(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . From the GNR Newsroom, its the Monday Good News Roundup [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-24 Its that time once again friends, time for the Monday Good News Roundup, where myself, Killer300 and Bhu bring you the good news to start your week off right. I’ve had a pretty good week last week; picked up some extra hours, a random stranger gave me twenty bucks, and I got a seventy dollar writing commission, which helped ease my money woes. Plus I signed up to have my internet payment reduced, another bonus. But enough about that, lets get to the good news. Amid all the attention on this month’s elections in Wisconsin and Illinois, one outcome with major implications for 2024 flew under the national radar: School board candidates who ran culture-war campaigns flamed out. Democrats and teachers’ unions boasted candidates they backed in Midwestern suburbs trounced their opponents in the once-sleepy races. The winning record, they said, was particularly noticeable in elections where conservative candidates emphasized agendas packed with race, gender identity and parental involvement in classrooms. While there's no official overall tally of school board results in states that held an array of elections on April 4, two conservative national education groups did not dispute that their candidates posted a losing record. Liberals are now making the case that their winning bids for school board seats in Illinois and Wisconsin show they can beat back Republican attacks on divisive education issues. I believe the GOP’s dirty tactics have gotten them as far as they can go. They’ve peaked, and soon we will see them begin to recede. The Country’s Ongoing Rejection of MAGA Remains A Big Opportunity for Democrats - The central dynamic in American politics today is a growing understanding and rejection of greater MAGA. MAGA has been with us for some time now, and it is getting worse, not better. And people see this. This new Navigator poll we discussed last week is worth looking at again for the numbers for Congressional Republican are just so terrible: 35-59 (-24) job approval, -48 with independent voters 37-52 (-15) on inflation, their central 2022 issue -17 on jobs and the economy with independent voters. Again, feeling real confident going into 2024. The US appears poised for a manufacturing boom as companies tap into Biden administration subsidies with pledges to spend tens of billions of dollars on new projects, according to Financial Times research. The Chips Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, passed within days of each other last August, together include more than $400bn in tax credits, grants and loans designed to foster a domestic semiconductor industry and clean-tech manufacturing base. The package was aimed at countering China’s dominance in strategic sectors such as electric vehicles and recapturing jobs from abroad. The FT identified more than 75 large-scale manufacturing announcements in the US since the passage of these two industrial policies. Here is what we learned. Don’t ever let em tell ya Biden didn’t do anything for them. To outsiders, Xi’s reign may look uncontested, but there are signs of growing resistance within China. In just the last six months, there were anti-Xi banners hung over a major Beijing thoroughfare and a series of highly-impactful street marches against Xi’s zero-COVID policy. Even before these recent outbursts, Chinese people have found ways to express their dissatisfaction with Xi. To avoid government censorship, imprisonment or worse, dissidents in China developed a creative tactic: They began using nicknames to refer to, and critique their president. According to the censorship log leaked by the social media app Xiaohongshu in 2020, 564 words were considered “sensitive” by the Chinese government when referring to Xi. These nicknames are cleverly subversive variations of Xi’s name, oftentimes pointing to his appearance, actions or history — and going against the image that he wants for himself. The efforts to suppress their usage reveal the extreme lengths the government is willing to go to in order to preserve its hegemony. Just as importantly, though, the nicknames serve as inspiration for further dissent, exemplifying the Chinese people’s unwavering pursuit of free participation in politics and their resistance to oppression. Yeah remember this is the guy who banned Winnie the Pooh in China because he hated being compared to him. Like its hard to imagine someone even more thin skinned than Trump but here we are. This anthology arrives at a moment of increasing fear about the consequences of climate change, especially for young people like Leedy and Jefferson, who turned 25 the day after Leedy’s desperate attempts to sway Manchin. The idea that it’s “too late” to do anything about global warming has become increasingly pervasive, percolating in online forums dedicated to spreading doomerism and visions of inevitable planetary collapse. “Passing policy is only one part of winning the climate fight,” Jefferson said in an interview. “If