In Zimbabwe the Water Taps Run Dry and Worsen ‘a Nightmare’ – The New York Times

By Patrick Kingsley and Jeffrey Moyo

• July 31, 2019
• • 1

HARARE, Zimbabwe — It had been five days since water had stopped flowing out of the taps at Eneres Kaitano’s bungalow in southern Harare, Zimbabwe’s modern and tidy capital city. Five days since she had done any laundry. Five days since she had forbidden her children from using the toilet more than once a day.

On the sixth day, she again rose at 3 a.m. to fetch water from a communal borehole. By the early afternoon, she was still waiting her turn at the tap with her six buckets and cans.

Much of the city had the same idea. More than half of the 4.5 million residents of Harare’s greater metropolitan area now have running water only once a week, according to the city’s mayor, forcing them to wait in lines at communal wells, streams and boreholes.

“It is causing us serious problems,” said Ms. Kaitano, a 29-year-old jeans wholesaler who was down to her last clean outfit last week. “We have to stop ourselves from going to the toilet.”

Opinion | A Racist Stuck in the Past – By Paul Krugman – The New York Times

By Paul Krugman

Opinion Columnist

• July 29, 2019
• • 849

As evidence grew in 2002 to exonerate the Central Park Five, their supporters demanded an apology from Donald Trump, who, soon after their arrest, had called for the return of the death penalty.   CreditCreditFrances Roberts 

“Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes, Donald Trump is a vile racist. He regularly uses dehumanizing language about nonwhites, including members of Congress. And while some argue that this is a cynical strategy designed to turn out Trump’s base, it is at most a strategy that builds on Trump’s pre-existing bigotry. He would be saying these things regardless (and was saying such things long before he ran for president); his team is simply trying to turn bigoted lemons into political lemonade.

What I haven’t seen pointed out much, however, is that Trump’s racism rests on a vision of America that is decades out of date. In his mind it’s always 1989. And that’s not an accident: The ways America has changed over the past three decades, both good and bad, are utterly inconsistent with Trump-style racism.

Why 1989? That was the year he demanded bringing back the death penalty in response to the case of the Central Park Five, black and Latino teenagers convicted of raping a white jogger in Central Park. They were, in fact, innocent; their convictions were vacated in 2002. Trump, nevertheless, has refused to apologize or admit that he was wrong.

His behavior then and later was vicious, and it is no excuse to acknowledge that at the time America was suffering from a crime wave. Still, there was indeed such a wave, and it was fairly common to talk about social collapse in inner-city urban communities.

But Trump doesn’t seem to be aware that times have changed. His vision of “American carnage” is one of a nation whose principal social problem is inner-city violence, perpetrated by nonwhites. That’s a comfortable vision if you’re a racist who considers nonwhites inferior. But it’s completely wrong as a picture of America today.

For one thing, violent crime has fallen drastically since the early 1990s, especially in big cities. Our cities certainly aren’t perfectly safe, and some cities — like Baltimore — haven’t shared in the progress. But the social state of urban America is vastly better than it was.

On the other hand, the social state of rural America — white rural America — is deteriorating. To the extent that there really is such a thing as American carnage — and we are in fact seeing rising age-adjusted mortality and declining life expectancy — it’s concentrated among less-educated whites, especially in rural areas, who are suffering from a surge in “deaths of despair” from opioids, suicide and alcohol that has pushed their mortality rates above those of African-Americans.”

David Lindsay: Thank you Paul Krugman. I didn’t want to read this piece, because I’m getting tired of going over Trump, who gets too much attention. But Krugman doesn’t disappoint. Here is top comment I heartily endorsed:

J

Jonathan

OlympiaJuly 29

Paul Krugman is, currently, and has been for some long while, the best opinion columnist in America. Not only are his analyses of problems almost inevitably deeply, penetratingly, accurate, recognizing and illuminating a host of ideas and issues related to the main issue and showing how they are related – usually social problems are complex, let alone political and economic ones – he is also a superb writer, able to articulate all manner of complex notions in simple, clear language. Today’s column is spectacularly good – and merely the normal for him. He is a gift to the nation.

