(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.'] Date: 2023-10-30 Hey everyone, welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, where the GNR newsroom of myself, Killer300 and Bhu, bring out the stories to start your week off right. I am currently in the process of getting over a cold, and am at the point where my voice is gone from coughing, luckily I can still type, so here is the good news! Winning Virginia - Got word from the VA Dem Party last night that there was a lot of energy and activity this weekend in Virginia. Party folks were really encouraged by what got done - great work all! Two more weeks of voting in Virginia and we need to keep our heads down, keep working hard. I deeply appreciate everyone who has stepped up for the six candidates I’m recommending down the stretch. Between direct contributions and our ActBlue page we’ve raised over $75,000 so far - thank you! I’ve left the comments section open today for folks to share what actions they are taking to help us win Virginia! We’re not the only one chronicling the good news out there, its always good to see other people making the same effort. ROOKLYN, New York — Jeff Hansen climbs up onto a narrow metal platform and stands beside three towering mixers, which are stirring up concrete with the texture of wet sand. In the bustling warehouse below, tall machines press the concrete into molds like giant Play-Doh sets, churning out thousands of building blocks per day at the Glenwood Mason Supply facility in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. To make the concrete in these jumbo mixers, Glenwood Mason dumps in Portland cement, sand, crushed aggregates and one final key ingredient: carbon dioxide. Yep, still love living in the future. weden inched a step closer to joining NATO on Monday after Turkey’s president sent accession protocols to parliament. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted both Sweden and Finland to seek NATO membership but the former’s entry had been stymied by Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s sign off on the accession protocols comes after months of delays but it is unclear how long the process will take. A stronger NATO is the last thing Putin wants, so this is bad news for him, which is good for us. The new plant is part of a multibillion-dollar expansion that U.S. Steel is undertaking at Big River Steel, a sprawling complex on the outskirts of the tiny city of Osceola. The company says the massive undertaking will allow it to supply much more lower-carbon material to automakers, construction firms and other companies looking to clean up their own supply chains. For nearly a decade, Big River Steel has been producing millions of tons of high-strength metal and using electricity to do it — instead of heating purified coal, like the nation’s oldest and most polluting steel furnaces do. Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel acquired the site in 2021, in part, it said to help create a more ​“secure, sustainable future” for the 122-year-old industrial giant. At the steel mill, heaps of recycled metal — from chopped-up cars, washing machines, structural beams and more — are placed inside two enormous ​“electric arc furnaces,” along with small amounts of iron pellets. The furnaces blast a bolt of electricity between internal electrodes, melting the contents into a glowing orange liquid at nearly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Other machines roll the material into sheets and curl it into coils, which are strapped to beds of trains and trucks and hauled across the country. Producing steel this way can curb carbon dioxide emissions by up to 75 percent, compared to traditional coal-based methods, according to the company and industry reports. “The future is toward electrification, and we can make some money with this green steel,” David Burritt, U.S. Steel’s president and CEO, told me as giant metal rolling pins droned loudly behind us. If they want to make the steel green, why not paint it? Thank you I’ll be here all week. Seriously though its good to see them putting so much effort into this. Ministers are to scrap “outdated” IVF laws that deny access to people with HIV and force lesbians to pay extra for tests. Campaigners said the move would transform lives across the UK. Hundreds of couples hoping to become parents but going through the distress of fertility issues will have their chances improved, the government announced on Wednesday, as it outlined two law changes to IVF provision in the UK. Lesbian couples will no longer be required to pay for expensive screening before IVF, while couples with HIV will no longer be banned from having babies via IVF under the new laws. And good news from out of the UK. Debt activists have bought out the student debt balances held by nearly all of the attendees of a historically Black college for a penny on the dollar — and canceled it entirely. On Monday, a debtors’ union called the Debt Collective announced that, in collaboration with its sister organization, the Rolling Jubilee Fund, it had bought nearly $10 million of debt in collections from Morehouse College for a mere $125,000, or a little more than a penny on the dollar. Morehouse College is a historically Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta whose alumni includes notable figures like Martin Luther King Jr. With the college’s permission, the Debt Collective then released all of the debt, eliminating the balances of 2,777 accounts from the Fall 2022 term and earlier, no strings attached. This was made possible in part by the fact that the debt was owned by the college and not the federal government. The cancellation allows borrowers to access their transcripts and