catholic leaders are acting in the interest of their own schools, which have experienced declining enrollment for decades, while promoting a program that could harm public schools.
   4. A voucher program would give parents the opportunity to choose a religious education regardless of their income level, said Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, which oversees all 254 Catholic schools in Texas.
   5. “It’ll take a few years, but our primary hope is that it will open the doors of our schools to even more low-income families and provide even greater access for those who wish to use Catholic schools for the education of their children,” Allmon said. …
   6. For some voucher critics, funneling taxpayer dollars to religious schools raises concerns about the separation of church and state.
   7. The Texas Constitution prohibits using money from the state treasury “for the benefit of any sect, or religious society, theological or religious seminary.” However, in a 2022 religious discrimination case, the S. Supreme Court ruled that tuition assistance programs, or school vouchers, must include religious schools if they are available to nonreligious private schools.
   8. The ruling was a major win for pro-voucher religious schools and leaders, but opponents say it raises thorny issues when people’s tax dollars are sent to religious institutions that have beliefs they do not share.
   9. MIKE: The second article goes a lot deeper into the Church-State issues of State education vouchers.
   10. MIKE: The whole idea of vouchers and “parental school choice” is based on a fundamental fallacy: That being, “if people are going to pay school taxes, they should have a choice of where they send their kids to school.”
   11. MIKE: And by the way, did you notice that part of the story mentioning “Woodlands Methodist”? And of course, the second story about Catholic schools wanting vouchers hits the nail on the head. And that gets us squarely into a Church-State issue, which Republicans want us to ignore.
   12. MIKE: On that basis of who has kids going to school, childless people should not pay school taxes and older “empty nesters” should not pay school taxes. Heck, Businesses — that by definition have no children — directly or indirectly pay school taxes. However, I have no interest in subsidizing religious schools, and that is my right under the US Constitution.
   13. MIKE: Frankly, it’s been quite a while since I had children in public school, but I still pay school taxes and I’m cool with that.
   14. MIKE: But that’s not why everyone — including businesses and renters who pay these taxes via their landlords — pays school taxes.
   15. MIKE: School taxes are the price we pay for universal education because universal education is an unequivocal societal good. Children grow into adult citizens. Those are citizens who need education to work. Citizens who need education to understand the world around them. And citizens who will hopefully and wisely vote.
   16. MIKE: “An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.” There are Conservatives who believe that workers should have no more education than absolutely necessary to join the labor class. At least one said the quiet part out loud: In 2022, Republican Representative Jim Banks tweeted, Student loan forgiveness undermines one of our military’s greatest recruitment tools at a time of dangerously low enlistments.” In other words, keep them poor and make sure their education doesn’t make them too smart to enlist. (Which, by the way, is a fallacy of its own, since the military needs increasingly well-educated people to operate its increasingly sophisticated systems.)
   17. MIKE: Free universal education is essential to our society. Arguably, college-level education should also be free, or at least very inexpensive, because it’s good for our country socially, economically and politically.
   18. MIKE: So if folks want to send their kids to private school, that’s fine, but I don’t want my school taxes to subsidize them.
8. House Republican centrists chickened out and failed America; by Juan Williams, Opinion Contributor | THEHILL.COM | 10/30/23, 9:30 AM ET
   1. What happened to House GOP centrists?
   2. They finally had a chance to defeat Trump extremists who turned the U.S. House of Representatives into a dysfunctional clown show for three weeks.
   3. But instead of grabbing control from the radicals, they caved and gave their votes to a low-profile agent of Trump chaos, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.).
   4. Johnson is an election denier who refused to vote to certify the 2020 election results. He also signed an amicus brief supporting Texas’s lawsuit to overturn President Biden’s victory in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
   5. “Mike Johnson wants to criminalize abortion care. … Mike Johnson wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it,” said House Minority leaderHakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “Those are extreme views.”
   6. Earlier, in the fight to name a Speaker, a group of 20 or so moderate House Republicans looked ready to defeat the radicals. They blocked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a Freedom Caucus extremist, from the top job.
   7. Jordan is a high-profile election denier and a central player in former President Donald Trump’s plot to overturn the last presidential election.
