Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

 

Rapidly Rising Prices for Consumer Basics is a Small Price to Pay… NOT

Is sacrificing quality of life the new GOP austerity vision for middle America?

Donald Trump has already chastised Americans for giving their daughters too many dolls and hording too many pencils. Decrying the American “affordability crisis” as a Democratic Party “hoax” – which has to be right up there with the Dem “hoax” of climate change (surviving flooding and sweltering are just new American pastimes) – the GOP mantra has switched to convincing us that the exploding costs of living are short-term sacrifices for a better tomorrow. Americans, even diehard MAGA supporters, are skeptical. Simple historical awareness tells anybody with even the remotest sense of history that this skepticism is fully justified. Future cost cuts? Right?!

It should now be quite apparent that Trump’s true political beneficiaries are only the mega-rich. Deregulation does not benefit ordinary Americans who would prefer to live in a pollution-free environment, where less-than-honest profiteers are reined in, corrupt politicians are jailed, where housing and healthcare don’t require giving up most everything else, where children are not saddled with intolerable student debt in a job-impaired environment and where guardrail-free AI is no longer threatening future employment or sucking down a huge proportion of electrical power generation. But if those realities were challenged by a responsible government, those rich folks wouldn’t be raking in the billions that they are, and income polarization would vaporize.

That Trumpian “Big Beautiful Bill,” a Republican home run in a world of tax cuts for the rich, added trillions to our deficit (all Americans pay the interest carry on over $39 trillion in federal deficit) and has salivating Republicans wanting so much more. More tax cuts. Slashing federal spending, even as the DOGE experiment created massive job loss but virtually no reduction in federal spending, is still holy grail to the GOP. And more cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security, beyond the almost $1 trillion already cut from those programs. But they also want $200 billion more for the Iran War, which they declared over?!

All across this nation, small hospitals are closing or contracting available services… medical facilities that Medicaid used to support. This hits rural communities the hardest, but these realities are roiling everywhere. Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services are focused on implementing those healthcare cuts necessitated by that Big Beautiful Bill. New restrictions on what federal healthcare programs will cover have sent healthcare providers and insurers scampering for the exits, leaving millions of Americans high and dry, even those seniors that were supposed to be covered in those elusive golden years. Vermont just might be the canary in the medical coal mine.

“The numbers coming out of Vermont are almost unbelievable at first glance. Roughly 92% of Medicare Advantage enrollees in the state were forced to leave their plans after insurers exited the market… That means tens of thousands of seniors suddenly had to find new coverage or switch to traditional Medicare. In some counties, there were no replacement Medicare Advantage plans available at all… Seemingly overnight, a staggering number of older adults were forced off their Medicare Advantage plans. This has left many people scrambling to find new coverage. And what’s terrifying is that this is setting the tone for a larger trend happening across the United States. If you rely on Medicare Advantage (or are considering it), this situation offers a critical warning.” SavingAdvice.com, March 23rd.

National numbers are closer to 10%, but for smaller states, where the insurance profit margins are not high enough, disaster looms. Medicare has reduced coverage and eliminated reimbursable programs to feed the above tax cut. With the collapse of Affordable Care Act premium subsidies, millions of Americans are no longer able to afford healthcare. The Peterson-KFF charts above show the relentless rise in medical costs, just as Congress chooses to cut benefits to fund unnecessary tax cuts for those at the top of the American economic food chain.

The reverse Robin Hood – stealing from the poor to feed the rich – is the new American Golden Rule, one that is particularly cruel to Gen Z. “Recent 2025 polling indicates:

• 42% of Americans under age 30 report they are ‘barely getting by.’
• One in three people are currently going into debt just to attend friends’ weddings or bachelorette parties.

“In response, a growing movement of personal finance experts is urging ‘radical transparency.’ Influencers are coaching Gen Z and Millennials to set firm boundaries, suggesting that being honest about budget constraints is the only way to preserve both their credit scores and their mental health… As the gap between income and social expectations widens, the choice for many Americans is becoming stark: stay home and stay lonely, or go out and go broke… New data from the CFP Board reveals that two-thirds of U.S. adults have declined social invitations—including weddings, holiday gatherings, and birthday dinners—over the past 24 months solely due to financial constraints. The trend highlights a growing ‘financial FOMO’ that is severing social ties across the country.

