Monday Morning Read

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It turns out that the City of Buffalo stopped fluoridating its water in 2015, according to a report by Charlie Specht in The Buffalo News. Pretty outrageous. Then again, the administration of Mayor Byron Brown has been bad news for public health for a long time. It dragged its feet on addressing lead poisoning. Tolerates the death of civilians at the hands of police. Didn’t do squat about pollution from the Peace Bridge. Has been cutting down climate-soothing trees without sufficiently replacing them, especially on the East Side. And left residents to largely fend for themselves during the recent blizzard (more than 30 people died). All this prompts me to again pose the question I raised a couple of weeks ago: Is Byron Brown the worst mayor in America?

Reinvent Albany, the good government group that does stellar work, published a devastating analysis of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s economic development agenda that she outlined in her recent State of the State address and related documents. The headline sums things up pretty succinctly: “Governor Hochul doubling down on totally discredited corporate welfare.” I strongly encourage you to read their analysis.

Speaking of corporate welfare, The New York Times published an op-ed piece on the  microchip industry, which is in line for massive subsidies from Hochul, and the Albany Times Union explained how the state’s push for microchip manufacturing could work at cross-purposes with its renewable energy goals.

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How is this for brazen green washing? Ohio lawmakers, in coordination with the fossil fuel industry, have redefined natural gas as green energy.

Ron DeSantis is the modern day George Wallace.

The Intercept points to a deeper problem than Joe Biden and Donald Trump retaining classified documents: governments’ penchant for secrecy. It’s not just a federal problem. It’s at the root of stonewalling at the local and state level, as well.

The Verge has an inside account of Elon Musk’s disastrous takeover of Twitter.

RIP, David Crosby.

The post Monday Morning Read appeared first on Investigative Post.

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Trump’s blunders ‘raise the risk of global conflict’ as enemies ‘gang up’: analyst



After a series of diplomatic blunders, President Donald Trump and America's reputation loss could "raise the risk of global conflict" and come at a major cost, including "mischief or worse" from enemies.

In an opinion piece published Monday, Bloomberg columnist Andreas Kluth describes how a good reputation can be difficult to obtain or maintain, and Trump "has squandered whatever credibility America had left in foreign and security policy."

Following his rambling speech last week in front of the United Nations and his struggle to see the difference between "personal chemistry" with President Vladimir Putin and diplomatic action, Trump has effectively put both adversaries and allies on edge, wrote Kluth.

"Inklings of danger are everywhere," Kluth writes. "America’s partners are becoming more anxious and making alternative arrangements for their security: Saudi Arabia just signed a defensive pact with Pakistan after watching an Israeli strike against its Gulf neighbor Qatar, which is allied to, but got no help from, the United States. America’s adversaries keep testing the resolve of Trump and the West, as Putin is doing in eastern Europe. Or, like Xi Jinping in Beijing and Kim in Pyongyang, they’re recalculating bellicose scenarios in secret. Other countries, like India, are wary of committing to America and keeping all options open, even clutching hands with Moscow and Beijing."

And although Trump is not the first president to struggle with navigating U.S. reputation among foreign nations, it puts America at an unfortunate future disadvantage.

"Against this backdrop, anybody watching US policy for the past decade, from friendly Europe to adversarial China, already had reason to doubt US credibility. What Trump has done in his second term is to remove the doubts and confirm the loss. Allies now know they can’t trust America, while adversaries are ganging up and recalculating their plans for mischief or worse.

It's unclear what will happen in the future; a damaged reputation jeopardizes diplomacy.

"These responses to America’s loss of credibility will raise the risk of global conflict," Kluth writes. "The danger will go up even more if the US, under this or a future president, panics and decides to overcompensate in reestablishing its reputation, with a demonstratively hawkish turn that could tip into war. If America and the whole world are becoming less safe, it’s because Donald Trump’s foreign policy is, literally, in-credible."