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Here’s What It Costs Taxpayers to Fly Trump to Mar-a-Lago

by trasze2aja Posted on May 4, 2017

Mother Jones

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When Donald Trump travels to one of his properties for weekends of golf and well-done steak, he brings a massive entourage of aides, Secret Service agents, and all the trappings of the world’s most powerful job. And it’s all on the taxpayer’s tab.

It’s still not clear how much all of that costs, but we now know how much money it takes to operate the biggest presidential accessory involved with these trips: Every hour Trump flies on Air Force One costs taxpayers more than $142,000. For just two weekend trips to Mar-a-Lago that Trump took in March, taxpayers paid $1.2 million. Again, that’s just for the plane that ferried Trump. That doesn’t count the cost of fighter jet escorts, the planes carrying Trump’s limousines, or any of the on-the-ground costs.

The figures come from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of the Air Force. Notably, Judicial Watch is the group that calculated the oft-quoted figure of $96 million as the tab for Obama’s family travel during his presidency. The group says it has also asked for figures for the cost of Secret Service protection and other expenses associated with Trump’s weekend trips, but those requests are still pending.

“We’re pleased the Air Force finally gave us some numbers for President Trump’s travel,” said Tom Fitton, president of the group, in a statement. Fitton vowed to go to court to get the other numbers. “Judicial Watch tracked some of the costs of President Obama’s unnecessary travel and we’re not closing up shop with a new administration.”

The figures do suggest that early estimates of the cost of Trump’s personal trips—as much as $3 million per weekend—might be in the right ballpark, but the exact amount remains difficult to tabulate. The FOIA responses Judicial Watch received detailed two separate trips, one of which included a stopover at an airport in Florida so Trump could hold an event with Secretary of Education Betsy Devos promoting a school voucher program. Each flight cost more than $600,000.

If Judicial Watch’s estimate of $96 million for Obama’s personal vacations is correct, it would mean that he averaged about $12 million a year on all travel. In other words, Trump is easily on pace to easily exceed his predecessors totals. Trump has spent seven of 13 weekends of his presidency at Mar-a-Lago, but the club is closing for the summer season. This weekend Trump makes his first trip to his New Jersey golf club, which will be a shorter flight, but will require moving Trump through the crowded New York City area. That could significantly increase his on-the-ground costs.

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Here’s What It Costs Taxpayers to Fly Trump to Mar-a-Lago

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Trump Is Playing Chicken With Millions of Health Plans. The Result Might Be a Government Shutdown.

by RoyceSteinmetz Posted on April 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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Members of Congress are home in their districts until next week, but when they come back to town they’ll be facing an imminent government shutdown—unless they manage to pass last-minute legislation to keep federal programs funded. A shutdown now appears a little more likely thanks to some gamesmanship from President Donald Trump over Obamacare that prompted Democrats to issue threats of their own last week.

The showdown involves an Obamacare program know as “cost sharing reduction,” which requires insurance companies to offer discounted copayments and deductibles to low-income people who buy health plans on the individual market. In return, the federal government makes payments to compensate insurers for this expense. Last week, Trump threatened to stop making these payments to insurers—a move that could lead to massive price spikes for millions of people and cause insurers to flee from the individual marketplaces.

By issuing the threat, Trump was attempting to scare Democrats into agreeing to repeal Obamacare. “Obamacare is dead next month if it doesn’t get that money,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal. “I haven’t made my viewpoint clear yet. I don’t want people to get hurt…What I think should happen and will happen is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”

But Trump’s gambit may have backfired. Democratic leaders are now saying they might not vote to keep the government funded next week unless that funding bill includes a provision appropriating money specifically for the cost sharing reductions. “We will not negotiate with hostage takers,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned last week.

Democrats may actually have a surprisingly strong negotiating position. Despite controlling both chambers of Congress, the GOP needs their help to keep the government open. Republicans will need support from at least eight Democratic senators in order to avoid a filibuster. And given House Republicans’ penchant for defying party leadership, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) might also need some Democratic votes to overcome conservative objections to the funding bill.

When it comes to the controversies surrounding Obamacare, the cost sharing reduction payments have received relatively little attention. But they are an essential component of how the law makes insurance affordable for lower-income families. For anyone who makes less than 250 percent of the federal poverty line ($30,150 for an individual, $61,500 for a family of four), the government pays insurance companies to lower out-of-pocket costs.