   8. Once Jordan was defeated, the far-right actors were busy knifing each other.
   9. That’s when the centrists had the opportunity to get the House GOP caucus back on the path of conservatism that had won the presidency for former Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
   10. They were steps from victory when Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) won enough votes to take his nomination to full vote on the House floor. But Trump denounced himas a “Globalist RINO.” Emmer’s sin was having voted to certify the 2020 election results and having been openly critical of the violent attack on the capitol by Trump supporters. 
   11. Once Emmer withdrew, the centrists folded, confirming their impotence.
   12. “This has been about who can appease Donald Trump,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) astutely observedof the three weeks of dysfunction in the House caused by far-right, Trump Republicans battling each other to lead the Republican majority.
   13. The heart of the centrist House bloc that chickened out comprises 18 Republicans representing congressional districts where President Biden got more votes than Trump.
   14. Beyond those swing-district members, there are middle-of-the-road Republicans with pragmatic approaches to fiscal issues and national security as well as centrist conservative views on social issues.
   15. If you look at the membership of three of the House GOP’s leading coalitions — the Problem Solvers, the Governance group and Main Street Republicans— they had enough firepower to keep the Speaker’s chair vacant and force the GOP to accept someone less extreme. They could have even worked with Democrats to that end. Instead, they turned tail and ran.
   16. Now the meager opposition to Trump on Capitol Hill is among Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the leader of the GOP caucus, remains no fan of Trump, but he rarely condemns the Trump-led extremists in the Senate or the House. McConnell limits his opposition to votes on funding the government and support for U.S. defense of Ukraine and Israel.
   17. At this point, the only Republicans daring to speak up about the odious decay caused by Trump are being pushed out of Congress or they have already been thrown out.
   18. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) leads the soon-to-depart Republican opposition to Trump. …
   19. Former House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney leads the already-ousted caucus of traditional conservatives opposed to Trump’s impact on the GOP brand. …
   20. [Juan Williams then says,] I’m a Democrat. I never thought I’d have to celebrate Romney and Cheney for their traditional Republican ideas – respect for election results, trying to govern and opposition to authoritarian governments.
   21. But times change.
   22. Republicans need some centrists with a backbone in Congress.
   23. If the MAGA extremists throw out Johnson for working with Democrats to keep the government open, they’ll need a new speaker.
   24. Speaker Romney? Speaker Cheney? 
   25. MIKE: On last week’s show, I gave an idea of how I thought the House Speaker race would resolve. My guess after 3 Speaker candidate dropouts was that we would end up with a bipartisan choice for a Republican speaker who would deal with both Republicans’ and Democrats’ legislative priorities and come to compromise solutions that would get bipartisan support.
   26. MIKE: Silly me. Democrats went through several decades of consistent spinelessness, Apparently, it’s now Republican centrists’ turn too be political jellyfish.
   27. MIKE: Juan Williams is no liberal. That he labels himself as a Democrat in this piece rather surprises me. For those who are curious about the interesting career path Juan Williams has taken, I’ve provided a reference link below this story.
   28. MIKE: But I think he’s hit the nail on the head. Relatively moderate Republicans had a chance to strike a historic political deal with Democrats to elect a Speaker of the House that would genuinely serve America and American interests, and they caved. There’s just no other way to put it.
   29. ANDREW: You know, I wonder how much real difference there will be between Speaker Johnson and the theoretical Speaker Emmer. 
   30. ANDREW: I’m sure there will be some, but I think that similarly to how Trump borrowed his slogan from Reagan, the two Speaker candidates will have a lot more overlap on the fundamentals. I expect the difference to be in how those fundamentals are presented. 
   31. ANDREW: Speaker Johnson will probably be a lot more open about hatred and conspiracy and Trump fealty, but just because Emmer would have been more quiet about those things does not mean he wouldn’t have bought into them. The two men are members of the same party, after all, and at this point those fundamentals of hatred and conspiracy and Trump fealty are the path to success in the Republican Party. I don’t see anything in centrism that would have stopped Emmer from walking that path, given the chance.
   32. ANDREW: In my opinion, this is the problem with “centrist” politics as a whole: it’s not about doing what’s right, it’s about doing what’s wrong deniably. As a result, centrist Republicans will never serve anyone but themselves.
