In today’s political news - Part 5

He has a point…

Unbelievable…

Hmm it looks like more people turned out to see the Warriors in SF then did at trump’s inauguration..












I saw the crowd and just couldn’t help myself.  😀

“False equivalence is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone incorrectly asserts that two or more things are equivalent, simply because they share some characteristics, despite the fact that there are also notable differences between them. For example, a false equivalence is saying that cats and dogs are the same animal, since they’re both mammals and have a tail.

False equivalences, which generally exaggerate similarities and ignore important differences, can be used to equate a wide range of things, including individuals, groups, actions, or arguments, either implicitly or explicitly. Accordingly, false equivalences are frequently used in debates on various topics, especially when it comes to suggesting that there is a moral equivalence between two or more things that are being equated.

Because false equivalences are so widely used, it’s important to understand them. As such, in the following article you will learn more about the false equivalence fallacy, see examples of how it’s used, and understand what you can do in order to counter it as effectively as possible.”

I think the Republicans learned a new term and use it everywhere they can even if it makes no sense like here.  

And as to the Colbert Production Team “storming” the Capital?  Really?

These people are delusional…

From The Washington Post…. link

”Are drug seizures at the border good or bad? Depends on the president.”

Analysis by Philip Bump
National correspondent
May 24, 2022 at 8:46 a.m. EDT


“Late Sunday evening, the official Twitter account of the Republican Party published an excited message.

“11,007 pounds of methamphetamine was seized at the southern border in April alone!” it read.

Now, there are two ways to read this. One is to read it as celebratory: Just think of all those drugs that were prevented from entering the country! The other is accusatory: Look how many drugs people are trying to bring in!

In the abstract, the former makes a bit more sense. But in this specific case, of course, we know from the broader context what’s meant: The GOP is suggesting that President Biden is failing at controlling the border.

But, then, that’s not always what they meant with similar tweets when the president was Donald Trump.

Look at the volume of drugs that was stopped! Good news, to be sure … because it bolstered a point about Trump.

But when Trump triggered a government shutdown at the end of 2018 in an effort to obtain money to build that wall, seizures were again used as a mark of failure.

“As Dems continue to drag their feet & play politics, the crisis at our border is only getting worse.

From Oct 2017 through Aug 2018, U.S. Border Patrol seized:
-6,423 lbs of cocaine
-532 lbs of heroin
-439,531 lbs of marijuana
-10,382 lbs of methamphetamine
-332 lbs of fentanyl
— GOP (@gop) December 29, 2018”

Trump himself did the same thing on another border-related issue. When he took office, the low number of people stopped at the border was a regular feature of his boasts about the effectiveness of his policies. But when apprehensions began to climb … that became a feature of his boasts about how robust a barrier he had erected at the border.

Since Biden took office, of course, there has been no waffling. Drug seizures are always framed as bad by the GOP — even when the data are relatively good.

Take this tweet, for example.

“The Biden and Harris border crisis is putting our country at risk.

Drug seizures along the southern border increased by 18% last month!

This is a true crisis & Biden and Harris are doing nothing to stop it
— GOP (@gop) June 10, 2021”

In May 2021, there were 38,600 pounds of drugs seized at the border. It’s worth noting, by the way, that most of these stops occur at legal entry points. For smugglers, it’s easier to drive in a lot of drugs and hope to avoid detection than to scramble a small amount of drugs through unprotected areas. That was up from 31,900 the month before, a 21 percent increase. (Customs and Border Protection adjusts its numbers over time, probably explaining the difference with the GOP tweet.)

But May’s total was down more than 20 percent from February 2021. And the seizure in May was lower than in every single month of 2020, when Trump was president.

It’s worth looking at the total amount of drugs seized at the border over time. You can see that the amount of drugs being seized during Biden’s administration has been lower than during the tail end of Trump’s. (The gray bars on the top chart below indicate all other illegal drugs besides those at the bottom. The dotted line marks Biden’s inauguration.)

The recent decline is largely a function of a drop in marijuana seizures. Fentanyl seizures have risen since the middle of 2020. It is also a favorite target of the GOP’s rhetoric, given both that increase and the role of the drug in the public conversation.

This April Border Patrol seized enough fentanyl to kill more than 290 million Americans.#BidenBorderCrisis
— GOP (@gop) May 22, 2022

If we compare the 16 months of Biden’s administration for which we have data with the last 16 months of Trump’s, the number of seizures has generally declined. Under Trump, nearly twice the total amount of drugs was seized (by weight), including three times as much marijuana and nearly twice as much heroin. Under Biden, nearly two times as much fentanyl has been seized.

Is this a mark of Biden’s failure? His success? The key question, of course, is the hard-to-answer one: How much of the inflow of illegal drugs isn’t halted at the border. Or, relatedly, how good a measure of effectiveness are those seizure numbers?

Such nuances don’t work well when a political party is tweeting. So we know their answer: The seizures are bad, because Biden. Should a Republican win in 2024, one could suspect that view might change.”