About 58 percent of people who purchase insurance through Obamacare’s marketplaces qualify for the reduced copays and deductibles, totaling more than 7 million people. For consumers, the savings can be substantial. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that for people below 150 percent of the poverty line, average deductibles dropped from $3,609 to $255 thanks to the program. It all adds up to $7 billion in federal spending for 2017, and it’s projected to rise to $10 billion next year and $11 billion in 2019.

The current debate revolves around a quirk in the way the law was written. The Affordable Care Act requires the government to reimburse insurance companies, but lawmakers apparently failed to include a provision to explicitly “appropriate” money for these payments. (It’s not enough for Congress to authorize a program; under the Constitution, Congress must also appropriate funds for a program before the government can spend money on it.) The Obama administration started to dole out the funds anyway, citing a different appropriation authority, but House Republicans objected and sued. A federal judge sided with Republicans last year, though that decision was stayed pending appeal. (The details are too convoluted to explain in full here, but Vox has a great description.)

After Trump won the presidency, House Republicans asked the courts to hold off on the case, since they’re hoping they can end the program by repealing Obamacare. Now, the Trump administration has until May 22 to let the court know if it still plans to appeal the ruling. If Trump chooses, the administration could unilaterally drop the case and let stand the lower court decision barring the payments.

But while the administration can choose to stop making the payments to insurance companies, insurers would still be required to offer discounted policies. On that point, the law is explicit: Insurance companies must reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income consumers. In other words, they would still have to offer cheaper copays and deductibles—just without the government assistance they were promised.

An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that, in order to offset those lost funds, insurers would have to increase premiums by 19 percent on average. That increase would not be evenly distributed across the country, though. The rate increase would likely be far less drastic in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare, since Medicaid provides government-sponsored insurance to low-income people who would otherwise use the individual marketplaces. North Dakota would see the smallest premium spike if the payments to insurers stopped—a 10-percent increase. By contrast, insurance premiums would rise 27 percent in Mississippi and 25 percent in Florida and Alabama.

It isn’t just Democratic politicians who are crying foul over Trump’s threats. The health care industry industry last week implored Trump to maintain funding for the subsidies. In a letter to the president—signed by the American Medical Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, BlueCross BlueShield, and the US Chamber of Commerce—industry groups warned that unless Trump makes clear that he’s going to continue the payments, insurers will flee the markets in 2018, and premiums for the remaining options will skyrocket.

“The most critical action to help stabilize the individual market for 2017 and 2018,” the letter says, “is to remove uncertainty about continued funding for cost sharing reductions.”

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Trump Is Playing Chicken With Millions of Health Plans. The Result Might Be a Government Shutdown.

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The Next Step in the Trump-DeVos Plan to Send Taxpayer Money to Religious Schools

by ScarletXHU Posted on March 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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During his address before a joint session of Congress earlier this week, President Donald Trump paused to introduce Denisha Merriweather, a graduate student from Florida sitting with first lady Melania Trump. Merriweather “failed third grade twice” in Florida’s public schools, Trump said. “But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, great learning center, with the help of a tax credit,” he continued, referring to Florida’s tax credit scholarship program that allows students attend private schools. Because of this opportunity, Denisha became the first member of her family to graduate from high school and college.

Trump used Denisha’s story to call for his favorite education policy, school choice, asking lawmakers to “pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious, or home school that is right for them.”

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has also been pointing to Denisha and Florida in the past two weeks as a way to promote school choice. “Florida is a good and growing example of what can happen when you have a robust array of choices,” DeVos told a conservative radio host on February 15. DeVos brought up the state’s school choice model again during her speech to the leaders of historically black colleges earlier this week.

So what is it about Florida? For starters, the state offers many different types of school choice, including charter schools, vouchers for low-income students and those with disabilities, and tax credit scholarships. Charter schools, found in 43 states and Washington, DC, represent the most common type of school choice. Vouchers are a little more complicated: They essentially operate like a state-issued coupon that parents can use to send their child to private or religious schools. The amount is typically what the state would use to send a kid to a public school. But vouchers are difficult to implement, because many state constitutions, like those in Michigan and Florida, have what are called Blaine Amendments, which prohibit spending public dollars on religious schools. And notably, only 31 percent of Americans support vouchers.