   33. REFERENCE: Juan Williams — From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
9. The Devil’s Bargain Mike Pence Could Not Escape; The former vice president tied himself to Donald Trump in the 2016 campaign and it may have cost him a political future. By Adam Nagourney | NYTIMES.COM | Oct. 29, 2023, 5:02 a.m. ET
   1. The decision by Mike Pence to end his presidential campaign on Saturday was a bow to what had finally become inevitable. He was struggling to raise money, win support from the party’s base and manage the torments from the man who had made him nationally famous, Donald J. Trump.
   2. But the root of his campaign’s collapse — and, very possibly, his political career — goes back to 2016, when Mr. Pence accepted Mr. Trump’s offer to be his running mate.
   3. “He got it completely wrong,” said the Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical clergyman and a one-time leader of the anti-abortion movement who gave ministerial counsel to Mr. Pence 20 years ago but later turned against him because of his affiliation with Mr. Trump. “This ended up being disastrous for his political career.” …
   4. MIKE: DUH!!
   5. MIKE: The article goes on with what I charitably must call “blah, blah, blah.”
   6. MIKE: It’s always worth noting that Pence was not Trump’s first choice for VP. Rather, Pence was simply the last in a line of potential running mates for Trump who had enough integrity (and/or prescience) to decline the offer.
   7. MIKE: According to a reference article I’ve included below, there were up to about 35 individuals from among whom Trump might have picked a running mate.
   8. MIKE: Some of those were non-starters, but as I recall — and I can’t find an article to support my memory on this — there were some prospects who let it be quietly known that they would not share a ticket with Trump, who was widely seen as a clownish political aberration who could not possibly win the general election. Those individuals who declined saw no upside to being Trump’s running mate, win or lose.
   9. MIKE: So Pence, as I recall, was the first in line who had the blind ambition and the weakness of character to say “yes” to Trump.
   10. MIKE: So what could possibly go wrong?
   11. MIKE: Pence’s weakness of character and selective Christian morals were on full display during his single VP debate with Democratic VP nominee Senator Tim Kane. Kane looked like the rumpled, perpetually lost character “Uncle Billy” from “It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)”. Tim Kane is a good person, and he struggled against Pence’s almost-movie star good looks. Where Pence was attractive. Well-built and well-groomed, Kane looked almost like he had just rushed on stage from a windy day.
   12. MIKE: When Pence answered moderator’s questions, he lied his butt off. That left Kane with the perennial choice of rebutting Pence’s lies or getting his own debate points on the record. This is a no-win in any debate.
   13. MIKE: It was my opinion then — and I hated to say it then and now — that Pence’s smooth lies won that debate against Kane’s somewhat flustered truths.
   14. MIKE: I’ve seen nothing in Pence’s public career or comments then since to change my opinion of him: That he’s a truly smooth liar and prevaricator
   15. MIKE: The one courageous thing I know of that he’s done in his career was to insist on doing his ceremonial role of counting the electoral votes against immense pressure from Trump and his lackeys.
   16. MIKE: And it’s worth noting that he only stood up to Trump after seeking advice from numerous confidants as to what he should do. He went so low on the intellectual food chain as ex-VP Dan Quayle — a man not known for his wisdom and intellectual breadth — to look for a way to say “yes” to Trump. Even Dan Quayle had the smarts and integrity to tell Pence that there was no Constitutional or legal way to do it.
   17. MIKE: Winston Churchill has been credited with saying something to the effect of, Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.”
   18. MIKE: Evidence suggests that Churchill never said any such thing, and the origin of a similar quote may actually be properly attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Abba Eban, who didn’t actually ascribe such a sentiment to any nation specifically.
   19. MIKE: But in the end, this might perfectly describe Mike Pence’s actions on January 6^th and 7^th of 2021. Pence did the right thing, once all other possibilities were exhausted.