6 Replies1211 Recommended

How to Pack a Suitcase – Travel Guides – The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/guides/travel/how-to-pack-a-suitcase?fallback=0&recId=1OjaJi76xSlpWWBg2eUKpnwE34R&locked=0&geoContinent=NA&geoRegion=CT&recAlloc=home-desks&geoCountry=US&blockId=home-living-vi&imp_id=733213345&action=click&module=Smarter%20Living&pgtype=Homepage&redirect=true

1. The bigger your suitcase, the more you will put into it: The simplest way to avoid bringing too many things is to buy a hard-sided suitcase, no more than 22 inches tall (so it can work as a carry-on) with a structured shell so you can’t squeeze in any extras.

2. Do the clothing countdown: If you need a mantra to help streamline your wardrobe, use the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 rule for a weeklong trip: Limit yourself to no more than five sets of socks and underwear, four tops, three bottoms, two pairs of shoes and one hat. The list should be adjusted to suit your needs. Throw in a swimsuit and exercise gear or a suit jacket and dress if you’ll need them.

3. Lay out what you think you’ll need, then edit ruthlessly: “Think twice about everything you want to put in your bag,” said Ben Nickel-D’Andrea, who writes about flying first-class with his husband, Jon Nickel-D’Andrea, at No Mas Coach!, part of the BoardingArea blogger network. The jet-setting couple once flew to Morocco for nine days with only carry-on bags and backpacks. “Fully get rid of the ‘just in case I need it’ category,” he said. “If and when you need it, you can buy it.”

Opinion | Spare Me the Purity Racket – By Maureen Dowd – The New York Times

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

• July 27, 2019
• • 2602

Nancy Pelosi, at lectern, with other House Democrats at the Capitol Thursday to talk about the first 200 days of the 116th Congress.CreditCreditErin Schaff/The New York Times

“WASHINGTON — After I interviewed Nancy Pelosi a few weeks ago, The HuffPost huffed that we were Dreaded Elites because we were eating chocolates and — horror of horrors — the speaker had on some good pumps.

Then this week, lefty Twitter erected a digital guillotine because I had a book party for my friend Carl Hulse, The Times’s authority on Capitol Hill for decades, attended by family, journalists, Hill denizens and a smattering of lawmakers, including Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Susan Collins.

I, the daughter of a D.C. cop, and Carl, the son of an Illinois plumber, were hilariously painted as decadent aristocrats reveling like Marie Antoinette when we should have been knitting like Madame Defarge.

Yo, proletariat: If the Democratic Party is going to be against chocolate, high heels, parties and fun, you’ve lost me. And I’ve got some bad news for you about 2020.

The progressives are the modern Puritans. The Massachusetts Bay Colony is alive and well on the Potomac and Twitter.

They eviscerate their natural allies for not being pure enough while placing all their hopes in a color-inside-the-lines lifelong Republican prosecutor appointed by Ronald Reagan.

The politics of purism makes people stupid. And nasty.

My father stayed up all night the night Truman was elected because he was so excited. I would like to stay up ’til dawn the night a Democrat wins next year because I’m so excited to see the moment when the despicable Donald Trump lumbers into a Marine helicopter and flies away for good.

But Democrats are making that dream ever more distant because they are using their time knifing one another and those who want to be on their side instead of playing it smart.

House Democrats forced Robert Mueller to testify, after he made it clear that he was spent and had nothing to add to his damning yet damnably legalistic, double-negative report, because they were hoping the hearings would jump-start howls for impeachment.”

David Lindsay: You go girl. Maureen is spot on, even if catty as ususal. It all boils down to the anlaysis of lights like David Leonhard and the folks he reports on. Trump would do welll in impeachment, claiming every day to be the victim, while enjoying all the negative attention. Then, if the Dems were stupid enough to actually impeach him, it would go to the Senate, which would declare his innocence, which he would trumpet like a happy drunk.  It’s a part he plays well. We do not worry about his base, but about the myriad red state voters who voted for Obama, but then voted for Trump.