Tax credit scholarships provide a crafty mechanism to get around these obstacles. Tax credits are given to individuals and corporations that donate money to scholarship-granting institutions; if parents end up using those scholarships to send their kids to religious schools—and 79 percent of students in private schools are taught by institutions affiliated with churches—the government technically is not transferring taxpayer money directly to religious organizations.

While DeVos is best known as an advocate of vouchers, most veteran Beltway insiders told me that a federal voucher program is very unlikely. “Democrats don’t like vouchers. Republicans don’t like federal programs, and would rather leave major school reform decisions up to states and local communities,” Rick Hess, a veteran education policy expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute said. “Realistically, nobody thinks they’ve got the votes to do a federal school choice law, especially in the Senate.”

This political reality is perhaps why Trump and DeVos are singling out Florida’s tax credit programs as a way to expand private schooling options. While Trump and DeVos have not specified what shape this policy might take at the federal level, most of these changes will come from the state legislators. Republicans have full control of the executive and legislative branches in 25 states, and control the governor’s house or the state legislature in 44 states. At least 14 states have already proposed bills in this legislative session that would expand some form of vouchers or tax credit scholarships, according to a Center for American Progress analysis. (And 17 states already provide some form of tax credit scholarships, according to EdChoice.)

This perfect storm for pushing through various voucher schemes comes at a time when the results on the outcomes of these programs “are the worst in the history of the field,” according to New America researcher Kevin Carey, who analyzed the results in a recent New York Times article. Until about two years ago, most studies on vouchers produced mixed results, with some showing slight increases in test scores or graduation rates for students using them. But the most recent research has not been good, according to Carey: A 2016 study, funded by the pro-voucher Walton Family Foundation and conducted by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, found that students who used vouchers in a large Ohio program “have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools.”

Then there is the issue of state oversight and transparency. Many states, including Florida, have little to no jurisdiction over private schools and don’t make student achievement data public, save for attendance. A 2011 award-winning investigation by Gus Garcia-Roberts of the Miami New Times described the resulting system as a “cottage industry of fraud and chaos.” Schools could qualify to educate voucher and tax credit scholarship students even though they had no accreditation or curriculum. Some staffers in these schools were convicted criminals for drug dealing, kidnapping, and burglary. “In one school’s ‘business management’ class, students shook cans for coins on the streets,” Garcia-Roberts found.

Florida’s Department of Education investigated 38 schools suspected of fraud and in 25 cases, the allegations were substantiated. “It’s like a perverse science experiment, using disabled school kids as lab rats and funded by nine figures in taxpayer cash,” Garcia-Roberts wrote. “Dole out millions to anybody calling himself as educator. Don’t regulate curriculum or even visit campuses to see where the money is going.”

But these on-the-ground realities in Florida won’t tame the enthusiasm of a voucher booster like DeVos. As I showed in my recent investigation, her philanthropic giving shows an overwhelming preference for promoting private, Christian schools, and conservative, free-market think tanks that work to shrink the public sector in every sphere, including education. These past choices suggest that the data—or the fact that there are many stories like Denisha Merriweather’s in America’s public schools—doesn’t matter.

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The Next Step in the Trump-DeVos Plan to Send Taxpayer Money to Religious Schools

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Trump’s Treasury Pick Excelled at Kicking Elderly People Out of Their Homes

by BeatrizViner Posted on January 1, 2017

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared on ProPublica.

In 2015, OneWest Bank moved to foreclose on John Yang, an 80-year-old Korean immigrant living in Orange Park, Florida, a small suburb of Jacksonville. The bank believed he wasn’t living in his home, violating the terms of its loan. It dispatched an agent to give him legal notification of the foreclosure.

Where did the bank find him? At the same single-story home the bank had said in court papers he did not occupy.

Still OneWest pressed on, forcing Yang, a former Christian missionary, to seek help from legal aid attorneys. This year, during a deposition, an employee of OneWest’s servicing division was asked the obvious question: Why would the bank pursue a foreclosure that seemed so clearly unjustified by the facts?