   20. MIKE: So to sum up, this is Mike Pence reaping what he has sown. And in my opinion, most deservedly.
   21. ANDREW: Agreed. Pence’s fortunes remind me of another saying: “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.“
   22. REFERENCE: Trump picked Pence for VP. Here’s who he passed up. — WASHINGTONPOST.COM, By Kevin Uhrmacher, Denise Lu and Aaron Blake. Updated July 15, 2016
   23. REFERENCE: “Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing…” —THE CHURCHILL PROJECT, WINSTONCHURCHILL.HILLSDALE.EDU
   24. REFERENCE: Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives — QUOTEINVESTIGATOR.COM
10. Everything you wanted to know about Fed day and were afraid to ask; Analysis by Elisabeth Buchwald, | CNN | Updated 9:35 PM EDT, Tue October 31, 2023
    1. While you’re busy handing out candy to trick-or-treaters, Federal Reserve officials are doing something a lot less riveting, most people would say.
    2. After finishing the first day of their two-day meeting, they’re probably still thinking about all the discussions they had about the economy. Then tomorrow comes the big decision on interest rates.
    3. But this time around, it doesn’t feel like such a big decision. That’s because the central bank is widely expected to hold interest rates steady for the second meeting in a row.
    4. It may seem a little strange given all the recent data that’s suggesting the economy is doing really well. Or as many economists are implying, scary well.
    5. That’s because what may appear like good news for the economy isn’t necessarily that good.
    6. For instance, last week’s gross domestic product report, which showed the economy grew at a remarkably strong pace in the third quarter, on the surface sounds like something worthy of celebrating. The Biden administration certainly did.
    7. But in [this writer’s] view, good economic reports are ones that show sustainable trends. And in many economists’ view the third-quarter GDP report shows the economy isn’t growing at a sustainable pace.
    8. In other words, the good times may not last very long before the party’s over and the economy wakes up with a big hangover. …
    9. So are we getting that rate cut any time soon? [This writer] wouldn’t bank on it. The general sense [she’s] getting is that the Fed may be done hiking but they’re going to keep rates high for a while.
    10. MIKE: There’s a fair bit to unpack in this short article. One piece is, why does the Fed raise interest rates? Answer: To fight inflation, which might be defined as prices rising too rapidly.
    11. MIKE: Why do prices rise too rapidly? The classic answer is too much money chasing too few goods. Another less-classic answer is corporate greed, otherwise known as charging what the traffic will bear.
    12. MIKE: So how does raising interest rates slow down inflation? In theory, it slows purchases by making it more expensive to borrow money to finance those purchases. This relieves pressure on the supply side, making price increases harder to sustain. Of course, it also means losing jobs as demand slackens. Thus, higher interest rates generally penalize workers by raising unemployment, which also is supposed to aid in slowing demand and lowering price pressures on supplies.
    13. MIKE: This brings up in my mind the writer’s comment that, “the economy isn’t growing at a sustainable pace.” I then ask, what constitutes a sustainable pace?
    14. MIKE: As a non-economist, in my view, a sustainable pace is when supply can meet demand without rapid prices increases because supply and demand are in close equilibrium.
    15. MIKE: Right now, the year-over-year inflation rate in the US is about 3.7 percent. That’s compared to about 8.2% this time last year. With a target inflation rate of 2% (which most central banks consider optimal), during a time of supply disruptions due to various significant wars, 3.7% is pretty good.
    16. MIKE: Further, thanks to Bidenomics, companies are investing in new factories and increased production. That helps to ease supply-side constraints which are a key cause of inflation, so we may see further inflation reductions in some segments of the economy.
    17. MIKE: There are still elements outside US control, though, such as certain raw materials and imported components.
    18. MIKE: But there’s also another aspect to fighting inflation with interest rate increases: It’s a lot like looking for police cars while you’re speeding. By the time you see one, it’s usually too late. Fighting inflation with interest rate hikes is often similar. By the time a central bank realizes it got the job done, it’s tilted the economy into a recession, which is a fancy way of saying that they overshot their target.
    19. MIKE: Every central bank hopes to get things tuned so finely that the economy makes a “soft landing” when inflation is eased. That almost never happens due to economic inertia. Central banks almost always wait too long to lower interest rates.
    20. MIKE: So that brings us back to the question of what constitutes a sustainable pace?
    21. MIKE: I’m hoping that we’re in one, and that keeping rates at this level will keep things at just the right pace when things settle down.