the light goes out in people’s hearts and minds, and they no longer believe in the future, then there won’t be one.” And is that not the entire point of the Good News Roundup? To keep that hope for the future alive? We only lose when we give up. If you are living you are winning. Republican mega-donor Thomas Peterffy told the Financial Times this weekend that he’s pausing his plans to fund Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) inevitable 2024 presidential campaign, which DeSantis still hasn’t formally announced. Given Peterffy’s aforementioned Republican mega-donor status, his reasoning for this may surprise you: He cited DeSantis’ crusade against abortion and zest for banning books in classrooms. Yeah it turns out trying to out Trump Trump was a bit too much for most Republican Donors. I think this pretty much sinks DeSantis’ presidential aspirations thank goodness. mmigration is back, in the US at least. Over the past two and a half years, immigration into the American labour market has increased by 4mn workers, and the working age immigrant population has now finally reached its pre-pandemic trend level. This is likely to be a central factor in strong employment growth, particularly in leisure and hospitality. It is also part of the story on increasing workforce participation, as well as being good news for the fight against inflation. As Apollo’s chief economist Torsten Sløk put it in a recent note to clients, “immigration is a key reason that the US labour market is gradually moving from very overheated to less overheated. The fact that immigration is now moving to levels above 2019 is going to be very positive for the labour market, and for the Fed’s inflation challenge.” Yeah, with Trump gone the country is becoming safe for immigrants once again, as it should be. he American Tobacco Trail is just one small stretch of the East Coast Greenway, an evolving network of trails from Calais, Maine down to Key West, Florida. Project leaders at the East Coast Greenway Alliance have been working since 1991 to stitch them together and create new greenways with the goal of establishing a car-free, 3,000-mile route for walking and biking. The Durham Belt Line will add about two more connecting miles to the Greenway’s remaining 2,000 miles. Although it’s a fraction of the path’s full Eastern Seaboard-spanning journey, it will be a critical car-free route for Durham residents on a daily basis. This is really neat, I wished I lived closer to it. Oklahoma’s freeway fighters are resting a little easier this week, having learned that the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority (OTA) is halting all work related to the $15 billion turnpike expansion, ACCESS Oklahoma. Back in January, Strong Towns reported that Oklahoma residents took the OTA to court, arguing that its plans for a $15 billion turnpike expansion not only lacked transparency, but were illegal. The judge presiding agreed, ruling that the OTA “wilfully violated” Oklahoma’s Open Meetings Act. As a result, over 200 plaintiffs celebrated their first major legal victory in the fight against the project, known as ACCESS Oklahoma. On March 15, 2023, Oklahoma’s attorney general stepped in and seemingly sided with the plaintiffs, requesting an audit of the OTA. More news from the war on automobiles. That call was an offer to run the enigmatically named EnerVenue, a newcomer making big claims about supplying the world with cheaper, safer batteries to store clean energy and overcome the temporal limitations and intermittency of renewable energy. EnerVenue took nickel-hydrogen technology NASA developed to store power on the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope, swapped out the uber-expensive platinum catalyst for an unnamed material designed to be radically cheaper, and brought it to market. Since Heinemann joined as CEO in the summer of 2020, the pace of action has been dizzying, especially compared to the slow simmer of most battery hardware startups. We have some our best technological breakthroughs when we are reaching for the stars. he hits just keep on comin’ for Meatball Ron. A Republican megadonor very publicly said over the weekend that he “and a bunch of friends” were pausing plans to fund Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) inevitable run for president because of the governor’s love for banning books and abortion. And now some of his top donors are so mad that they shared photos of their group chat with Rolling Stone. Florida donors who helped fuel DeSantis’ rise as an alternative to Donald Trump are getting increasingly concerned that the governor can’t beat Trump in a primary and are scrutinizing his moves in colorful language. The outlet reports that “participants exploded with alarm” last week when DeSantis was doing book tour stops while part of his state was underwater: Meatball Ron I like that actually, I may start using that myself. The strike, which halted garbage collection across the state for four days, was partially successful. By January, the government had agreed to convert more than 24,000 out of the