Cartoon

Disruption

Written by SK Ashby

(Cartoonist - Matt Davies)

In other news, Trump's numerous attempts to blame the Federal Reserve for bad economic news have had virtually no effect on public opinion of the Federal Reserve according to a new Reuters Ipsos poll.

Among the 4,174 survey respondents, only 9% said they felt the Fed makes decisions “to intentionally hurt the president,” while just 14% said the Fed was trying “to intentionally help” Trump in the decisions it makes about interest rates.

While the survey results split slightly along party lines, even among Republicans only 13% said they felt the Fed was trying to damage the president with its policies, while 19% of Democrats thought the Fed was trying to help Trump.

That compares to 45% who said the Fed was acting neither to help nor hurt the president, a Republican, and a third who said they did not know.

Meanwhile, researchers at Columbia University and the University of California Los Angeles say climate change has already increased medical costs for Americans by about $10 billion. They also say they this is a conservative estimate and the true cost could have been as high as $24 billion in 2018.

Finally, climate change led to increased migration from Guatemala to the United States according to the Department of Homeland Security's own analysis which was ignored by the White House.

An internal report that was circulated to senior Homeland Security officials and obtained by NBC News showed that migration surged from those areas of Guatemala without reliable subsistence farming or wages from commercial farming jobs. More than 100,000 Guatemalans headed north last year, and many more followed in fiscal year 2019, making Guatemala the single largest country contributing to undocumented immigration across the U.S. southwest border this year. [...]

But inside the Trump White House, that message was largely ignored in both policy decisions and messaging around what should be done to stem the flow of migrants. Last October, a month after the CBP report was finalized, President Donald Trump announced he was considering suspending foreign aid to Guatemala, which included money used to mitigate the affects of climate change on small farms.

Trump ultimately did suspend aid to Guatemala. This is our future under conservative climate change policy. We'll create refugees and then refuse to take them in just like Free Market Jesus intended.

I'm exhausted and it feels like summer will never end. Have a good weekend.