The employee’s response was blunt: “You’re trying to make logic out of an illogical situation.”

Yang was lucky. The bank eventually dropped its efforts against him. But others were not so fortunate. In recent years, OneWest has foreclosed on at least 50,000 people, often in circumstances that consumer advocates say run counter to federal rules and, as in Yang’s case, common sense.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Steven Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary has prompted new scrutiny of OneWest’s foreclosure practices. Mnuchin was the lead investor and chairman of the company during the years it ramped up its foreclosure efforts. Representatives from the company and the Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment.

Records show the attempt to push Mr. Yang out of his home was not an unusual one for OneWest’s Financial Freedom unit, which focused on controversial home loans known as reverse mortgages. Regulators and consumer advocates have long worried that these loans, popular during the height of the housing bubble, exploit elderly homeowners.

The loans allow people to benefit from the equity they have built up over many years without selling their houses. The money is paid in a variety of ways, from lump sums to a stream of monthly checks. Borrowers are allowed to stay in their homes for as long as they live.

The loans are guaranteed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, meaning the agency pays lenders like Freedom Financial the difference between the ultimate sale price of the home and the size of the reverse mortgage.

But the fees are often high and the interest charges mount up quickly because the homeowner isn’t paying down any of the principal on the loan. Homeowners remain on the hook for property taxes and insurance and can lose their homes if they miss those payments.

A 2012 report to Congress by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that “vigorous enforcement is necessary to ensure that older homeowners are not defrauded of a lifetime of home equity.”

ProPublica found numerous examples where Financial Freedom had foreclosed for legally questionable reasons. The company served several other homeowners at their homes to let them know they were being sued for not occupying their homes. In Florida, a shortfall of only $0.27 led to a foreclosure attempt. In Atlanta, the company sought to foreclose on a widow after her husband’s death, but backed down when a legal aid attorney sued, citing federal law that allowed the surviving spouse to remain in the home.

“It appears their business approach is scorched earth, in a way that doesn’t serve communities, homeowners or the taxpayer,” said Alys Cohen, a staff attorney for the National Consumer Law Center in Washington D.C.

Since the financial crisis, OneWest, through Financial Freedom, has conducted a disproportionate number of the nation’s reverse mortgage foreclosures. It was responsible for 16,200 foreclosures on government-backed reverse mortgages, or 39 percent of all foreclosures nationwide, from 2009 through late 2014, even though it only serviced about 17 percent of the loans, according to government data analyzed by the California Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group for low-income consumers. While some foreclosures were justified, legal aid attorneys say Financial Freedom has refused to work with borrowers in foreclosure to establish payment plans, in contrast with other servicers of reverse mortgages.

Experts say the companies are not entirely to blame for the wave of foreclosures. HUD oversees standards on most reverse mortgages. In the years after the housing crash, HUD’s rules evolved, creating a miasma of confusion for mortgage servicers. Companies say the new federal rules required them to foreclose when borrowers fell far behind on property and insurance costs, rather than work out payment plans.

OneWest’s rough treatment of homeowners extended to its behavior toward borrowers with standard mortgages in the aftermath of the housing crash. In 2009, the Obama administration launched a program to encourage mortgage servicers to work out affordable mortgage modifications with borrowers. OneWest, weighed down by several hundred thousand souring mortgages, signed up.

It didn’t go well. About three-quarters of homeowners who sought a modification from OneWest through the program were denied, according to the latest figures from the Treasury Department. OneWest was among the worst performing large servicers in the program by that measure. In 2011, activists protested OneWest’s indifference at Mnuchin’s Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles.

“We’re in a difficult economic environment and very sympathetic to the problems many homeowners face, but under the government’s program there’s not a solution in every case,” Mnuchin told the Wall Street Journal in that year.

Despite the controversy, Mnuchin and the other investors in OneWest made a killing on their purchase. In 2009, Mnuchin’s investment group bought the failed mortgage bank IndyMac, which had been taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation after the financial crisis, changing the name to OneWest. They paid about $1.5 billion, with the FDIC sharing the ongoing mortgage losses. George Soros, a Clinton backer at whose hedge fund Mnuchin had worked, and John Paulson, a hedge fund manager who also supported Trump, invested alongside Mnuchin in IndyMac.