Opinion | Jay Inslee: Climate Change Is a Winning Campaign Issue — and President Trump Knows It – The New York Times

By Jay Inslee

Mr. Inslee is the governor of Washington and a Democratic candidate for president.

• July 28, 2019
• • 556

Firefighters trying to douse burning embers during the Woolsey Fire in Ventura County, Calif., which destroyed mansions and mobile homes alike.CreditCreditFrederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“I’ve heard it my whole career, from pundits, special interests and even political consultants: Just shut up about climate change if you want to be elected. They set up a false dichotomy between the economy and the environment, saying you can’t fight for good jobs and for clean air.

That was bad advice then, and it’s even worse advice now. There is a change happening: Americans really feel climate change in their daily lives — and they are demanding leadership from their politicians like never before.

In my campaign, I’ve seen how climate change — and the coal, oil and gas industries fueling it — have become personal problems for many families.”

Opinion | Why We Should Fear Easy Money – The New York Times

By Ruchir Sharma

Mr. Sharma is a contributing opinion writer.

• July 29, 2019
• • 80

Image

The Federal Reserve in Washington DC. CreditCreditChristopher Lee for The New York Times

To widespread applause in the markets and the news media, from conservatives and liberals alike, the Federal Reserve appears poised to cut interest rates for the first time since the global financial crisis a decade ago. Adjusted for inflation, the Fed’s benchmark rate is now just half a percent and the cost of borrowing has rarely been closer to free, but the clamor for more easy money keeps growing.

Everyone wants the recovery to last and more easy money seems like the obvious way to achieve that goal. With trade wars threatening the global economy, Federal Reserve officials say rate cuts are needed to keep the slowdown from spilling into the United States, and to prevent doggedly low inflation from sliding into outright deflation.

Few words are more dreaded among economists than “deflation.” For centuries, deflation was a common and mostly benign phenomenon, with prices falling because of technological innovations that lowered the cost of producing and distributing goods. But the widespread deflation of the 1930s and the more recent experience of Japan have given the word a uniquely bad name.

After Japan’s housing and stock market bubbles burst in the early 1990s, demand fell and prices started to decline, as heavily indebted consumers began to delay purchases of everything from TV sets to cars, waiting for prices to fall further. The economy slowed to a crawl. Hoping to jar consumers into spending again, the central bank pumped money into the economy, but to no avail. Critics said Japan took action too gradually, and so its economy remained stuck in a deflationary trap for years.

The Weekly | Facebook Love Scams: Who’s Really Behind That Friend Request? – The New York Times

Episode 7: ‘Connecting the World’

Producer/Director Rolake Bamgbose

“A lonely Florida woman established a Facebook romance with a man she thought was an American soldier in Iraq. It wasn’t until she had sent him tens of thousands of dollars from her and her husband’s life savings that she learned her buff, blue-eyed friend was a fake.

Online scams may be as old as the internet, but Facebook has made it easier for scammers to victimize users longing for connection, and to draft unwitting U.S. service members into their schemes. Neither the world’s largest social network nor the world’s most powerful military seem to be able to stop it.

In a special one-hour episode of “The Weekly,” our technology reporter Jack Nicas tries to track down some of these digital con artists.”

Under Brazil’s Far Right Leader, Amazon Protections Slashed and Forests Fall – The New York Times

By Letícia Casado and Ernesto Londoño

• July 28, 2019
• • 463

“BRASÍLIA — The destruction of the Amazon rain forest in Brazil has increased rapidly since the nation’s new far-right president took over and his government scaled back efforts to fight illegal logging, ranching and mining.

Protecting the Amazon was at the heart of Brazil’s environmental policy for much of the past two decades. At one point, Brazil’s success in slowing the deforestation rate made it an international example of conservation and the effort to fight climate change.

But with the election of President Jair Bolsonaro, a populist who has been fined personally for violating environmental regulations, Brazil has changed course substantially, retreating from the efforts it once made to slow global warming by preserving the world’s largest rain forest.

While campaigning for president last year, Mr. Bolsonaro declared that Brazil’s vast protected lands were an obstacle to economic growth and promised to open them up to commercial exploitation.

Seven months into his term, that is already happening.