“The data suggests the economic burden is compounded by social stigma. According to the report, which surveyed over 1,100 Americans, 56% of those who decline invitations never disclose that money is the primary driver. This lack of transparency is leaving millions of Americans feeling ‘out of sync’ with their peers’ perceived spending habits.” Thomas Smith writing for BetterAmerica.com, March 21st. Yet, just about every priority and policy that Donald Trump has embraced, from tariffs and the War over Iran to the cuts to programs intended to benefit average and lower income Americans, as income inequality has widened in this country like never before… have slammed the cost of living and our quality of life. To serve the rich?!

I’m Peter Dekom, and beware of greedy Republicans muttering “creeping socialism” (hardly tracking the real definition of that term) as their excuse to pillage most of us.

 

Who is the Leader of the Free World Not the United States or Donald Trump

Who is the Leader of the Free World? Not the United States or Donald Trump!

“We don’t need anybody… We’re the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military by far in the world. We don’t need them.” 

Donald Trump, March 16th when European leaders initially declined to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump has the lowest approval polls of any president since such polls have been conducted. His own base, traditional MAGA voters, are reeling from his beginning an unwinnable foreign war plus the staggering cost increases in oil & gas, medical care, foodstuffs, housing, automobiles and, well, anything that needs to be shipped by any means. After he and Secretary of War/Defense, Pete “Little Man” Hegseth, declared a total decapitation of the Iranian military, “removal by death” of dozens of key Iranian leaders and complete victory over this middle eastern Shiite theocracy – all in accordance with Israeli plans – Iran then shut down the vital Strait of Hormuz (depriving the world of 20% of all oil and gas), pasted regional Arab nations with missile attacks that destroyed as much civilian infrastructure as military targets, capping off those efforts by launching a longer-range missile (with a range that could reach Europe) 2,500 miles to the joint US/UK base in Diego Garcia (in the Indian Ocean).

Both Iran’s clergy and top military leaders, on the one hand, and the Trump administration, on the other, each declared victory in this Iran WAR. The Trump fomenter-in-chief, Israeli PM Netanyahu, noted that from his nation’s perspective, the WAR was not even half over. Even as Iran pledged that oil tankers from friendly nations would be granted safe passage through Hormuz (despite the extensive mining?) and even as the United States encouraged European and other “allied” nations to defy the Hormuz ban, companies that insured shipping made it very clear that they would not cover any losses incurred in such efforts to pass through that strait. Iranian tankers, now blessed to sell their cargo by Trump himself (more oil in the market may help reduce oil and gas prices), are still making their global deliveries.

Meanwhile, according to the March 24th Wall Street Journal, “Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan gathered before dawn on Thursday [3/19] in Riyadh for talks aimed at finding a diplomatic off-ramp to the war in Iran. Egyptian intelligence officials managed to open a channel with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and put forward a proposal to halt hostilities for five days. Those discussions laid the groundwork for an abrupt reversal: On Monday [3/23], as word of the discussions in the Saudi capital made its way to the White House, Trump backtracked on his threat to strike Iran’s power plants, embracing diplomacy with Tehran instead…” Trump claimed the United States was in direct negotiations with Iran, finding a path to settle the WAR. Iran denied that they were in any such discussions with the United States.

But Trump has managed to antagonize most of our traditional allies, whether through his TACO Trump tariffs (legally challenged by our Supreme Court), our out-and-out territorial demands over lands either in allied hands but in no event remotely legally under US control, or our government’s proclivity to use bully and blackmail tactics to coerce even our allies to join forces against Iran. Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most obvious foe despite a quasi-detente, seems to be encouraging the US to keep destroying Iran’s military and governance systems. We have reneged on trade agreements, made demands with threats (especially concerning the viability of NATO), abandoned supporting a democratic Ukraine in favor of supporting Russian bogus territorial claims, while lifting our oil embargo against Russia (ostensibly to increase product in the petroleum market), but effectively funding Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.

Contrary to Mr Trump’s assertions, there are dwindling few nations who still either respect or trust us. Workarounds are everywhere, further isolating the United States. It’s gotten to the point where, since Trump was reelected following an interim Democratic presidency where his volatile personality was quite well established, even a liberal successor to Trump (assuming we have elections) cannot create pledges or treaties that some subsequent autocratic American president just might undo. And Trump loves to find blame among his simpering appointees. Hey, Pete “Jesus Christ is on Our Side” Hegseth, a Trump bus has just left the blame depot and just might be heading in your direction.