receive their diplomas without thousands of dollars of debt looming over them. That was very nice of them. I hope someone cancels my debt someday (not that I’m paying any of it atm). The United Auto Workers have secured a tentative deal with Ford that would end the strike against one of the mammoth automakers making up The Big Three, the union announced Wednesday night. Earlier in the evening, numerous journalistsand publications noted that the tentative deal was likely, and publications like Bloomberg reported early Wednesday evening that the deal had already been made. “We announce a major victory in the Stand-Up Strike. Today, we reached a tentative agreement with Ford. For months we said that record profits mean record contracts, and UAW family, our Stand-Up strike has delivered,” UAW President Shawn Fain said in a video posted on X (formerly Twitter). Bloomberg noted that ​“the breakthrough puts pressure on the carmaker’s two chief rivals to reach deals and end a protracted strike that has already cost the industry billions of dollars.” Great news for the UAW. Remember, striking works. Which brings us into the present day. Since Lula’s election last year, I have seen a steady stream, seemingly every month, of “Amazon deforestation cut x percent” articles, but none that showed long-term figures so I could compare current data with past. But now we have a chart that does, from the US-based environmental outlet Mongabay. The thick red lines represent data from the Brazilian government’s deforestation monitoring system, DETER—the creation of which is one reason Lula’s efforts against deforestation worked so well in the early millennium. (I’d love to know who comes up with these half-catchy, half-cringey acronyms . . .) The thick blue line is data from Imazon, an independent Brazilian NGO. Deforestation in Brazil is beginning to dip, which is very good. mericans have gotten used to reading a bunch of dire, grim news lately — war, inflation, political turmoil, etc. In this swirl of things to worry about, good news tends to fly under the radar. So your friendly neighborhood econ blogger, Yours Truly, is here to bring it above the radar…or whatever the metaphor is. Anyway, here’s some good news. A week ago, the Fed and Treasury released its 2022 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), which is a big survey they do every three years in which they ask households about their finances. Household surveys are important because they allow us to calculate things like medians — if you want to know how a household in the middle of the national income or wealth distribution is doing, you need to talk to a ton of households to find out what that distribution looks like. A downside of household surveys is that they take a long time to do (which is why the SCF only comes out every three years), so they don’t give you up-to-the-minute information. Another downside is that you have to be very careful about which households you survey, in order to get a representative sample. But even with those limitations, survey data is hugely informative. Great news, we are taking back the money that was taken from us by Reaganomics. Federal and state green public-procurement programs — also known as Buy Clean programs — are designed around this objective. The idea is to leverage the vast purchasing power of public agencies to spur decarbonization of dirty heavy industry. The U.S. government, for example, is the largest consumer in the world, spending more than $650 billion on products and services each year. The U.S. General Services Administration by itself is one of the largest landlords in the U.S., owning or leasing 9,624 assets and maintaining more than 375 million square feet of workspace. Harnessing this purchasing power will reduce carbon in the atmosphere, send strong signals to the private sector and support clean, domestic manufacturing jobs. North American suppliers have cleaner, less carbon-intensive manufacturing operations than many of their international counterparts, whose manufacturing facilities may be subject to less environmental regulation. Buy Clean offers these domestic suppliers a competitive advantage against imports that tend to undercut them on price. Lets hope it works out, we need all hands on deck to fight climate change. Hey they took our name kinda! That’s pretty cool, its like we’re becoming internet famous now. NEW YORK (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence on Saturday dropped his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, ending his campaign for the White House after struggling to raise money and gain traction in the polls. “It’s become clear to me: This is not my time," Pence said at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual gathering in Las Vegas. “So after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today.” "We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets,” Pence went on to tell the friendly audience, which reacted with audible surprise to the announcement and gave him multiple standing ovations. Well of course its not your time. Your only window to become president was the hope that Trump would choke to death on a whopper while you were VP (Which was a very real possibility, but sadly was not in the cards). You will NEVER be president you blithering jackass, and the world is better for it. And on that note, its time to bring this weeks GNR to a close. It may have been shorter than usual, but I think it was just as sweet. Have a good week all. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/30/2202354/-From-the-GNR-Newsroom-its-the-Monday-Good-News-Roundup?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web 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/