Tag: Subsidies

Can the U.S. Kick Its Reliance on Russian Uranium?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Posted on September 5, 2022 by John McGregor

John here. France is working to bring all of its nuclear power plants back online before winter and Germany is contemplating a plan to postpone the closure of its plants. Hungary has just issued approvals for two new nuclear reactors from Rosatom. Nonetheless, Ukraine is pushing for sanctions on Russian uranium. Theoretical capacity to replace uranium with thorium won’t translate into immediate results, so any sanctions in the short term would put further pressure on energy markets.

Can the U.S. Kick Its Reliance on Russian Uranium?

How Russia and the U.S. See Africa’s Place in the World

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Ivan Loshkaryov

Since the early days of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, the diplomacy of the Сollective West has been striving to isolate Moscow, punishing it for resolving the conflict in Donbass. However, one cannot talk about isolation without accounting for the position of developing countries: Alongside the golden billion, there are another 7 billion people living in the world. It is then only natural that the eyes of Western strategists and diplomats have turned to states and regional organizations reluctant to join the anti-Russian rhetoric, seeing no point in imposing economic and political restrictions against Moscow.

How Russia and the U.S. See Africa’s Place in the World

Bill Gates and the Secret Push to Save Biden’s Climate Bill

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Bill Gates and the Secret Push to Save Biden’s Climate Bill

Gates started wooing Manchin and other senators who might prove pivotal for clean-energy policy in 2019 over a meal in Washington DC. “My dialogue with Joe has been going on for quite a while,” Gates said. “Almost everyone on the energy committee” — of which Manchin was then the senior-most Democrat — “came over and spent a few hours with me over dinner.”

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Also at Manchin’s insistence, automakers also will see new strings attached to electric vehicle tax incentives so they will have to be made in North America and, by 2024, can’t use batteries sourced from China. Labor leaders bemoaned that the final package doesn’t contain much support for workers who lose their jobs in the green transition.

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There’s been such whiplash from 2016 when, as Gates puts it, green spending from the US government “had dropped to near zero.” Six years later, American climate finance has been “reinvigorated,” and Gates now sees innovation “going way faster than I expected. That’s why I’m optimistic that we will solve this thing.”

The working class is going to be thrown under the bus, but at least Bill Gates is happy. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Will you get insulin-cost relief from the inflation bill? Not if you have private insurance

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Will you get insulin-cost relief from the inflation bill? Not if you have private insurance

But an out-of-pocket cap identical to that for Medicare was stripped from the bill for those with private insurance because Democrats are trying to pass the bill by a simple majority through the reconciliation process. That requires Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to vet the provisions. She said most of the health-related features were fine, but the insulin proposal for those who have private insurance, not Medicare, violated the Byrd provision, which says that issues “extraneous to the federal budget” cannot be passed by simple majority through reconciliation.

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Out-of-pocket spending for those with Part D Medicare drug coverage will be capped at $2,000 a year.

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In 2024, a 5% coinsurance payment that now kicks in after someone reaches the catastrophic drug spending level of $7,050 in Medicare will end. Because drug companies set their own prices, 5% on expensive drugs can be a lot of money.

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Big Chip in US-China Crisis

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

For the U.S., it is unthinkable that semiconductor behemoth TSMC could one day be in territory controlled by Beijing, writes Maria Ryan.

One aspect of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan that has been largely overlooked is her meeting with Mark Lui, chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC). Pelosi’s trip coincided with U.S. efforts to convince TSMC – the world’s largest chip manufacturer, on which the U.S. is heavily dependent – to establish a manufacturing base in the US and to stop making advanced chips for Chinese companies.

Big Chip in US-China Crisis