In 2015, CIT, a lender to small and medium-sized businesses, bought OneWest for $3.4 billion, more than doubling the Mnuchin group’s initial investment. Mnuchin personally made about $380 million on the sale, according to Bloomberg estimates. He retains around a 1 percent stake in CIT, worth around $100 million, which he may have to divest if confirmed.

CIT has found the reverse mortgage business to be a headache. Recently, CIT took a $230 million pretax charge after it discovered that OneWest had mistakenly charged the government for payments that the company should have shouldered itself. An investigation of Financial Freedom’s practices by HUD’s inspector general is ongoing.

Yang’s lawyers at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid fought his foreclosure for a year. Though Yang had run a dry cleaning business in Florida and roamed the world as a missionary, working in North Korea, China, and Afghanistan, the bank’s torrent of paperwork had overwhelmed him. Yang didn’t speak English well. OneWest claimed it had sent him forms to verify he was living at his home, but that he never sent them back.

Under HUD rules, OneWest was required to verify that each borrower continued to use the property as a principal residence. It is a condition of all the HUD-backed loans in order to help ensure the government subsidy goes to those who need it.

But Yang can be forgiven for thinking that OneWest could not have doubted that he was still in his home. During the same period that OneWest was moving to foreclose on Yang for not living in his home, another arm of the bank regularly spoke and corresponded with him at his home about a delinquent insurance payment, according to court documents.

A Financial Freedom employee testified in the case that the department that handled delinquent insurance payments and the department that handled occupancy did not communicate with each other in those circumstances.

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Trump’s Treasury Pick Excelled at Kicking Elderly People Out of Their Homes

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

by LynIrvin725 Posted on December 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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The US Department of Labor exists to “foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners and job seekers,” and to “improve working conditions” and “assure work-related benefits and rights.” Andrew Puzder, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the department, has not exactly embodied those values in his career as CEO of CKE Restaurants, parent company of fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. He’s a staunch and vocal opponent of minimum-wage hikes, and his company has had to pay out millions of dollars to settle overtime claims (more here).

And now, thanks to OC Weekly‘s Gabriel San Roman, we know what Puzder thinks of worker breaks. Spoiler: not much.

San Roman got to digging into the archives of Cal State Fullerton’s Center for Oral and Public History, where he found a 2009 interview (not available online) with Puzder. According to San Roman, Puzder “complained about regulations and overtime laws, claiming workers are overprotected.” San Roman adds, quoting from the interview:

“Have you ever been to a fast food restaurant and the employees are sitting and you’re wondering, ‘Why are they sitting?'” Puzder asked. “They are on what is called a mandatory break emphasis his.” He shared a laugh with the interviewer, saying the so-called nanny state is why Carl’s Jr. doesn’t open up any new restaurants in California anymore.

Now, anointing a burger tycoon who openly disdains worker rights as labor secretary might seem like a quintessentially Trumpian move. But it’s worth remembering that Puzder is very much an establishment Republican. A major donor to GOP political campaigns, he served as an economic adviser and spokesman for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, and as a delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention and as chairman of the Platform Committee’s Sub-Committee on the Economy, Job Creation, and the Debt.

In late 2014, as the 2016 presidential race was about to heat up, Puzder listed his top three choices for the Republican nomination: Romney, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (now Trump’s choice to lead the Department of Energy), and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. That same year, Puzder and then-Gov.Perry even appeared together at a Carl’s Jr. event in Austin, to roll out the burger chain’s “Texas BBQ Thickburger” and raise funds for a veterans’ charity, along with Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Hannah Ferguson. Puzder declared Perry “America’s best governor.”

And now they’ll both be in the Cabinet. Trump ran hard against the GOP establishment, only to hand it the keys to power.

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Trump’s Pick for Labor Secretary Doesn’t Think Workers Should Get Breaks

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Can You Really Power Your Phone from a Solar Panel?

by IgnacioChumley Posted on December 19, 2016

At approximately 4pm on Oct 18, my phone died. In our modern age, those words fill people with dread, as they mean your constant connection to the world’s information has been severed without your approval. Fortunately, I was near plenty of other computing devices, so I wasn’t entirely cut off, and I had ample access to power for recharging it. Whew, disaster averted!

