Brian Wood

Living without petrol.

[Brian Wood @brian30s]

@WeatherProf I keep seeing Reagan in the data.

[Melanie D'Arrigo @DarrigoMelanie]

They're letting Social Security fail because they refuse to scrap the cap and make the super-wealthy pay their fair share.

Letting Social Security become insolvent is a choice.

[Jared Ryan Sears @JaredRyanSears]

Social Security does not add to the national debt. It is even prohibited by law from borrowing money.

Politicians who talk about cutting or changing Social Security to address the debt are lying to you.

Here is how Social Security funding works:

Social Security is funded by payroll taxes. When more money comes in from payroll taxes than benefits that need to be paid out, Social Security is obligated to invest the surplus in Treasuries.

Treasuries are bonds. Governments and corporations issue bonds to generate money. A bond is a loan from the purchaser to the issuer.

A bond has a principal, a maturity date, and an interest rate. The principal is the value of the bond. When you buy a bond, you pay the principal. When the bond reaches its maturity date, the issuer is required to pay the principal back to the holder. The interest rate is the amount the issuer pays to the bondholder.

It is similar to how, when you take out a 30-year mortgage, you agree to a repayment schedule and to pay interest until the loan is repaid.

As Treasuries mature, if Social Security doesn't need that extra money, it rolls them over by buying new Treasuries.
When Social Security needs more money to cover benefits, it cashes out Treasuries.

The federal government has had a deficit for the past 25 years. This means that when it has to meet its obligations, it needs to borrow money.

This is how people claim that Social Security adds to the debt. That is ridiculous.

Companies and countries buy US Treasuries. You and I can buy them. Anyone holding a Treasury when it matures isn't increasing the debt. The government’s unbalanced budget is causing the debt.

Cutting Social Security will do nothing to get the US out of debt, but it would create hardship for millions of Americans.

Social Security currently has a shortfall, primarily because people are living longer and the large Boomer generation is retiring. In 1960, there were 5.1 people paying into Social Security. Today, there are only 2.7. The trust fund from past surpluses is keeping it afloat, but it is running out.

The easiest way to address the shortfall is to remove the tax cap on Social Security. Benefits do not have to be increased to do this. This is exactly what was done for Medicare in 1993. The tax cap was removed, and benefits weren't increased to better fund the program.

[Mike Levin @MikeLevin]

Scientists at Trump’s EPA say they are being told to make chemical risks “disappear on paper.” Not to study or manage them, but to make them vanish.

When a safety test on a household chemical shows danger, supervisors reportedly ask to keep shrinking the scenario until the poison looks safe.

They have reassigned senior scientists to paperwork and handed life-and-death risk assessments to staff with less experience. They have installed former chemical industry lobbyists to run the very offices that are supposed to regulate the chemical industry.

A gift to industry, paid for with your family’s health.

They are even throwing out research on how certain chemicals hit certain communities harder, calling decades of established science “DEI.”

You can make risk disappear on paper.

The cancer does not disappear.

The birth defects do not disappear.

The infertility does not disappear.

The kids drinking the water and getting sick do not disappear.

The EPA exists to protect people, not to protect the profit margins of the people poisoning them.

Every American deserves to know what is happening. #TrumpMakesUsSick

https://t.co/5DwXgxBybt

[Brian Wood @brian30s]

This was when I knew 10 years ago that humans had ended themselves.

[National Geographic @NatGeo]

The effects of climate change are displayed through two views of Opal Reef on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Following periods of unusually high ocean temperatures in 2016 and 2017, many corals that once filled the reef with color had become gray and skeletal.

[EveryLibrary @EveryLibrary]

No country has ever increased freedom and liberty by banning books - https://t.co/UzUkYn2U07

#library #libraries #read #reading #book #books #librarianship #lit

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY ‼️

[Annie @AnnieForTruth]

I agree with Melanie Stansbury!

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Fascism does not arrive saying “I am fascism.” It arrives saying “law and order,” “border security,” “anti-woke,” “election integrity,” and “national emergency.”

[Bill Madden @maddenifico]

Echoes of 1938 Nazi Germany.

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

It's the golden age for criminals.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

The cheapest, most effective wildfire crew in California has four legs and eats the problem.

Clearing flammable brush off a steep slope by hand is brutal, slow, expensive work. A herd of goats is none of those things.