About time…

FACT SHEET: BIDEN-HARRIS ADMINISTRATION ANNOUNCES NEW PAY RAISES & SUPPORTS FOR WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER WORKFORCE FROM BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE LAW
JUNE 21, 2022
•
STATEMENTS AND RELEASES

“Our nation’s wildland firefighters safeguard vital benefits for communities across the nation: protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure, defending lives and private property from the risk of catastrophic wildfire, preserving forests so they can help us combat climate change, and protecting landscapes that contain cultural and natural resources of significance and value to Tribes, provide habitat to fish and wildlife, and serve as a source of drinking water for more than 60 million people. Investing in our wildland firefighting workforce is a matter of national security as there are more than 460 million acres of land at moderate to very high risk from wildfire this year, and the number of acres burned in 2021 is the highest on record.

For decades, Federal wildland firefighters have faced the challenges of longer, more severe fire years with pay that has lagged behind their counterparts. Shifting development patterns, land and fire management decisions, and climate change have turned fire “seasons” into fire “years” in which increasingly destructive fires are exceeding available Federal firefighting resources. Federal firefighters also lack an official, uniform occupational series and a clear path for career advancement through the Federal government.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing a series of bold steps to increase pay, create new mental wellness and health supports, and establish a new wildland fire management job series for federal firefighters. These unprecedented actions on behalf of the wildland firefighter workforce are funded by $600 million from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These measures are a significant step forward that will deliver an immediate, temporary pay raise to Federal wildland firefighters across the nation, and sets Federal agencies on a path to continue working with stakeholders towards an updated, competitive, and equitable pay structure, along with a support system that will address the many challenges that have plagued our wildland firefighter workforce for decades.

INCREASING PAY

Under President Biden’s 2021 initiatives to support federal wildland firefighters and ensure they receive a minimum of $15 per hour, more than 11,300 firefighters received pay increases last year at a cost of $24.3 million. This increase in the minimum wage was a critical first step for the dignity and respect of all Federal employees. Over the coming summer months, the Administration is implementing a new set of temporary pay increases that will put retroactive pay (from October 1, 2021) into wildland firefighter pockets increasing their bi-weekly pay, up to the lesser of $20,000 or 50% of their annual base salary through September 2023. The Federal agencies will begin processing these payments in the coming weeks, with additional payments to occur throughout July and into August. The $600 million in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law serves as a bridge for two years as the Administration works with Congress on longer-term reforms.

CREATING NEW SUPPORTS FOR FIREFIGHTERS

During a visit to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) last week, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland announced the establishment of an interagency wildland firefighter health and wellbeing program. Wildland firefighters work in incredibly stressful environments that can take a significant toll on their overall health and wellbeing, as well as on those who love them. Standing up a targeted interagency effort to provide trauma-informed mental health care is critical. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law directs the Departments of the Interior (DOI) and Agriculture (USDA) to increase focus on wildland firefighters’ physical and mental wellbeing. The newly established joint DOI- U.S. Forest Service program will address mental health needs, including post-traumatic stress disorder care for permanent, temporary, seasonal and year-round wildland firefighters at both agencies, along with addressing environmental hazards to minimize on-the-job exposure for wildland firefighters. The joint program will also connect existing efforts and establish year-round prevention and mental health training for wildland firefighters and create critical incident stress management staffing response. The Forest Service along with each of DOI’s wildland fire management bureaus — the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service — will also add staffing capacity specifically to focus on mental health and employee support efforts for firefighters.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also provides increased support to the Joint Fire Science Program, an interagency partnership with USDA’s U.S. Forest Service that funds wildfire science research projects. A total of $3.1 million will be used to support research towards a better understanding of firefighter mental health, landscape resiliency, and other climate-related studies on the beneficial uses of prescribed fire, carbon storage, and greenhouse gas and smoke emissions.

IMPROVING RECRUITMENT AND RETENTION

Because the pay increase under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is temporary, the Biden-Harris Administration supports a new firefighter pay structure that is both sufficiently competitive and equitable to address longstanding nationwide recruitment and retention challenges and consider the longer work shifts, pressures and risks associated with these jobs. The Administration is committed to working with Congress to secure much needed investments and to grow this critical workforce. The costs in firefighter turnover brought about by not having an adequately compensated and supported firefighting workforce will far exceed the amount needed to invest in them.

ESTABLISHING NEW WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT OCCUPATIONAL SERIES

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has taken the necessary step of creating the Wildland Fire Management occupational series established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. No such series has existed for 50 years. The new occupational series better identifies Federal firefighters with the work they do. It defines the duties of wildland firefighters and is responsive to the calls of firefighters and their unions to provide opportunities for career advancement. It also gives a boost to recruiting, as agencies can now post clear job opportunity announcements that specifically target people interested in wildland firefighting jobs. And it will help with retention, as our wildland firefighter workforce will benefit from a clear career path with detailed requirements for advancement, providing wildland firefighters with a job title and description that more accurately reflects their contributions.

Agencies will implement the new series in the coming months, though current Federal firefighters will be able to choose whether to opt-in to the new Wildland Fire Management series or stay in their current occupations. Once fully implemented, the series will provide a solid foundation for recruitment and retention, further strengthening our wildland firefighter workforce and contributing to the fire safety of communities across our Nation.”