    22. ANDREW: One of the hard truths that Northern societies are going to have to learn to accept is that infinite growth is not sustainable, from an ecological perspective or an economic one. Growing the economy means using more resources, which means creating more pollution, but also means reducing the resource pool available. At some point, the skies will be full of smog and the earth will be empty, and the economy will have nowhere left to go.
    23. ANDREW: Economic strategies that focus on short-term goals like fighting inflation, or growing the economy by X percent this year build their impacts up over time to push the economy closer and closer to that point of exhaustion. I believe we keep finding ourselves in financial and inflation crises because central banks aren’t concerned with long-term strategies of actual sustainability. The idea of an economic cycle that fluctuates between expansion and contraction is well known–crisis, therefore, is the other side of the coin to growth. If we stop trying to grow infinitely, we can break the cycle and avoid regularly dipping into crisis.
    24. ANDREW: I’m not saying that growth is inherently bad, but there is a point at which consumption can meet everyone’s needs if distributed fairly, and our goal should be to grow to that point and then stop so we don’t waste anything or cause any more pollution than we need to. Avoiding waste allows us to preserve natural stores of resources for emergencies and even allow those stores to replenish given a long-enough time frame, and keeping pollution steady gives us a chance to clean it up and give us some of that smog space back. In other words, we can preserve economic growth potential for when we need it without having to accept the human suffering that comes with our current strategy of restoring that potential through the crises of the economic cycle–a strategy that seems to lead to diminishing returns every time.
    25. ANDREW: To bring this all back to the article, I don’t think we are in a sustainable economic pace, and we won’t be so long as we don’t have a growth limit in mind. The strategy of raising interest rates to fight inflation is making inflation worse in the end, and if we want to stop it, we have to stop thinking in the ways that make it happen.
    26. MIKE: Maybe we can expand on this discussion after the next story.
11. Energy Dept. Pours Billions Into Power Grids but Warns It’s Not Enough; America’s electric grids may need to expand by two-thirds by 2035 to handle future growth in clean energy, the agency said. The nation isn’t on track. By Brad Plumer, Reporting from Washington | NYTIMES.COM | Oct. 30, 2023
    1. The Energy Department on Monday announced $1.3 billion to help build three large power lines across six states, part of a new gusher of money from Washington to upgrade America’s electric grids so they can handle more wind and solar power and better tolerate extreme weather.
    2. But officials warned that money won’t be enough. In a major report published the same day, the Energy Department said that the nation’s vast network of transmission lines may need to expand by two-thirds or more by 2035 to meet President Biden’s goals to power the country with clean energy.
    3. That would help slash carbon dioxide emitted by gas and coal-fired electric plants — pollution that is heating the planet. But it would require hundreds of billions of dollars in investment and a frenzied pace of construction. “We need to seriously build out transmission,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.
    4. There is no single grid. The nation’s electric system is divided into a patchwork of regions, each overseen by different operators. But many face similar challenges.
    5. A major one is that there isn’t enough transmission capacity to carry power from far-flung wind and solar farms to population centers. Many regions are at risk of blackouts during heat waves or powerful storms, which are expected to worsen with climate change. Aging infrastructure needs to be replaced.
    6. The Energy Department’s report, the National Transmission Needs Study, looks at which places would benefit from new or expanded power lines. For example, customers in parts of Wisconsin and Michigan pay high prices because local grids are too congested to bring in cheaper power from elsewhere. The Mid-Atlantic’s grid is vulnerable to electricity shortfalls during winter storms because it lacks sufficient capacity to import power from its neighbors.
    7. But there are major barriers to grid expansion. While the study found that new transmission capacity between different regional grids would have large benefits, hardly any such projects have been built in recent decades, since they can require approval from more than one state or jurisdiction, leading to disagreements over who should pay.
    8. The federal government has limited authority to direct grid planning, in contrast to the way it oversaw the Interstate Highway System. Some regions, like Texas and the Southeast, have resisted expanding transmission ties with their neighbors. And some utilities are wary of new long-distance lines that might undercut their local monopolies.