So, what does a President who has fallen in global influence, even among his cherished followers, do? He knows that his party is facing midterm elections where his blind GOP follower-cadres face loss of one or, now, both Houses of Congress? Hold your breath until you turn, perish the thought, blue? Or the political equivalent of blackmailing his Senate stooges to repeal the filibuster rule so you can force passage of the Save America (voting) Act to eliminate all that consistently disproven election fraud… but in reality to cull as many blue voters out of their right to vote, knowing that unless you get that passed, GOP control of Congress is almost certainly toast. Add telling your stooges that you won’t sign any bills until they follow your autocratic order. Throw in full funding of DHS to ensure your brutal private ICE police force gets lots of money. Continue to pledge even more tax cuts for the rich – even noting the deficit is now over $39 trillion – but demand another $200 billion to continue your very unpopular WAR in Iran, costing a tad less than a billion dollars a day?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time for the American public to put its collective foot down, send a clear message to their elected representatives in Congress that Trump no longer can call the shots without severe political consequences, underscoring that resolve with a massive “No Kings” day of protests across the land.

Just a Short "Excursion"

   George W Bush – 2003

                  Hegseth & Trump – 2006 

Just a Short “Excursion”

I’m one of those over-traveled, US born Americans, who, as a US diplomat’s stepson, has journeyed to what are currently Middle Eastern regions representing the hotbed of global financial instability (from Beirut to Tehran), the plunge in American influence, the failure of announced military victory to match the reality on the ground – or should I say the reality on critical shipping lanes – and perhaps the beginning of a good old fashioned recession… which were quite foreseeable. Since a seriously misinformed Donald Trump elected to wage WAR – what else can you call an all-out effort to decimate every facet of Iran’s military assets and demand “unconditional surrender”? – from Iran’s effort to attack US regional military bases to the de facto paralysis of that global passageway for 20% of the world’s oil and gas, the obvious has come to pass.

We still have not heard a clear and consistent Trump explanation of why this WAR started. Since the GOP-controlled Congress – lackadaisical in operating as a Constitutionally-endowed equal branch of our government – never authorized this WAR, but Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu did, you would have to believe that Trump is simply following Bibi’s masterplan. To do otherwise, if you listen to too many senior members of Congress, would be, as the increasingly meaningless use of the term suggests, simply antisemitic. That so many American Jews are equally against this WAR would suggest otherwise.

Yet an objective look at what Israel’s unsubtle goal for Iran has been for years – crippling of her ability to apply any force beyond her borders and accept total subservience to Israel’s needs – compared to US goals focused more basically on regional stability and a predictable global petroleum marketplace, you can readily spot the obvious inconsistency. There’s very little in Bibi’s plan that benefits the United States. And as our departing Trump-appointed counter terrorism Tsar has stated, Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States.

Efforts to analogize this to our application of American force to Venezuela – where a tiny US military force removed a single, corrupt figurehead with no other bona fide governance changes – or even as seemingly mentally challenged South Carolina Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham, suggested that a nation that took Iwo Jima in WWII should have no problem seizing key coastal areas of Iran’s oil pumping port facilities – miss so many points. That the US military took 27,000 casualties (of which 7,000 were fatalities) to take that small island atoll seems to have slipped Graham’s failing mind. Iran is a heavily militarized surveillance state, a theocracy where slaughtering its own citizens is viewed as God’s will (hey, Pete Hegseth, you are hardly alone in your God-justified perspective), where Trump’s call to overthrow this regime pits innocent but completely unarmed Iranian patriots against a powerful, unwavering but massive set of well-trained soldiers.

As the current drone warfare suggests, pitting these cheap Iranian weapons again truly expensive defensive American and Israeli defensive missive systems, is not working well. But wait, there’s more. That Iran also launched a sophisticated missile, reaching a joint UK-US base (Diego Garcia) 2500 miles away, came as shock, particularly to Europe, which is within range, even as that strike did not do any damage. Insurance carriers have let their shipping companies know that no matter the pledges of Trump and friends, traversing the Strait of Hormuz would vitiate coverage.

