In the century leading up to 1975, nearly 6000 freighters went down in the Great Lakes. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the last. The last. In 50 years, not a single commercial freighter has been lost in the Great Lakes. Why? It's NOAA. Of course it's NOAA.

Still processing the inanity of this cave, like, "We're going to make Republicans go on record that they want to destroy the ACA." You mean the motherfuckers who radicalized in opposition to it & voted to repeal it, like, 22 times? You're finally getting them on record? Really impressed over here

The logic has always been there where self gen was possible, eg with industrial cogen. Now farms, factories, buildings can do it with with solar, and batteries complete the argument for “micro markets” with their own marginal supply cost & demand, & Q of when and if to buy from or sell to the grid.

Reflecting, we built the historic system as a monolithic grid with large generators sending power down brachiating AC lines because that made sense at the time. What if that's not sensible anymore? What if it could be better done hybridized with DC & AC semi-islands, batteries & connectors? 🤷

Every transmission story the same. Every transmission story is the same. Every transmission story is the sa...

"India 's energy grid isn’t keeping up with a surge in clean power. The country wants to reach 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, but “we won’t be able to exceed it because there’s not enough transmission,” www.ft.com/content/9950...

Even the socialist won’t do something that’s completely within his power to delay the passage of a bill he ostensibly opposes. That same socialist also told the media the filibuster is important to the chamber. The Senate behaves like a private club.

To the extent PR + stronger parties can force some of these internal dynamics into the open, I bet it would be good for democracy and journalism.

I think I underestimated Australia’s size. Driving from Melbourne to Sydney is the equivalent of driving NYC to Detroit.

Don't glorify profits. You'll miss developments (like grid-scale batteries) which overturn previous profitability calculations or render new ones possible. But you'll also overlook the state's role in cultivating accumulation pathways through...dare I say it...a mixture of carrots and sticks.

Shout it from the rooftops! The (partial) impact on growth would also be positive. But again, that's not really the point either for "capitalists."

I should write the argument up properly somewhere, but I think this is fundamentally wrong. A decisive fraction of the capitalist class does oppose addressing the climate crisis, but *not* because it would be bad for profits. If anything, a green New Deal type program would raise aggregate profits.

Still upset about no power of the purse language. You truly do hate to see it. The Trump admin undertook the most expansive set of illegal budgetary actions of any president in history, and broadcast as loudly as possible they’d keep doing it, and nothing. Budgetary lawlessness.

Everyone is saying it. Literally everyone

The agreement to hold a vote on ACA subsidies is not a concession. It's worth literally nothing. It should be ignored when evaluating the merits of the deal

Sanders: Let’s be clear… If this vote succeeds, over 20 million Americans are going to see at least a doubling in their premiums… if resolution is passed tonight, we are on a path way to throw 15 million Americans off of medicaid and the affordable care act, 15 million.

For my entire career, approps has worked backwards from toplines. A bad practice that artificially constrains spending and deprioritizes actual need. These three bills were done the very very very old-fashioned way. Would love to see more of that. But again, if Trump can then just ignore the deal….

Should be clear in case I wasn’t clear enough: the bads are REALLY bad.

Either way, so many Dems... the bulk of the Senate caucus, House leadership, governors, etc.,... all quickly throwing down the gauntlet with such open unrestrained attacks on any Dems who cave is new. It wasn't like that in March, not nearly as loud and widespread and immediate, much more base-only.

The RIFs language is actually great. Not only does it rehire the people RIFed during the shutdown, it makes it an unequivocal Antideficiency Act violation to do ANY MORE RIFs through the duration of the CR (Jan 30) Completely stops Trump/Vought Phase 2 for now Would love to see this standardized

3 GOOD: some real approps working right for the first time in EONS, built based on need & politics, not from toplines. SHALL language on backpay 4 feds. Good anti-RIF language we’d want to see continued 2 BAD: Nothing forces Trump to actually FOLLOW the approps. A vote we could have forced already

I don't read enough Congressional legislation to speak with any real authority here but this RIF language stood out to me

If that's the deal, and the minibus stops RIFs, and we can just do this all over again in February if they renege... I think that's a viable outcome. The bottom line is that if the GOP wants to break the ACA, they're going to be able to do it, and we should chain it to their necks in the midterms.