    9. The Biden administration wants to use the limited tools at its disposal. As part of the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, Congress approved more than $20 billion to upgrade America’s power grids. The Energy Department has started sending much of that money out the door in recent weeks.
    10. As part of Monday’s announcement, the agency will negotiate a commitment to buy capacity from three proposed transmission projects: a 748-megawatt power line carrying renewable energy from New Mexico to Arizona, a 1,200-megawatt line bringing Canadian hydropower to Vermont and New Hampshire and a 1,500-megawatt line linking Utah and Nevada.
    11. By acting as an initial customer, the agency hopes to give developers confidence to move forward with these projects. The government would later sell its rights to private customers and replenish its funds, so that it could help other grid proposals.
    12. “This is an extremely promising program,” said Rob Gramlich, president of the consulting group Grid Strategies. He noted that many transmission projects are plagued by a “chicken or egg” problem: Developers won’t build power lines to windy or sunny regions until there are customers, but renewable projects won’t get built until after the lines are in place.
    13. Still, Mr. Gramlich said, the agency’s $2.5 billion program to alleviate this issue can only support “a very small set of lines.”
    14. Separately, the Department of Energy this month announced $3.5 billion in grants for 58 different projects to harden power lines against extreme weather, integrate batteries and electric vehicles into local grids and expand capacity for wind and solar power. That included $464 million for an effort to connect two large regional grids in the Midwest and Great Plains.
    15. Together, those projects could help increase U.S. renewable energy capacity by 10 percent, Ms. Granholm said. …
    16. MIKE: There is some more to that story if you’re interested.
    17. MIKE: Speaking of Texas, at the same time that we have suffered tight energy supplies due to intense heat or cold, we have wind and solar farms in west Texas that don’t have the transmission capacity get their energy to east Texas. This is the kind of program that can help to alleviate that problem and bring zero carbon energy to more people, which is of course bad for the natural gas industry. It will be interesting to see what kinds of roadblocks the Texas government tries to throw in the way of these investments.
    18. MIKE: One of the unmentioned aspects of this story is that it shows how economic development doesn’t have to mean “dirtier and more polluting”. In fact, economic development can mean doing things smarter, better, and more efficiently.
    19. MIKE: At the same time as we expand and modernize our energy grid, we can also use our electricity more efficiently with more efficient motors and better insulation, for example.
    20. MIKE: More and less expensive access to renewable electricity will mean more power for fewer natural gas appliances, thus reducing indoor and outdoor air pollution and reducing CO2 emissions. It also means elevating standards of living for people who have trouble paying their utility bills, both in terms of more money in their pockets and more comfortable lifestyles.
    21. ANDREW: Investment in renewables can certainly be a better choice for economic expansion than investment in non-renewable sources of energy. However, it’s not quite as simple as “do green capitalism instead and we don’t have to worry”.
    22. ANDREW: We’ve talked before on the show about articles covering the ecological footprint of manufacturing things like solar panels and batteries, and there’s a Scientific American opinion piece from 2021 using electric vehicles to illustrate the same thing. Even green growth requires the use of resources, processes that release pollution and carbon, and often aren’t even 50% efficient with the energy they use and/or store. That’s not to say we might as well just use coal, oil and gas, but it means we have to replace coal, oil and gas with green energy and more efficient uses of that energy at the same time as we shift to a “degrowth” or other alternative economic model and apply that model to our rollout of green energy.
    23. ANDREW: In the absence of that kind of model shift, green energy still has ecological benefits over fossil fuels, and it’s a better choice than building new coal power plants. And we certainly aren’t at the stage where everyone’s needs are met yet, one of the crucial intentions needed for a successful economic model shift. This new spending on power grids should have a positive impact in those directions, so I’m happy to hear about it. But I am asking our listeners and you, Mike, to not get complacent with spending that is ultimately in service of infinite growth like this package is, and to not buy into the fallacy of infinite growth. After all, humans don’t grow forever. Why would our constructs?
12. US halts exports of most civilian firearms for 90 days; Reporting by Chris Sanders and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Sandra Maler | REUTERS | October 27, 2023 @ 8:26 PM CDT, Updated a day ago
    1. The U.S. has stopped issuing export licenses for most civilian firearms and ammunition for 90 days for all non-governmental users, the Commerce Department said on Friday, citing national security and foreign policy interests.