Inasmuch as the theocratic leadership – infinitely replaceable even as they are serially killed – does not measure “victory” in terms of US/Israeli inflicted damage, but rather in staying power and the complete controlled passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Iran stubbornly maintains it is winning this conflict. Tehran has managed to draw a bevy of US Arab allies into this conflict as well, with strategic attacks on military and civilian targets in those countries. Oh, and this: the price of oil has skyrocketed globally, and the damage to Iran’s infrastructure suggests that a return to normal is not in the short-term cards, and just might trigger a global recession, since just about every commodity and product on earth is shipped. This is not a momentary blip in oil prices!

There is this misperception that since the US is one of the major oil producing nations on earth, we are immune to huge price fluctuations in distant petroleum products we neither need nor import. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Oil and gas are global commodities, and a price rise anywhere is a price rise everywhere. It is as if all the oil in the world is dumped into a massive communal bathtub where it is priced for all purposes everywhere. This is why the cost of gasoline/diesel at US filling stations is soaring. Texas oil billionaires are happy; they benefit rather dramatically from this global pricing.

But reminiscent of George W Bush’s “mission accomplished” Iraq War declaration on May 1, 2003, ironically aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln – one of the two US aircraft carriers deployed in this WAR – Christian nationalist Secretary of WAR, Pete Hegseth, has joined the President in stating that we have won this conflict. Really? Our European allies did not join this WAR, because their intelligence services told them that this could easily escalate into one of those “forever wars” and that despite the damage in Iran (and knowing the regime would not fall or be taken over by unarmed protesters – read Islamic Revolutionary Guards’ “fodder’), Iran would never surrender.

But the Trump administration has maintained that we have already won. A few Marines have been sent to “hang around,” but a ground WAR is not what most Americans would tolerate. Been there, done that. As Trump and his mini-minion Pete declare victory, perhaps they should go to the WAR room and look at all those satellite images of tankers jammed together unable to cross the Strait of Hormuz… and ask themselves whose definition of victory actually matters. Wreaking global havoc, impacting the US economy like no other, increasing the wedge between the United States and its allies, and shutting off 20% of the world’s oil and gas supply, seems more like a genuine victory to me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while having moved out of Los Angeles has impaired my ability to keep putting out the volume of blogs I have been used to writing, if the US can embrace facts… and if our democracy can right the ship, we do have a good shot of making America truly great again.

Your Cheatin’ Heart & Academic Writing Assignments

 

Your Cheatin’ Heart & Academic Writing Assignments

“Google has AI embedded into it, Microsoft has AI embedded into it — like literally everything has AI in it… So, in a roundabout way, there’s no way to write a paper without using AI, unless you go to the library and you check books out and use encyclopedias.” 

Marley Stevens, a recent grad of the University of North Georgia, who battled false charges of AI use.

In ye olde days, rote learning was probably the best level of education any Americans ever received. Public education was not the rule, and back in 1635, Boston built the first public school. TV Westerns are filled with “school marms,” often the love interest of the white Stetson-hatted heroes, but the point illustrates how pervasive public education and functional literacy moved us to a level of modern education that embraces even advanced math and science as part of a basic public education. Rote learning is no longer even discussed. We have social agendas and censorship as prevailing topics, but there is a real question for those students in high school and beyond whether their assignments are truly their own or some version of an easily accessible product of artificial intelligence.

While fake images, and often sexually explicit, have made their way onto mainstream social media sites (like Grok) and sometimes become extreme examples of what was intended as teenage mischief crossing into criminal activity. Even political fakery has become pervasive creating a perplexing challenge in education. We want them to be the digital natives they already are and to be able to function in a world where AI has to be part of their academic tool set, but we also want them to learn. Much like plagiarizing is grounds for academic discipline, or at least a failing grade, substituting genuine research, writing and math skills with AI-generated substitutes seems comparable.

So, as students have embraced these AI shortcuts, teachers and professors have deployed AI detection tools to combat the trend. But just as the military reacts to new weapons being developed by our foes, there is more than a little back and forth in academic as Tyler Kingkade, writing for the January 28th NBC News, points out: “Rapid adoption of AI by young people set off waves of anxiety that students could cheat their way through college, leading many professors to run papers through online AI detectors that inspect whether students used large language models to write their work for them. Some colleges say they’ve caught hundreds of students cheating this way.

“However, since their debut a few years ago, AI detectors have repeatedly been criticized as unreliable and more likely to flag non-native English speakers on suspicion of plagiarism. And a growing number of college students also say their work has been falsely flagged as written by AI — several have filed lawsuits against universities over the emotional distress and punishments they say they faced as a result… NBC News spoke to ten students and faculty who described being caught in the middle of an escalating war of AI tools.