Putting aside the argument of whether or not we’re too dependent on this type of technology, having a backup for charging your phone seems like a good idea. In my case, I had a small 6-watt solar panel available that I set up on a table outside. The setup was started at 4:25pm and less than an hour later, at 5:05 pm, I was able to power the phone up. It reported only 16 percent power, but it’s not a bad electricity haul for a partially overcast day and only 40 minutes of charging.

From this short trial, it was evident that one of these panels could be quite useful if normal grid power was unavailable. Another great use case could be mounting one of these to a backpack while hiking in order to keep your communication equipment active during a long trek.

Besides simply knowing that you can revive your phone in an emergency, another way to measure this type of unit’s effectiveness would be to calculate how long it would take to pay for itself and the power you’ll save using it. However, in the case of a phone at least, it would be a long, long time. According tothis on ZDNet, it takes only 84 cents per year to charge an iPhone 6 Plus, which has the biggest battery of the Apple phones. Similarly-sized Samsung phones would cost about the same, with older models costing less. My own very rough estimate of my phone’s power cost was .125 cents per charge, given a yearly cost of 46 cents per 365 days if charged every day.

Since my particular 6-watt panel cost nearly $70 with tax, this would mean a payback of roughly 150 years. If a good return on investment is your goal, perhaps putting your money into a savings account would be a better idea. Although things can always be better, it’s nice to step back once in a while and realize just how good we have it. The power for something that would have been considered a supercomputer 20 years ago can now fit in the palm of your hand and access a seemingly infinite amount of information. Each of these can be powered with roughly two quarters worth of power per year.

So a portable panel is a poor investment money-wise, but could be a good option if the power grid goes out. I did a little more testing at my house in the generally sunny region of Tampa, Florida. Tests are summarized in the following results:

Test 1 10/18/2016

My phone (Android Moto G) died. It was put out around 4:25 pm, with the panel pointed roughly toward the sun. I checked it at 5:05pm and was able to power it up. It was reading at only 16 percent at the time, and soon dropped to 15 percent, reporting a low battery.

Test 2 10/20/2016

I set up the charger on the table at 10:10am; it was collecting power within five minutes. Power initially read at 46 percent. It was placed on roughly the same spot as before, in a semi-shaded area, not really aimed towards the sun.

I checked my phone at 12:10pm. It was very bright at that moment and the charger was hot. The phone was resting under the charger to shield it and was warm. The phone read at 44 percentlower than before, but a two percent drop over two hours seems better than normal. The charging icon showed up immediately. Perhaps the charger did not give sufficient (or any) power to charge the panel during the earlier time, but the phone did start to charge later.

Test 3 10/21/2016

I set my phone on the same table at 12:50pm with a 53 percent charge. The panel was facing up, but it was not aimed toward the sun. I checked my phone at 2:21pm; it read at 72 percent power. It was still sunny out at the time, though a partial cloud cover was seen while checking. I checked again at 2:55pm and the phone read at 79 percent. It was sunny when the final check was made.

Test 4 10/24/2016

Hooked up an iPad 3 to the charger at 11:50am with a five percent charge. The sun was fairly bright, and when plugged in, I noticed that it read at six percent almost immediately after panel attachment, but the iPad didnt show as charging.

When I checked again at 4:52pm, it was in the shade from our house. Power read at 28 percent. The device had charged significantly, but it was definitely not at full power.

As you can see from these tests, charging from your house’s electrical grid is normally the best way to keep your electronics functional. On the other hand, though more costly, a home solar system can produce a much shorter payback period and give you some power backup options. If you just want a backup for your phone or tablet, perhaps one of these small panels would be a good fit!

Jeremy Cook is obsessed with tech and creating DIYs. He likes to test new gadgets, like the solar panel phone charger mentioned here, and gives some great advice on how to use them. To see a selection of Home Depot solar panel options,click here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Can You Really Power Your Phone from a Solar Panel?

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Mass transit wins big in ballot initiatives

by MaryanneParkins Posted on November 10, 2016

In an otherwise rough election for cities, poor people, and the environment, all three got a bit of good news from state and local ballot initiatives funding mass transit. Across the country, voters approved a majority of measures to expand bus and rail lines.