Hand clearance:

- Around 28,000 dollars an acre
- People with tools on dangerous slopes
- Cuttings that then have to be hauled away

A herd of goats:

- Roughly 500 to 1,000 dollars an acre
- Climbs slopes no crew wants to touch
- Eats the brush to a firebreak and fertilises the ground on the way through
- Reaches branches several feet up
- Visibly thrilled to be at work

Calling the goat a quaint throwback has it backwards. On this job the goat is the superior technology by a factor of about fifty, and it runs on the very scrub everyone else is paying to remove.

[Mark Z. Jacobson @mzjacobson]

California has the most stable U.S. grid due to its renewables plus batteries

Anti-renewable fans often use California as an example of a state where the growth in solar and wind has increased the risk of electricity-grid blackouts. As it turns out, though, California’s largest grid, CAISO, is the most stable in the U.S., as evidenced by the fact that it had the lowest wholesale electricity prices among U.S. grids during the past year. There has even been no grid blackout since August 2020. Wholesale electricity prices include spot prices, which are the real-time immediate cost of electricity. When spot prices drop, wholesale prices drop. Low spot prices, thus low wholesale prices, mean it is easier to match instantaneous demand with supply on the grid. Because California never had a single period with high wholesale prices during the past year, it had the easiest time matching demand, thus the most stable grid. Why? Although California has grown so much solar and wind since 2023, causing fossil gas use to decline by 61 percent, it has also added more batteries than any other grid region. Batteries respond to a shortage in demand within 20 milliseconds, versus up to 5 minutes for gas. Whereas, California has low wholesale electricity prices, it has high retail prices. But such prices have nothing to do with renewables or batteries. They have to do with utilities passing onto customers the high cost of wildfires caused by transmission-line sparks from 2015 to 2026, undergrounding transmission lines to avoid fires, upgrading an aging transmission system, using some gas and nuclear, the San Bruno and Aliso Canyon gas disasters, and upgrading gas pipes due to San Bruno. Despite California’s high retail electricity prices, Californians pay 23 percent lower electricity bills than Texans because California is the most energy efficient state, using 61 percent less electricity per person than Texas. Lastly, among all 50 states, the more renewables, the lower retail electricity prices. In sum, renewables and batteries stabilize grids and reduce retail electricity prices on top of eliminating health and climate costs of fossil fuels.

Grids with the lowest U.S. wholesale electricity price
https://t.co/GWDfh1nWlQ

TX pays 23% higher electricity bills than CA due mostly to CA's energy efficiency
https://t.co/ZWjRpD71uU

More renewables mean lower electricity prices
https://t.co/ieapw8SHmp

Video
https://t.co/YaQfKz2cB7

[Brian Wood @brian30s]

@Rainmaker1973 No mention of the fact that He is a finite, unsustainable element and wasting it on parties may kill those in need of an MRI.

[MayoIsSpicyy @Mayoisspicyy]

FACT: Trump cut funding to stop the spread of screwworms. Then he signed an executive order allowing 100,000 metric tons of beef from Argentina into the U.S. per year. America eradicated screwworms in 1966, while Argentina has been struggling with them for well over a century.

[DulceBiatch @BiatchDulce]

HOW RICH PEOPLE AVOID PAYING TAXES:

[Dad to the Bone @Dad_2_The_Bone]

Things for which he has cut funding
1. Cancer research
2. National Parks
3. Dept of Education
4. Public Broadcasting
5. Research grants
6. Centers for Disease Control
7. National Institute of Health
8. Housing and Urban Development
9. USAID
10. Medicare, Medicaid, SS
11. FEMA/EPA/NOAA
12. Everything that helps people

Things that cost more:
1. Everything

Things that are better:
1. Nothing

[Old Man Lefty @OldManLefty1]

Since Trump..

Ebola is back.
Whooping cough is back.
Measles is back.
Inflation is back.
Screw worm is back.
High gas prices is back.
Low wages is back.
Bigotry is back.
Hate is back.
Blatant lying is back.
Corruption is back.

I just want life under a sane president back..

[Sen. Bernie Sanders @SenSanders]

Is Congress doing anything to help the millions of workers who could lose their jobs to AI and robotics? No.

They're intimidated by the hundreds of millions the AI industry is pouring into super PACs.

We must ban super PACs and crack down on corruption.

[Anonymous @YourAnonNews]

Congress thinks $83 an hour isn’t enough for them…
but $7.25 an hour is enough for you.
That’s not public service. That’s class warfare.