“Amid accusations of AI cheating, some students are turning to a new group of generative AI tools called ‘humanizers.’ The tools scan essays and suggest ways to alter text so they aren’t read as having been created by AI. Some are free, while others cost around $20 a month… Some users of the humanizer tools rely on them to avoid detection of cheating, while others say they don’t use AI at all in their work, but want to ensure they aren’t falsely accused of AI-use by AI-detector programs.

“In response, and as chatbots continue to advance, companies such as Turnitin and GPTZero have upgraded their AI detection software, aiming to catch writing that’s gone through a humanizer. They also launched applications that students can use to track their browser activity or writing history so they can prove they wrote the material, though some humanizers can type out text that a user wants to copy and paste in case a student’s keystrokes are tracked.

“‘Students now are trying to prove that they’re human, even though they might have never touched AI ever,’ said Erin Ramirez, an associate professor of education at California State University, Monterey Bay. ‘So where are we? We’re just in a spiral that will never end.’

“The competition between AI detectors and writing assistance programs has been propelled by a heightened anxiety about cheating on college campuses. It shows how inescapable AI has become at universities, even for students who don’t want to use it and for faculty who wish they didn’t have to police it… ‘If we write properly, we get accused of being AI — it’s absolutely ridiculous,’ said Aldan Creo, a graduate student from Spain who studies AI detection at University of California San Diego. ‘Long term, I think it’s going to be a big problem.’”

To police AI cheating would require a serious escalation in source material tracking, a really huge privacy problem, often with spotty results as Kingkade noted: “Kelsey Auman, who graduated last spring, started the petition after she fought to prove she did not use AI on several of her assignments. She knew enough classmates with similar experiences that they had a group chat named ‘Academic Felons for Life.’ Auman said she started to run her papers through multiple AI detectors on her own before turning them in, hoping to avoid another dispute, but it created more anxiety when they also incorrectly flagged things she wrote as generated by a chatbot.”

But if national leadership is setting a bad example for the use of AI falsification, it seems hard to fault students mimicking the political world around them. Kaitlyn Huamani, writing for the January 28th Associated Press, points out: “Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the ‘Utopias’ podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for ‘trustable information… AI systems are only going to exacerbate, amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or evidence,’ he said.

“Srinivasan said he thinks the White House and other officials sharing AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in positions of credibility and power, such as policymakers, to share unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media platforms tend to ‘algorithmically privilege’ extreme and conspiratorial content, ‘we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.’… There are also many fabricated videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.” Embrace AI anyway? Some Academics are finding ways to incorporate honest AI use into class assignments, while others seem to have just given up.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if AI cannot be contained within reasonable guidelines, a declining quality in our high school, college or graduate/professional school grads will infect the entire nation and its competitive future.

One Industry Unable to Afford Its Traditional Home – Hollywood

 

One Industry Unable to Afford Its Traditional Home: Hollywood

The digital transformation, online distribution, the pandemic changing viewing patterns, executives with failed visions, massive debt, algorithms as deciders, consolidation and buyer contraction, AI, fakes and even better fakes, short theatrical windows, no loyalty, everyone is getting fired or at least cuts in compensation, shorter attention spans, few productions generate major cross-generational traction, shorter series seasons, franchise content under-performing, precedent is just bad word, renegotiation, guild agreements about to negotiate again, changing of the guard, and those massively high performing exceptions that creatives believe should apply to them. Try being a negotiator representing rights and talent… or a studio or network executive trying to pick productions and establish budgets. Welcome to my world.

Put all of this into “the place where talent and creatives live” – or used to live until their house burned down or they got fed up with the “noise, traffic and absurd costs” and moved. There was a time when studio space was rented out at a premium, where private equity believed that this was a good business. I suspect that’s why God created bankruptcy laws, and all the state-sponsored incentives couldn’t make up for the cost of living, one that has become unaffordable to people who are not at the top of the pay chain. Below-the-line personnel (crew) joined the ranks of once-in-a-while actors… and struggle in an industry where if you work in production, there maybe dry periods between jobs. In Los Angeles, that dry spell looks a lot like the Sahara Desert to so many. The falling box office is just one reflection of our new reality.