    2. The Commerce Department did not provide further details for the pause, which also includes shotguns and optical sights, but said an urgent review will assess the “risk of firearms being diverted to entities or activities that promote regional instability, violate human rights, or fuel criminal activities.”
    3. The Commerce Department declined to comment beyond the posting on its website.
    4. The halt covers most of the guns and ammunition that could be purchased in a U.S. gun store, said Johanna Reeves, a lawyer who specializes in export controls and firearms with the law firm Reeves & Dola in Washington.
    5. Reeves said she had not seen the Commerce Department take such a sweeping action like this before. “For sure they have individual country policies – but nothing like this,” she said.
    6. Export licences for Ukraine and Israel, as well as some other close allies, will be exempted from the temporary halt in exports.
    7. S. companies that sell firearms, including Sturm Ruger & Co., Smith & Wesson Brands and Vista Outdoor, could be impacted by the export ban.
    8. Overseas customers include distributors and stores that sell firearms.
    9. Exporters can continue to submit license requests during the pause, but they will be “held without action” until the pause is lifted.
    10. The pause does not affect previously issued export licenses, Commerce said.
    11. For shipments to government clients, exporters must name specific end users, while applications with unnamed government, military, and police users will be “returned without action.”
    12. MIKE: I’m actually not sure what to add to this story except to say that it’s interesting and unprecedented, and I thought it was worth including in the show.
    13. ANDREW: Definitely interesting. There’s a Guardian article from 2021 that talks about how an estimated hundreds of thousands of guns are illegally exported from the US to Latin America, fuelling harmful violence and exploitation there. (I’m sure the US’ history of regime change in the region left a lot of guns over, too.) It’s possible that this action is an attempt to stem some of that modern “iron river”. We shall see if it’s effective.
    14. MIKE: Yes, I haven’t seen that article specifically, but Mexico and other Latin American countries get really pissed at the armaments that their gangs and revolutionaries get from the US gun market, whether it’s from straw sales at private gun shows or outright arms smuggling, among other means.
13. IAEA officials: Fukushima ongoing discharge of treated radioactive water going well; The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says the discharge of the second batch of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea has ended as planned on Monday. By MARI YAMAGUCHI | ASSOCIATED PRESS via ABCNEWS.GO.COM | October 23, 2023, 8:35 AM
    1. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said the discharge of the second batch of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea ended as planned on Monday, and International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Japan for their first safety and monitoring mission since the release began two months ago said “no issues” were observed.
    2. Fukushima Daiichi started releasing treated and diluted radioactive wastewater into the sea on Aug. 24. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings [TEPCO], said the release of a second, 7,800-ton batch of treated wastewater was completed, with its daily seawater sampling results fully meeting safety standards.
    3. A magnitude 9.0 quake on March 11, 2011, triggered a massive tsunami that destroyed the plant’s power supply and cooling systems, causing three reactors to melt and spew large amounts of radiation. Highly contaminated cooling water applied to the damaged reactors has leaked continuously into building basements and mixed with groundwater.
    4. The release of treated wastewater is expected to continue for decades. It has been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including South Korea, where hundreds of people have protested. China banned all imports of Japanese seafood the day the release began, badly hurting Japanese seafood producers, processors and exporters. Russia recently joined China in the trade restrictions.
    5. “I would say that the first two batches of releases went well. No issues were observed,” Lydie Evrard, IAEA deputy director general and head of the department of nuclear safety and security, told a Tokyo news conference. She said she visited Fukushima Daiichi on Friday for a firsthand look.
    6. Evrard’s visit came on the heels of a marine sampling mission by another IAEA team that included scientists from China, South Korea and Canada. She said all participants in that mission said their activity went well. She did not say whether Chinese scientists acknowledged the safety of the release.
    7. She said China has been involved in the IAEA safety task force since the beginning of the review that began two years ago and has participated in corroboration activities. The IAEA is aware of China’s concern and engaged with its authorities, Evrard said.