Smart Growth America, the pro-transit and urbanism advocacy group, compiled a list of the biggest transit initiatives on Tuesday’s ballots. Of the 27 measures tracked, 19 passed. And of the eight that failed, five received majority support but fell short because local tax increases required a supermajority.

Among the biggest successes were a sales tax increase to build new light rail in Seattle, a property tax to pay for repairs and maintenance on the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, and a slight sales tax hike to expand bus and rail services and upgrade bike lanes and sidewalks in Los Angeles County.

It wasn’t only the famously eco-friendly cities of the Left Coast that supported mass transit. Even in the South — the country’s most conservative region, with some of its most car-dependent metro areas — voters approved taxes for transit. Wake County, North Carolina, passed a half penny per dollar sales tax increase for new services, including three bus rapid transit lines and a commuter rail line. Atlanta passed two separate sales taxes for biking and walking trails, street and sidewalk improvements, and bus upgrades and rail expansions.

There were also positive results in smaller cities in the Midwest and Interior West. In Eastern Washington, the conservative side of the state, Spokane passed a 0.2 percent sales tax to fund more bus service and launch the area’s first bus rapid transit line. Indianapolis and surrounding Marion County voted for a 0.25 percent income tax to increase bus service. (The Indianapolis area has long had Republicans who support transit, such as former Mayor Greg Ballard and Carmel, Indiana, Mayor Jim Brainerd.)

The Center for Transportation Excellence, a pro-transit think tank, kept track of all transit-related ballot measures and found support for mass transit in small and mid-sized cities, too. Kansas City, Missouri, passed a 3/8-cent sales tax increase to build light rail, while Greensboro, North Carolina, voted for a transportation investment bond to fund new sidewalks.

There were also some disappointments. Measures to expand transit in Broward County, Florida, and in southeast Michigan failed. But, overall, the results were evidence that most Americans — even Trump voters — are willing to pay for greater, greener mobility.

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Mass transit wins big in ballot initiatives

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Measure in Florida That Claims to Back Solar Power May Discourage It

by JennieSharrow Posted on October 27, 2016

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Measure in Florida That Claims to Back Solar Power May Discourage It

Opponents of the proposed constitutional amendment on the Nov. 8 ballot say that it was written to fool voters and could make panels more costly.

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Measure in Florida That Claims to Back Solar Power May Discourage It

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Measure in Florida That Claims to Back Solar Power May Discourage It

Posted in alo, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, Monterey, ONA, PUR, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Measure in Florida That Claims to Back Solar Power May Discourage It

Donald Trump Takes Time Off From Campaigning for an Infomercial

by Graciela5532 Posted on October 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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With less than two weeks to go before the presidential election, Donald Trump spent Wednesday morning not worrying about making America great again but about preserving his business empire.

As Trump took the stage for the grand opening of his new hotel in Washington, DC, it wasn’t clear whether he would be talking about the election or just praising this new venture. It was a throwback to the Republican primary, when campaign events and Trump product placement went hand in hand. (At a press conference at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago in March, Trump bragged about his business prowess by listing products that have borne his name over the years—Trump steaks, Trump vodka—as the cable networks aired the event live.)

The hotel opening was listed on his campaign website and staffed partly by campaign employees. But with election day around the corner, Trump seemed more interested in basking in the glow of the media cameras to hype this project—and his kids, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric, who were there for the occasion. He had given up a morning of campaigning in a swing state for this. On the same day, Mike Pence, was holding a rally in Utah, a state Republicans should be able to take for granted but where Trump has been slipping in the polls.

“With a notable exception of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this is the most coveted piece of real estate in Washington, DC,” Trump said to a full room of VIPs in business suits and dresses. The well-attired attendees, who clapped when Trump entered the room, did not look like folks upset with NAFTA and who were eager to see the Washington swamp drained. One VIP was a woman who works for a major consulting firm in Washington who recently booked meeting rooms at the hotel for an event in April. The rates were low, she said, as many companies in the capital shy away from the Trump hotel because of Trump’s campaign. “There are a lot of people who will not want to have anything to do with this place,” she said. She noted that her firm is hoping that by the time of its event, Trump will have “calmed down.”