California real estate is part of the problem, but the changing consumer demand for differing content compounds the problem. The cost of production has now generated a push-back that is slamming owners of stage space, prop and equipment rental houses, out of business. I visited some clients recently, on one of the legendary LA studio lots… and realized that I could spend some serious quiet time almost anywhere within the facility. The trickle of production was not enough to keep this lot open. Along with a pile of other such production lots, it was forced into bankruptcy.

Writing for the January 27th Los Angeles Times, Roger Vincent and Samantha Masunaga surveyed the damage: “‘We just had all the major networks, all the major streaming platforms walk through this facility and they can’t believe how nice it is,’ said [Shep] Wainright, managing partner of East End Studios… But so far, no one has signed up to make a project at East End Studios’ newest property, even as state and local leaders tout new tax incentives to boost the film industry… ‘Everyone is doing their best to try to bring productions back to Los Angeles,’ Wainright said, ‘but it’s pretty dire.’

“The challenges facing owners of local soundstages came into sharp relief last week [mid January] when one of the largest landlords in Hollywood — Hackman Capital Partners — said it was turning over the historic Radford Studio Center in Studio City to Goldman Sachs… After years of aggressive soundstage development across Southern California — fueled by a surge in TV production and low interest rates — the writing was on the wall as filming activity dropped to historic lows... The average annual soundstage occupancy rate dropped to 63% in 2024, the most recent year for which data are available, according to FilmLA, a nonprofit that tracks filming in the L.A. area… The 2024 rate is down from 69% the prior year and is well below the average occupancy rate of 90% seen from 2016 to 2022, according to FilmLA data.

“An upcoming report for 2025 is expected to reveal little change in occupancy levels, spokesman Philip Sokoloski said. The group recently reported a 16% drop in film and TV shoot days last year compared with 2024… Those busy days were heady, but they weren’t built to last, said real estate broker Carl Muhlstein, who helps arrange sales and leases of studios and other large entertainment facilities.

“The dawn of the streaming era set off a scramble to grab market share among newcomers such as Netflix and old-timers such as Paramount and Walt Disney Co., which created hundreds of original scripted televisions shows. By 2022, during the height of so-called peak TV, nearly 200 shows were in production industrywide… ‘It was all about speeding to market and capturing eyeballs by throwing billions of dollars’ at creating new shows and movies, Muhlstein said. ‘They were all building platforms.’” And then in fits and stops, it all changed. To call it a slump or just a temporary moment is misleading. It seems more like the end of an era. Oh, productions will continue, a bit more decentralized, people still cherish entertainment, but the money and the technology – added to changing tastes and the complexity of too many demographics – well the economics are very different.

I still have to tell dreamers, who cite Maverick or Barbie as proof that this is a viable business where dreams can come true, that statistical realities paint a very different picture. I hate those talks. I hate explaining to amazing talent after a hit show why their next success isn’t generating the pay then know they deserve. Or get asked why major media executives still get paid tens of millions a year. It hurts, but a few are doing beyond well. And we will muddle along.

I’m Peter Dekom, and a few years ago, I delivered a lecture with the humous title – “Film, More than a Bathtub Ring” – but no one finds that funny anymore.

Death by Recycling

 

Death by Recycling

Refuse Derived Fuel (“RDF”)

If you’ve ever wondered if those “well-tested” solutions to very serious issues – like climate change and environmental pollutions – are actually safe and effective, well, today’s blog is for you. Sometimes, rich people have a way of putting a pleasant-sounding label or arguments of “on balance, not worth the cost” on profound toxicity, the same people who will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to install very efficient air and water filters in their offices, homes, yachts, jets and cars. Their three-star restaurants do not serve micro-plastic prime steaks, but even these fat cats cannot avoid the problem. But when it comes to business efficiencies and profits, health and safety concerns are often washed away as the chemicals remain. For those finding controlling these toxic substances, they have an anti-environmental, climate change denying ally ready declare a new “hoax” and push regulation aside. Orange Man.

A report published on January 29, 2025, in Stanford Medicine tells us: “Microplastics — plastic fragments up to 5 millimeters long — are inescapable. An estimated 10 to 40 million metric tons of these particles are released into the environment every year, and if current trends continue, that number could double by 2040. Most come from larger plastic items that break down over time, while some are added directly to products we use such as paint, cleansers and toothpastes… ‘Plastic never goes away — it just breaks down into finer and finer particles,’ said Desiree LaBeaud, MD, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Stanford Medicine who co-founded the university's interdisciplinary Plastics and Health Working Group...