    8. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in his policy speech Monday, renewed his call for China to immediately lift its ban on Japanese seafood imports. …
    9. TEPCO has said it plans to release 31,200 tons of treated water by the end of March 2024, which would empty only 10 tanks out of 1,000 because of the continued production of wastewater at the plant.
    10. MIKE: I thought this was a useful update of a story that will be ongoing for up to 100 years. If not more.
14. The place where no humans will tread for 100,000 years; By Erika Benke | BBC.COM | 24th August 2023
    1. In a few years, Finland will begin depositing spent nuclear fuel underground in Onkalo, where it will remain for millennia. Erika Benke describes her experience of visiting the site. … Finland is on the verge of becoming the first nation to bury spent nuclear fuel rods deep underground for the long term.
    2. [This is written by the reporter in first person. I’m preserving her tense. It’s long, so I’ve heavily excerpted it.]
    3. I’m about to visit the world’s first permanent storage site for spent nuclear fuel.
    4. As I drive on a near-empty road in southwest Finland, I slow down trying to imagine what this picture-postcard Nordic countryside with huge pine trees would look like in 1,000 years. Or 10,000.
    5. Will there be any people in the pretty houses dotted around Olkiluoto island? If so, will they speak Finnish? Will they use a language at all? And, most crucially, will they know about the potential danger lurking in the ground under their feet at Onkalo? (Read more about how to communicate a nuclear warning 10,000 years into the future.)
    6. Spent fuel rods from nuclear power stations are currently kept in temporary storage facilities around the world.
    7. Finland is the first country implementing what it hopes is a permanent solution. Starting in two or three years, highly radioactive waste will be buried deep in the bedrock at Onkalo, after being encased in cast-iron and copper cylinders and wrapped in bentonite clay. …
    8. I walk through the turnstile at a security gate under the blazing midday sun and get into a car. Our guide drives into the service tunnel without hesitation. In a moment, everything turns very dark.
    9. It takes 15 minutes to drive down to Onkalo’s service station which lies … 1,430ft below the ground. As the …2.8 mile tunnel begins to snake down, we see a standard traffic sign for a … 12mph speed limit. …
    10. We arrive at the service station surprisingly quickly … It feels oddly normal: people are going about their jobs as if they were in a factory above the ground. …
    11. Our guides explain how nuclear waste canisters will arrive at the service area in a lift running straight down from the encapsulation plant on the surface. …
    12. When the spent fuel starts being stored here, canisters will be lowered from this lift landing area further down to a deposition tunnel where they’ll be picked up by robotic vehicles to take them to vertical deposition holes – their final resting places. …
    13. I’m alone in a dark tunnel where spent nuclear fuel will decay for millennia. I’m standing at a spot where, starting from 2025, no human should set foot for 100,000 years.
    14. It brings home so clearly how brief our lives are. I fleetingly contemplate how minuscule a part of 100,000 years my own life is.
    15. MIKE: I thought that this piece made a good couplet with the Fukushima story. At least from my perspective, it gives a good example of why I’m against nuclear power, at least in terms of current technology.
    16. MIKE” Let’s contemplate what it means to store hazardous waste for 100,000 years.
    17. MIKE: The oldest human civilizations go back no more than 10,000 years, and at that point, history is unwritten in any form we have discovered; it’s therefore considered to be prehistoric.
    18. MIKE: A 100,000 years is about 4000 to 5000 human generations. What do you know about your great-great grandparents? That’s 4 generations, including your parents.
    19. MIKE: Our species of human — homo sapiens — is about 100,000 years old. It’s thought that language is no more than 100,000-200,000 years old.
    20. MIKE: Is it the height of hubris to think that humans as a species can rationally think they can plan 100,000 years into the future? We can barely hope to project what the world will look like at the end of the 21^st century!
    21. ANDREW: There’s a video by Tom Scott from 2019 where he visited this exact site, showing what it looked like at that time and how they plan to store the waste. It’s a good watch, I’ve linked it on the blog at com.
    22. ANDREW: Interestingly, Tom says in his intro that he thinks nuclear power is good. So with Mike against it, Tom for it, and me solidly on the fence, that makes a nice diversity of viewpoints. Unexpected, but welcome.
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