Toomey slams Omarova’s case for putting credit to “productive uses.”
“It's troubling to ponder how she or anyone would choose to define ‘productive uses’ in our economy. How about loans to oil, gas and coal companies?”
She would push fossil fuel firms into bankruptcy, he says.
Toomey warns against ending fossil fuel finance with “Americans paying close to $5/g for gas, and home heating costs soaring due to the Biden administration’s disastrous energy policies.”
Here’s @amoshochstein refuting narrative that energy transition is causing the price surge:
Kennedy asks about Omarova’s membership in a Soviet youth group.
“Everybody in that country was a member of the Komsomol... it was a part of normal progress in school.”
“Have you resigned?”
“You grow out of it with age.”
“Did you send them a letter, though, resigning?”
Cynthia Lummis, who owns Bitcoin and is pushing for lighter crypto regs, praises adoption of Bitcoin as national currency in *El Salvador*
“How do you think that you, as a regulator, can make the judgment calls that people don’t have adequate access to capital?”
North Carolina Sen Tillis playing to the anti-woke/CRT crowd:
“Being an immigrant, a woman, and a minority — do you believe that to be the basis for any of the questions that have been asked of you today?”
“...I just don't see any basis for the so-called McCarthyism and bias.”
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UChicago has aggressively courted funds for special institutes, earmarked for specific, donor-influenced projects. The “Institute for the Formation of Knowledge,” run by the prolific classicist Shadi Bartsch, wife of the late president of the university, is a cautionary tale. 1/
These initiatives bypass faculty oversight, allowing the university to chase academic trends, poach talent, and make prize appointments. Easier to create and destroy than new departments, they also come with strings attached. chicagomaroon.com/27469/news/res…
Many of these centers have names that sound weirdly like what a university is already supposed to be doing... but, as special initiatives, they are much more flexible to the priorities of the administration.
NEW: In Texas, labor supply can hardly keep up with the booming demand for solar.
Yet despite the hot labor market, most solar construction workers are exploited temps: paid unpredictably, forced to front travel expenses, and laid off without notice. prospect.org/labor/workers-…
I visited the largest solar facility to date in Texas, which is (surprisingly!) staffed by a union construction company.
Their CEO told me it’s good business. “In right-to-work states, being union is an advantage, especially in a market where labor is short all around.”
Labor is definitely short. Multinational companies are flocking to energy hotspots like Houston, where they want to own part of America’s new renewable grid. This solar array sits on farmland leased by Tokyo Gas America, a Japanese utility, and Total, the French oil giant.
New: To build its plant in Normal, IL, @Rivian used an elaborate subcontracting scheme denying overtime pay to 100+ Mexican workers.
Now, assembly line workers are pushing to unionize the plant. I interviewed them on disorderly and unsafe work conditions: prospect.org/labor/industri…
The bigger picture: Biden promises “good-paying union jobs.” But as local and federal govts make an unprecedented wealth transfer to the next generation of clean energy companies, Democrats are missing the moment to make sure green jobs use union labor.
The first big pulse of investment into electric cars coincided with the financial crisis, when auto jobs were being restructured. Tesla, fueled by Obama’s clean energy investments, is the only non-union U.S.-based automaker. Lots of happy talk about not repeating those mistakes..
Fertilizer is another sector where turmoil in supply—driven by conflict and extreme weather—provides cover for dominant firms to sell at extraordinary prices.
For @TheProspect I looked at the roots of the fertilizer price runup:
China + Russia shielded their farmers from price surge by halting fertilizer exports. U.S. did the opposite, barring major fertilizer IMPORTS by slapping tariffs on Russia, Morocco, Trinidad.
@JLinvilleFert says top phosphate producer Mosaic has their hand in ~88% of U.S. supply
Bipartisan group in Congress is now pushing back on those tariffs: “planting decisions are increasingly being made not on market fundamentals but rather on the cost of production driven by the price and supply of fertilizer.”
The industrial policy and competition bill, COMPETES, just passed the House. It would put $500m toward “supporting independent media and countering disinformation.”
The Senate version of the competition bill urges criticism of the Belt and Road Initiative, which it also aims to compete with.
In other words, the same bill puts $ into competing with BRI, and criticizing it. (Also, promoting “market-based alternatives” in other target sectors)
“Unprecedented wave of mergers and a crippling erosion of the diversity and independence of the US media”
Critical of how U.S. uses soft power and NGOs to “brainwash local people with American values,” prior to interference particularly in LatAm and Caribbean.