Okay yeah the House caucus is pissed.

Really quite amazing (laudatory) for a Dem house member to be talking about the senate like this.

if the break is as reported- a short term CR- seems like we might want to do this again in January

personally, I think election years are a great time to repeatedly illustrate the intransigence, incapacity, & cruelty of the Republican majority

Sounds like the squishes in the senate caucus are ready to pull the plug with no ACA changes. This is real. If you want to register your opinion you shld call yr senator in the next hour. They not only want to reopen w/nothing. They want cover from their colleagues who still want to hold out.

From what I have seen so far this does not seem like a good deal:

interesting to review my own military theory canon and realize it's mostly about economics, social structures, and the connection between logistical-operational maneuver and air-sea power tactics is about as far at the bottom as one can imagine

When my parents and I visited Delhi during my early early childhood, I witnessed the very last days of my parents walking to the pharmacy to place international calls. It's absolutely wild that, in the blink of an eye, my generation set up whatsapp on our parents' phones.

SO MANY examples. Folks today basically have no conception of being lost in urban areas. If you don't know how the directions to an event or establishment, it's likely the *organizers* messed up. Not you. Would've been laughable 20 years ago.

It is genuinely hard for most people to grasp how poor the past was.

even within your own lifetime it is difficult to recall how much better everything you eat, drink, and touch is than it used to be

The CARES Act also established the precedent of large redistributive stimulus. That directly contributed to the Georgia senate wins. Remember that even as Dems were discussing big structural change™ in primaries, big fiscal didn’t achieve consensus till maybe summer 2020.

one thing i find crazy-making is the idea that getting rid of the filibuster would make congress a purely majoritarian institution. bicameralism itself is counter-majoritarian! equal state representation is counter-majoritarian! the fact that senate elections are staggered is counter-majoritarian!

Re affordability. The best thesis is that folks hate price shocks specifically. Temporally bounded, plenty of evidence, and doesn’t require any claims about income.

Always remarkable to remember that the us pandemic economic response was the single greatest economic policy of your lifetime

Urgent priority is for green banks and public developers to pursue public capture value off the massive solar + storage buildout. There’s added spread from impending loss of ITC. Won’t happen if they solely prioritize “additionality” or non-market segments in their portfolios.

Or the other way I’ll put it is they fail because they default themselves to only having a portfolio of bad assets.

Yup. Increasing returns demand large portfolios in which higher return assets cross-subsidize lower return assets and minimize project-specific risks. Municipalization convos too often emphasize lower return projects in housing + energy, ceding market share to the private sector from the jump.

I actually believe markets *are* hard to manage because increasing returns to scale / natural monopolies are way more common than people think. But that is kind of the polar opposite of what they believe (every big entrenched market actor is evidence of something dysregulated and unnatural).

This is a whopper when X is falling over itself to say we need more Dems like Golden. This proposal would permanently remove the ability of even a conservative Dem majority to ever legislate on its own terms.

The marginal cost of *generation* will be very close to zero, particularly during the day. Awesome, but not free or de-commodified electricity* We’ll have to pay to move it, store it, and maintain firmer generation. Economizing capacity will be imperative and we’ll likely still need user pricing.

A good result purely on the basis that Omar Fateh decided to juxtapose his supposedly pro-tenant policies against Frey’s “build and build and build” approach. YIMBYs figured out the synthesis years ago. No use having sloppy candidates if they can’t get it right. Not when we have Zohran’s example!

They also hit as a contractionary shock to aggregate demand. Just like taxes.

A coalition that ranges from democratic socialists to neoconservatives, including a lot of energized liberals in between, is large and formidable. A big pro-democracy tent. A united front. Any internal disagreements can be hashed out once the authoritarian emergency is over. This really can work.

This is @pewilliams.bsky.social thought.

A lot of hopeful stuff tonight but I think the most lasting, positive thing will be having America's premier city led, once again, by a strap-hanging, bike-riding, left-YIMBY pedestrian. Could prove to be a pivotal, historic moment for YIMBY urbanism.

Zohran quoting "great New Yorker" Mario Cuomo is A+ hate. ("Campaign in poetry, govern in prose.")