state’s 33,000 pourakarmika positions into permanent jobs. The government also vowed to abolish the contract labor system and bring more drivers and helpers into a direct payment system. If this promise is fulfilled, it will usher tens of thousands of workers into more secure conditions. All over the world workers are realizing they deserve better, and they are fighting for it. What comes after repealing parking mandates? Lots of newly legal homes. Studies from two cities observed that in the years following reform, 60 to 70 percent of new homes would previously have been illegal to build. The new data add to the heap of evidence that parking mandates—local rules that ban new homes and businesses unless they have a pre-determined number of off-street parking spaces—are a binding constraint on housing construction. While only a few buildings opted out of providing parking entirely, most new homes in the studies ultimately benefited from the increased flexibility. “It isn’t surprising,” said researcher C. J. Gabbe, who authored one of the studies. According to Gabbe, homebuilders have been saying for a long time that demand for off-street parking was lower than what zoning rules required. I actually live near Buffalo, so this is interesting news to say the least. If you live in Washington state, it’s just about guaranteed that you or someone you know is struggling with the cost of housing. This isn’t just an I-5 corridor problem either. Crosscut reported last week that the most drastic percentage increases in prices and rents over the past several years are in Washington’s smaller cities and rural areas, on both sides of the mountains. Opinion research bears this out as well. Over several years, in poll after poll after poll, Washingtonians have ranked housing affordability, the cost of living, and homelessness among their top concerns. Seventy-six percent of the 6,000 respondents in a Department of Commerce and Puget Sound Regional Council-commissioned survey from late 2022 said they were directly impacted or knew someone directly impacted by the cost and availability of housing in the state. Housing should be a right, not a commodity. This is a good step towards that. And just like that its time for another GNR Lightning round! New Coral Reef discovered in Galapagos islands Cancer and heart disease vaccines ready by the end of the decade Maryland to adopt biggest offshore wind goals in US Wage growth returns with cooling inflation This is how it spreads Vermont outlaws child marriage Wind farms and birds learn to coexist A Huge new clean energy transmission line given the green light Great lightning round. Now back to our regular good news. The Supreme Court on Friday granted a full stay in a case concerning the Food and Drug Administration's approval of -- and access to -- the widely used abortion pill mifepristone. The court's decision -- a 7-2 vote with Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting -- preserves access to mifepristone as the Biden administration and the pill's manufacturer appeal a lower court ruling that would impose restrictions on the drug. I know everyone on Friday probably breathed a little easier after hearing that ruling. The abortion pill is safe… for now. But stay vigilant. But life, even during a crisis, is only sometimes like that. As Hemingway wrote about bankruptcy, crises come upon us in two ways: gradually then suddenly. The “rise of the Nazis” or the “fall of Rome” are acts of linguistic compression that obscure the years in which many people went about their lives—falling in love, working and raising children, adapting to the events that would punctuate hindsight’s tidy narrative. A crisis rarely unfolds without precedent and preparation, and when it arrives, it can owe as much to the piling up of everyday acts of cowardice and compromise—sometimes decades of them—as to the grand plays for power splashed across headlines. This reality explains, at least in part, the decidedly mixed reactions to the insurrection on January 6, 2021, from the broad left-of-center in U.S. politics—the political factions that range from the mainstream of the Democratic Party to the Democratic Socialists of America. It was a brief event long in the making, which has allowed it to serve as a kind of Rorschach test for American politics during the Trump years. Was it the work of bumbling, conspiracy-addled fools, personified by the QAnon Shaman, as some socialists proclaimed—bad, sure, but also faintly ridiculous? Or did it vindicate, in spectacular fashion, those who call the Trump movement fascist? These takes, and nearly everything in between, could be found in the months following the attack on the Capitol. History will not look kindly on Trump and his ilk, we’re seeing that already. And before we go, the next video in what I like to call GNR Theater! Hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you enjoyed this weeks GNR. See you next week! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/24/2165532/-From-the-GNR-Newsroom-its-the-Monday-Good-News-Roundup Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/