“Research on the health impacts of microplastics in humans is just beginning. The particles have been found in multiple organs and tissues, including the brain, testicles, heart, stomach, lymph nodes and placenta. They've also been detected in urine, breastmilk, semen and meconium, which is a newborn's first stool. ‘We're born pre-polluted,’ LaBeaud said.

“Evidence is growing that this exposure could be harmful. Studies show that microplastics make fish and birds more vulnerable to infections. Animal and cellular studies have linked microplastics to biological changes including inflammation, an impaired immune system, deteriorated tissues, altered metabolic function, abnormal organ development, cell damage and more. A recent large-scale review of existing research by scholars at the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that exposure to microplastics is suspected to harm reproductive, digestive and respiratory health and suggested a link to colon and lung cancer.”

Microplastics are often lumped with a litany of non-or-very slow biodegradable chemicals and known as “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (also PFAS, PFASs, and informally called ‘forever chemicals’) are a group of synthetic organofluorine chemical compounds that have multiple fluorine atoms attached to an alkyl chain; 7 million such chemicals are listed in PubChem.” Wikipedia. As the Stanford scientists point out, even as our bodies are permeated with such plastics, even before we are born, they can cause serious medical issues throughout life.

RFD’s are not headline grabbers, but there are a few people paying attention. Sean Mowbray is a Scottish scientific writer (with a hot website) who specializes in those environment issues that slide under the radar. Microplastics, which make up about half of RFDs, have drawn his attention as “climate friendly’ recycling solutions that would be stored in landfills and forever chemicals if not dissipated. But there’s a catch. If there isn’t an effective microplastic removal or containment system before the RFD is incinerated, and the post-burning filters are not totally effective, this just might help spread those microplastics. Mowbray writes:

“RDF is typically made up of around 50% plastic waste, which is combined with other combustible materials like wood, cardboard and textiles. The mixed waste is processed via drying and shredding, with the resulting materials then burned in so-called waste-to-energy incinerators, cement kilns, or other industrial facilities such as paper mills.

“Proponents argue that burning waste is an effective way to simultaneously reduce landfilling and plastic pollution, while cutting greenhouse gas emissions, as it’s a substitute for fossil fuels. Advocates have even marketed RDF as a circular economy solution… Critics aren’t convinced. They say that incinerating RDFs, with their high plastic content, is akin to swapping out one dirty fuel source for another, resulting in the release of significant greenhouse gases, along with harmful particulate and chemical pollutants, including dioxins, a potential byproduct of burning plastics…

“RDF proponents like the RDF Industry Group say it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, though it appears to do so using a carbon accounting loophole also used by the forest biomass industry: While RDF’s biomass components (wood, paper and cardboard) do add significant carbon to the atmosphere, contributing to climate change when burned, those emissions often aren’t counted by countries because the burning of biomass is classified by United Nations rules as carbon neutral, since trees can eventually be regrown. But nature does count those emissions, which do add to near-term climate change.

“Industry advocates also argue that RDF avoids emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, because burning it reduces the amount of waste going into landfills, which emit large amounts of methane to the atmosphere.

“Both these carbon arguments have led to RDF being touted as a low-carbon solution, and even ‘zero-carbon,’ for industry. The RDF Industry Group, for example, said the volumes of imported and exported waste-derived fuels in the EU prevented the release of an estimated 83.7 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent from 2015-2024… Brown argues that while reducing, recycling and reusing waste is ultimately the ideal environmental solution, incinerating it is still beneficial. ‘The primary reason for [burning RDF] isn’t because it’s a low carbon fuel generating low carbon energy,’ he says. ‘The primary reason is because it’s better than the alternative of landfill.’” If this blog makes you feel warm and fuzzy, that just might be microplastics doing their thing.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the shame in all of this is how deprioritized climate change and chemical pollution as naked greed seems be the value our society cherishes most.