With more than two hundred journalists in the ballroom covering the odd event, Trump claimed that the hotel showed that he can get things done. He declared, “My theme today is five words: ‘under budget and ahead of schedule.'” (That is actually six words.) Trump then pivoted from hailing his hotel to assailing Obamacare. The health care program “is in free fall,” he said. The “military is depleted,” he added. Finally, he congratulated Newt Gingrich, one of his surrogates, for a combative interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Tuesday night.

Though the ballroom was packed with camera crews and reporters, Trump’s days of getting uninterrupted air time on major cable networks are over. None of the cable networks paid much attention to his event Wednesday. It stood in stark contrast to the last big event he held at the hotel.

That was September 16, and Trump was riding high. The polls showed him neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton, and he tricked the media into giving him a free 45-minute infomercial for his new Washington hotel. He had invited the press to the hotel, with a soft opening underway, for what was billed as a major statement on birtherism. The word was that Trump would finally declare that he believed Obama was a US citizen, after years of championing the conspiracy theory that the president was born in Kenya. Instead, Trump used about half an hour of the free media coverage to promote the hotel and showcase military veterans supporting his campaign. Eventually, he made about 20 seconds of remarks regarding his supposed abandonment of birtherism (which hardly seemed genuine).

After that event, Trump was pleased with how he had bamboozled the media, and the press fumed. “We got played,” CNN’s John King admitted. Ultimately, this stunt may have backfired on Trump. It became a turning point in his media coverage. Major news outlets called his birther statement—in which he blamed Clinton for starting the birther charge—a lie. And when Trump gave a tour of the hotel that day to the photographers and videographers in his press pool, without any reporters, the pool decided to destroy the footage. Shortly after this episode, Trump’s campaign began tanking, following his poor performance at the first debate and the appearance of a video of him bragging about sexually assaulting women.

After the September birtherism event ended, the stage on which Trump had touted his new hotel literally collapsed as the cameras were still rolling—a perfect metaphor for what happened that day between Trump and the press. On Wednesday morning, the stage did not fall apart. But it seemed as if Trump might have realized that his electoral prospects had. He appeared more fixated on trying to save his brand, which has been harmed by the divisive and insult-driven campaign he has mounted. After the ribbon-cutting ceremony in the hotel lobby, Ivanka was hobnobbing with well-wishers and accepting congratulations. Mother Jones asked her if her father’s presidential bid had damaged the Trump brand. She just smiled and quickly walked away.

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Donald Trump Takes Time Off From Campaigning for an Infomercial

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Trump Meltdown Continues Apace

by kx0bq6uuw Posted on October 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Only 16 days to go! So what did Hillary Clinton spend the weekend doing?

Hillary Clinton moved to press her advantage in the presidential race on Sunday, urging black voters in North Carolina to vote early as Republicans increasingly conceded that Donald J. Trump is unlikely to recover in the polls….By running up a lead well in advance of the Nov. 8 election in states like North Carolina and Florida, she could make it extraordinarily difficult for Mr. Trump to mount a late comeback.

….Both Mrs. Clinton and key Republican groups have effectively pushed aside Mr. Trump since the final presidential debate on Wednesday, treating him as a defeated candidate and turning their attention to voter turnout and battling for control of Congress. An ABC News tracking poll published on Sunday showed Mr. Trump trailing Mrs. Clinton by 12 percentage points nationally and drawing just 38 percent of the vote.

OK, that sounds like good, sound campaign strategy. How about Donald Trump? Well, he went to Gettysburg, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s famous speech about living up to our highest ideals as a nation. Trump was there, supposedly, to provide a vision of his first hundred days in office:

Instead, the Republican nominee used the first third of what had been promoted as a “closing argument” speech to nurse personal grievances, grumbling about “the rigging of this election” and “the dishonest mainstream media,” and threatening to sue the women who have come forward — an 11th woman did on Saturday — to accuse him of aggressive sexual advances.

“Every woman lied when they came forward to hurt my campaign — total fabrication,” Mr. Trump said. “The events never happened. Never. All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”

As always with Trump, his timing and his venue are perfect. Next up: Trump goes to Checkpoint Charlie to complain about NATO allies not paying us enough money.

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Trump Meltdown Continues Apace

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