Brazil’s part of the Amazon has lost more than 1,330 square miles of forest cover since Mr. Bolsonaro took office in January, a 39 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the government agency that tracks deforestation.

In June alone, when the cooler, drier season began and cutting trees became easier, the deforestation rate rose drastically, with roughly 80 percent more forest cover lost than in June of last year.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT comment

This is a depressing but important story, thank you Casado and Londono. The United States should be organizing NATO to pressure Brazil, and if necessary, invade Brazil, and conduct regime change, to protect the Amazon rain forest, since most scientist are in agreement, that we can not survive without it. Since Trump won’t be interested, what is a concerned citizen of the world and environmentalist to do. We can start with a boycott of all things Brazilian, by willing countries, and in the US, by willing citizens. I’ve never liked boycotts, because they are slow and clumsy, and I do no know how to go about it with Brazil. But a boyocott of everything Brazillian, and especially their beef and soy bean producst, would be better than silence and despair.

David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion” (of 18th centuryVietnam) and blogs at InconvenientNews.net.

Opinion | Black Women Are Leaders in the Climate Movement – The New York Times

By Heather McTeer Toney

Mrs. Toney is the national field director of Moms Clean Air Force.

• July 25, 2019
• 

Dr. Na’Taki Osborne Jelks, an environmental activist, is one of the founders of the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance.CreditCreditAudra Melton for The New York Times

“Before the first Democratic debate, I watched one of my favorite shows, MSNBC’s AM Joy, excited to see not one, but three people of color tapped to talk about climate change and how candidates were discussing it along the campaign trail. My heart dropped when Tiffany Cross, a guest commentator on the show, stated that while climate change disproportionately impacts communities of color, it’s an issue only in very “niche groups” of those communities. She wasn’t claiming that the issue wasn’t important, but that your average black person didn’t see it as an everyday thing.

Despite stereotypes of a lack of interest in environmental issues among African-Americans, black women, particularly Southern black women, are no strangers to environmental activism. Many of us live in communities with polluted air and water, work in industries from housekeeping to hairdressing where we are surrounded by toxic chemicals and have limited food options that are often impacted by pesticides.

Environmentalism, in other words, is a black issue.

For more than 20 years, Dr. Mildred McClain has been fighting to protect and educate communities of color in Savannah, Ga. When the air was thick with pollution from the shipping channels in the Savannah port in 2018, Dr. McClain convened community meetingsso that people were part of the solution. She encouraged African-Americans in her community to become certified in environmental fields like hazardous waste removal, soil remediation and air monitoring.

Dr. Beverly Wright, a professor of sociology, has been training leaders from our country’s historically black colleges and universities in the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice. She started the HBCU Climate Change Consortium and the HBCU-CBO Gulf Equity Consortium, where her students assisted Hurricane Katrina victims, researched climate impacts on vulnerable communities and took their brilliance to places like the COP21 in Paris to witness the negotiation of the Paris Climate Accord.”

Automakers, Rejecting Trump Pollution Rule, Strike a Deal With California – By Coral Davenport and Hiroko Tabuchi – The New York Times

By Coral Davenport and Hiroko Tabuchi

• July 25, 2019
• • 235

“WASHINGTON — Four of the world’s largest automakers, including the Ford Motor Company, have struck a deal with California to reduce tailpipe pollution, in a setback to the Trump administration as it prepares to weaken national emissions standards and revoke states’ rights to set their own such rules.

While Trump administration officials in the White House and Environmental Protection Agency have been working on a plan to drastically weaken Obama-era rules on planet-warming vehicle pollution, four automakers — Ford, Honda, Volkswagen Group of America and BMW of North America — have been holding secretive talks in Sacramento on a plan to move forward with the standards in California, the nation’s largest auto market. And on Thursday, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California said he was “very confident” that more automakers would join the deal in the coming days.

The move is another blow in the battle between Mr. Trump and California, a state he seems to relish antagonizing and which has filed more than 50 lawsuits against his administration. “We in California see these regulations as a good thing. The Trump administration is hellbent on rolling back them back,” Mr. Newsom said. “They are in complete denialism about climate change.” “