Water Woes Have Profound and Often Deadly Consequences

 

       Lake Mead is Slowly Drying Out      Midwest Cornfields are Failing as Well-Water Disappears

Water Woes Have Profound and Often Deadly Consequences

As we watched Iran explode in anger and frustration, with unofficial death tolls as Tehran’s forces massacred protesters, and were hanging others they caught after a very quick trial, most of the world focused on the meagre lifestyles, sky rocketing inflation and prices that required suitcases of cash to shop for groceries that got pricier in hours. But there’s another huge issue in Iran: the capital city is almost out of water. Major cities around the world share the same fate – taps are dry. Cape Town almost went down. Khartoum is shuddering with water woes. Mexico City is struggling. And the big cities in the American Southwest are running dry, fighting over Colorado River water based on long-standing allocations that exceed the capacity of actual available water.

The Ogalla Aquifer (aka High Plains Aquifer), which cuts through the plains states deep into Texas, began losing water when wells switched to diesel pumps to irrigate crops. There are parts of that major water source that are bone dry. Sure, there’s plenty of fresh water in the Great Lakes, but aside from the states around those lakes ready to fight if that water is diverted, water is very heavy and very expensive (in money and energy) to transport. It is a global problem, notwithstanding flooding from mega-storms sucking water from warming seas.

As Julia Jacobo, writing for ABC News (January 21st) addresses an issue that has forced millions into forced migration into lands where they are unwanted, this is a result of our unwillingness to contain climate change: “The world is now in water bankruptcy, according to the UN: What that means… as irreversible damage experienced by water systems has pushed many basins around the world beyond recovery, recent research has shown.

“Some of the worst impacts include chronic groundwater depletion, overallocation of water, deforestation, pollution and degradation to land and soil, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH)… As a result, many regions around the world are experiencing a ‘post-crisis condition,’ which entails irreversible losses of natural water capital and an inability to bounce back to historic baselines, the researchers said.

“The Middle East and North Africa are among the water bankruptcy ‘hot spots’ due to high water stress, climate vulnerability, low agricultural productivity, energy-intensive desalination, sand and dust storms and complex political economies, according to the report… Of the world's large lakes, 50% have lost water since the early 1990s, according to the report. A quarter of humanity directly depends on those lakes, the researchers said.

“In addition, 50% of global domestic water is now derived from groundwater, and 40% of irrigation water is drawn from aquifers being steadily drained. Of the world's major aquifers, 70% are showing long-term decline… Global glacier mass has declined 30% since 1970, with entire low- and mid-latitude mountain ranges expected to lose functional glaciers within decades, according to the report… An ‘overwhelming majority’ of the statistics listed were caused by humans, the researchers said… As a result, 2 billion people worldwide live on sinking ground and 4 billion people face severe water scarcity at least one month every year, according to the report… Between 2022 and 2023, 1.8 million people were living under drought conditions. Starvation is a great motivator, and the resulting anger spawns wars all over the Earth.

Writing for the January 20th Independent, Josh Marcus brings the number close to home: “More than two-thirds of the country [US] is facing unusual dryness or full-blown drought conditions, despite winter being known for heavier precipitation, according to a Washington Post analysis of recent U.S. Drought Monitor data… The conditions touch every state except for the usually drought-prone California, which has had a wet winter.

“The dryness has scientists, local officials, and resource planners alarmed, as the conditions can reduce local water supplies and drive up the risk of wildfires… States with the highest percentage of their area in severe drought include Georgia, Maine, North Carolina, Florida, New Mexico, and Virginia, the paper found.

“In Utah, about 93 percent of the state is experiencing moderate to extreme drought, and temperatures this winter have been nearly 10 degrees above the average… Two-thirds of U.S. territory, including regions in 49 states, are undergoing unusual dryness or full-on drought conditions, amid an unusually warm and dry winter season (AP)… ‘We had green grass and weeds growing in our city even into January, leading me to be more worried about mowing’ instead of shoveling snow. I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Jon Meyer, Utah’s assistant state climatologist, told the paper.

“The conditions have set off alarm bells across the country, especially in regions like the Mountain West, which is dependent on snowfall both for winter tourism dollars and water supplies from snowmelt… Colorado is in a snow drought, and the snowpack is the lowest on record for this time of year, according to Colorado Public Radio, following a December 2025 that was the warmest on record… ‘It’s as grim as it gets right now,’ Brad Udall, water and climate research scientist at the Colorado Water Center at Colorado State University, told the broadcaster.” But climate change is so much more than lost tourist dollars, as so many sky resorts cannot make money. Water is life.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those who have the power to reverse this trend, but who choose to cry “hoax” at the reality of climate change are participating in mass killings and misery…no matter how passionately they live in a world of denial.